U.S. v. Cardales–luna

632 F.3d 731

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.José Del Carmen CARDALES–LUNA, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 08–1028.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 4, 2010.Decided Jan. 20, 2011.

José R. Olmo–Rodríguez, for appellant.Nelson Pérez–Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Rosa Emilia Rodríguez–Vélez, United States Attorney, and Germán A. Rieckehoff, Assistant United States Attorney, were on brief, for appellee.Before TORRUELLA, SELYA, and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Our opinion in United States v. Angulo–Hernández, 565 F.3d 2 (1st Cir.2009), describes the facts underlying this Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA) appeal. Appellant José del Carmen Cardales–Luna was one of eight crew members serving on the Bolivian flag vessel Osiris II when it was boarded by the United States Coast Guard in international waters on February 4, 2007. In the course of a six-day search of the Osiris II, Coast Guard officers discovered 400 kilograms of cocaine, twenty-five kilograms of heroin, and a machine gun hidden in a compartment near the rear of the vessel. Cardales–Luna and his seven fellow crew members were subsequently charged in a three-count superseding indictment with (1) conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute the drugs found on the Osiris II, see 46 U.S.C. § 70506(b); (2) aiding and abetting the possession of those drugs with intent to distribute, see 46 U.S.C. § 70503(a)(1), 18 U.S.C. § 2(a); and (3) aiding and abetting the possession of a machine gun in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 2(a), 924(c)(1)(B)(ii).

The other seven crew members were tried jointly. The jury found four of them guilty on all counts and three not guilty on all counts. We affirmed the four convictions in Angulo–Hernández, a set of appeals that focused on whether the government had presented sufficient evidence to prove that the defendants knew the drugs were hidden on the vessel. See 565 F.3d at 7–9. For reasons that are not clear from the record, Cardales–Luna was tried separately from his co-defendants. After a one-day trial, the second jury found Cardales–Luna guilty on all three counts. At sentencing, the court dismissed the gun charge, as it had at the sentencing of the defendants found guilty in the Angulo–Hernández trial. This appeal followed.

I.

Cardales–Luna contends that the government proved only that he was present on a vessel that happened to be carrying drugs, not that he knowingly possessed those drugs with the intent to distribute. We considered and rejected the same sufficiency of the evidence argument in Angulo–Hernández, where we held that the circumstantial evidence was sufficient for the jury to infer knowledge. 565 F.3d at 9. In particular, we held that the route of the vessel, the quantity and value of the drugs, the low value and unprofessional handling of the other cargo, and evidence suggesting that the compartment containing the drugs had recently been sealed all supported a finding that the crew members knew about the drug trafficking operation. ¹ Id. at 8–9.

At Cardales–Luna's trial, the government offered the same circumstantial evidence that it had offered against two of the other crew members, José Luis Casiano–Jiménez and Gustavo Rafael Brito–Fernández, whose convictions we affirmed in Angulo–Hernández.² Cardales–Luna did not testify at trial, nor did he offer any evidence that would favorably distinguish him from Casiano–Jiménez and Brito–Fernández. Indeed, the one material fact distinguishing Cardales–Luna from Brito–Fernández arguably cuts in the government's favor: a Coast Guard officer testified that the other crew members appeared to treat Cardales–Luna and Casiano–Jiménez with deference, which the officer viewed as an indication that they were higher on the crew's hierarchy than the others (that is, closer to the status of the captain and engineer than the ordinary crew members).³ The jury could have inferred from that evidence that Cardales–Luna was more likely to know about the drug smuggling operation than Brito–Fernández.

In short, the evidence against Cardales–Luna was at least as strong as—and materially identical to—the evidence against Casiano–Jiménez and Brito–Fernández, which we held to be sufficient to prove knowledge in Angulo–Hernández. There is a question, however, of what weight our decision in Angulo–Hernández should be given in this appeal. In general, “accepted principles of stare decisis militate strongly in favor of resolving identical points in the same way for identically situated defendants.” United States v. Diaz–Bastardo, 929 F.2d 798, 799 (1st Cir.1991). Those principles suggest that we should follow our previous decision as a matter of stare decisis.

There are two potential difficulties with that route, however. The first is that the government conceded at oral argument that our prior decision has no stare decisis effect here. Yet that representation, though entitled to some weight, is not binding on us. United States v. Bucci, 582 F.3d 108, 119 n. 9 (1st Cir.2009). As the Supreme Court has pointed out, our “judgments are precedents, and the proper administration of the criminal law cannot be left merely to the stipulation of parties.” Young v. United States, 315 U.S. 257, 259, 62 S.Ct. 510, 86 L.Ed. 832 (1942). A concession by the government therefore “does not relieve [us] of the performance of the judicial function.” Id. at 258, 62 S.Ct. 510; see also Roberts v. Galen of Va., Inc., 525 U.S. 249, 253, 119 S.Ct. 685, 142 L.Ed.2d 648 (1999) (per curiam) (noting that “the concession of a point on appeal by respondent is by no means dispositive of a legal issue”). If the law requires us to adhere to Angulo–Hernández, we must adhere to it, the government's concession to the contrary notwithstanding.

The second difficulty is that there is limited authority directly addressing the role of stare decisis in the sufficiency of the evidence context. It is possible that this limited authority reflects a belief that sufficiency of the evidence rulings are categorically exempt from the ordinary rules of stare decisis. Sufficiency of the evidence rulings, after all, “generate[ ] no precedential force upon the decisionmaking processes of fact finders at criminal trials.” United States v. Willoughby, 27 F.3d 263, 268 (7th Cir.1994). Perhaps the same principle extends to appellate review for evidentiary sufficiency as well.

We reject that proposition. The role of an appellate court in judging the sufficiency of the evidence is fundamentally different from the role of the jury in finding the facts and determining guilt. Whereas the jury must determine whether, in its subjective judgment, the government has overcome the presumption of innocence and eliminated any reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the charged offense, a court reviewing for sufficiency is not permitted to “make its own subjective determination of guilt or innocence.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 n. 13, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Rather, appellate courts ask “whether the evidence introduced is sufficient to convict as a matter of law (which is not to say the jury must convict, but only that, as a matter of law, the case may be submitted to the jury and the jury may convict).” Carmell v. Texas, 529 U.S. 513, 547, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577 (2000) (emphasis altered). The question calls for a “binary response: Either the trier of fact has power as a matter of law [to make a finding of guilt] or it does not.” Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 330, 115 S.Ct. 851, 130 L.Ed.2d 808 (1995).

The distinction between fact-finding and sufficiency review is important because stare decisis “deals only with law.” United States v. Reveron Martinez, 836 F.2d 684, 691 (1st Cir.1988) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). The trier of fact is thus free to make an independent assessment of the evidence because “the facts of each successive case must be determined by the evidence adduced at trial.” Id. By contrast, even the narrowest conception of stare decisis demands that two panels faced with the same legal question and identical facts reach the same outcome. See 18 James Wm. Moore et al., Moore's Federal Practice § 134.03[1] (3d ed. 2010) (“At a minimum, stare decisis extends to the result reached by the prior authoritative decisions.”); Drive Fin. Servs., L.P. v. Jordan, 521 F.3d 343, 349 (5th Cir.2008) (“[W]hen a future case presents the same facts as a past case decided by a higher court[,] stare decisis requires that we decide those cases in a similar manner.”); Tate v. Showboat Marina Casino P'ship, 431 F.3d 580, 582 (7th Cir.2005) (noting that the holding of a case includes “the facts and the outcome”).

The proposition that courts policing the legal boundaries of the fact-finder's authority must act in conformity with binding legal precedent is confirmed explicitly in a few cases. E.g., Willoughby, 27 F.3d at 268 (noting that the stare decisis effect of a prior panel decision extends to “other appellate tribunals in the same jurisdiction faced with comparable challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence”); United States v. Gillis, 942 F.2d 707, 711 (10th Cir.1991) (holding that a previous panel decision “is stare decisis on the issue of sufficiency of the evidence to support this conviction”). It is also implicit in many others. E.g., United States v. Johnson, 519 F.3d 478, 485–86 (D.C.Cir.2008) (affirming conviction on the ground that “[t]he evidence introduced in this case is indistinguishable from evidence we have previously held sufficient”); United States v. Hernandez, 141 F.3d 1042, 1055–56 (11th Cir.1998) (reversing conviction on the ground that the evidence was indistinguishable from evidence previously held insufficient).

There are of course limits to stare decisis, which we have catalogued in numerous cases. See, e.g., United States v. Rodríguez, 527 F.3d 221, 224–25 (1st...