United States v. Rodriguez-Mendez

1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ADELFO RODRIGUEZ-MENDEZ, a/k/a MEXICAN MIKE, Appellant

No. 22-1422

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit

May 11, 2023

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) January 9, 2023

On Appeal from the United States District Court For the Western District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 1-17-cr-00015-001) District Judge: Honorable Stephanie L. Haines

Before: JORDAN, PHIPPS and ROTH, Circuit Judges

OPINION ^[*]

JORDAN, CIRCUIT JUDGE

Adelfo Rodriguez-Mendez appeals numerous aspects of the criminal proceedings leading to his conviction and sentencing for dealing drugs. For the following reasons, we will affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

In 2010, Rodriguez-Mendez opened an auto repair shop in Erie, Pennsylvania, called East Coast Monster Garage ("Monster Garage"), and at some point thereafter began using the garage as a front for trafficking drugs. He was running Monster Garage when law enforcement, with the help of a confidential informant ("C.I."), executed two "controlled buys" there in July 2016 and March 2017. The government indicted Rodriguez-Mendez and four confederates in June 2017.^[1] Federal law enforcement officials then arrested Rodriguez-Mendez near the U.S.-Mexico border in Southern California. (District Court Docket Item ("D.I.") 100 at 3.)

While detained pending trial, Rodriguez-Mendez filed various motions germane to this appeal. He filed two motions to dismiss the charges against him, one in July 2020, alleging that he was arrested on an unsigned warrant, and another in May 2021, arguing that the four-year-long delay in going to trial violated his speedy-trial rights. The District Court denied both motions. He also filed various motions in limine raising evidentiary and constitutional objections to the admission of undercover audio recordings of the C.I., primarily because the C.I. had since died and thus could not confirm the authenticity of the recordings or be cross-examined. The District Court granted in part and denied in part the motions in limine. Essentially, the court prohibited the introduction of any and all statements made by the deceased C.I. to law enforcement as inadmissible hearsay, and all testimonial statements made by the C.I. to law enforcement as violations of the Sixth Amendment. But the Court reserved ruling on the authentication of the undercover recordings pending a proffer of evidence from the government at trial and denied Rodriguez-Mendez's request to exclude the undercover recordings as violations of the Sixth Amendment because we had already held in United States v. Hendricks, 395 F.3d 173 (3d Cir. 2005), that undercover recordings are not testimonial for purposes of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). Ultimately, the Court concluded that the proffer of testimony of the undercover agent involved in the recording, in addition to a cooperating defendant, met the government's burden under Federal Rule of Evidence 901(a) for authentication, and, accordingly, the recordings were admitted in evidence.

After Rodriguez-Mendez's two-day trial, the jury returned a verdict convicting him of three counts in the superseding indictment: Count I, Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Distribute and to Distribute Less than Five Hundred (500) Grams of a Mixture and Substance Containing a Detectable Amount of Cocaine, and Counts II and V, both of which charged Possession with Intent to Distribute and Distribution of Less than Five Hundred (500) Grams of a Mixture and Substance Containing a Detectable Amount of Cocaine.^[2]

Rodriguez-Mendez moved for a judgment of acquittal before the case was submitted to the jury, but the District Court denied that motion as well. After the guilty verdict was handed down, Rodriguez-Mendez renewed his motion for acquittal and also moved for a new trial on the ground that the Court had erred in admitting the undercover recordings. The Court denied both motions, holding that the evidence adduced at trial was sufficient to support the jury verdict and that the admission of undercover recordings did not necessitate a new trial since the recordings were adequately authenticated.

Finally, at sentencing, the District Court increased Rodriguez-Mendez's sentencing range based on a finding that, by a preponderance of the evidence, Rodriguez-Mendez had trafficked between 5 and 15 kilograms of cocaine during the conspiracy.

II. DISCUSSION^[3]

A. The District Court properly denied Rodriguez-Mendez's motion to dismiss the Superseding Indictment.^[4]

Rodriguez-Mendez argues that the warrant used to arrest him was somehow constitutionally defective under the Fourth Amendment because it was unsigned by the clerk of the court, and therefore the charges against him should have been dismissed.^[5] In United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463 (1980), the Supreme Court, in addressing whether an in-court identification of a defendant by a victim should be suppressed as the fruit of a defendant's unlawful arrest, held that "[a]n illegal arrest, without more, has never been viewed as a bar to subsequent prosecution, nor as a defense to a valid conviction." Id. at 474. The Court went on to discuss how the exclusionary rule is a citizen's protection against police misconduct but that the defendant was "not himself a suppressible fruit, and [that] the illegality of [a defendant's] detention cannot deprive the Government of the opportunity to prove his guilt through the introduction of evidence wholly untainted by the police misconduct." Id. (internal quotations omitted). Thus, even if an arrest is unsupported by probable cause, the exclusionary rule in the form of suppressed evidence, not dismissal of the indictment, is the remedy. Id. Here, Rodriguez-Mendez does not dispute that probable cause supported his arrest. Nor does he contend that any unlawfully obtained evidence was admitted against him. Therefore, even if the arrest warrant were technically deficient, his conviction would still stand because the arrest was amply supported by probable cause. In any event, however, it appears the warrant was in fact signed by the clerk.

Although the initial public docket reflected an unsigned arrest warrant (D.I. 56), the Deputy Clerk testified under oath that standard procedure in the clerk's office after receiving an order to issue a warrant was to generate the warrant, "print three copies .. sign them . and give them to the [United States] [M]arshals[,]" after which an unsigned copy was then filed on the public docket. (Supp. App. Vol. II at 791-94.) She also testified that a signed arrest warrant does not appear on the docket until after it is returned executed by the U.S. Marshals. (See id. at 797.) That process was evidently followed here. (See id. at 790-97; see also App. Vol. I at 42.) The record clearly shows that the warrant was signed by the clerk on the same day the warrant issued but was not publicly filed until after it was executed, per standard procedure. (D.I. 100). Based on this, the District Court did not clearly err when it relied on the Deputy Clerk's credible, uncontradicted testimony to hold that Rodriguez-Mendez's arrest warrant comported with Rule 9 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. And Rodriguez-Mendez has not pointed to any authority indicating that a properly signed warrant left under seal somehow violates Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 9, or the Constitution. Thus, we will affirm the Court's denial of Rodriguez-Mendez's motion to dismiss his superseding indictment based on an allegedly faulty warrant.

B. The government did not violate Rodriguez-Mendez's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.^[6]

Rodriguez-Mendez does not appeal the District Court's determination that his 49-month pretrial delay did not violate the Speedy Trial Act; he appeals only the Court's Sixth Amendment ruling. The District Court held that while the delay in bringing this case to trial was lengthy, the delay was "understandable and excusable." (App. Vol. 1 at 69.) Upon review of the record and the District Court's constitutional analysis, we agree.

In Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), the Supreme Court laid out a four-factor balancing test to assess constitutional speedy trial claims. The Barker inquiry focuses on: "(1) the length of the delay before trial; (2) the reason for the delay and, specifically, whether the government or the defendant is more to blame; (3) the extent to which the defendant asserted his speedy trial right; and (4) the prejudice suffered by the defendant." United States v. Velazquez, 749 F.3d 161, 174 (3d Cir. 2014) (citing Barker, 407 U.S. at 530-31). "No one factor is dispositive nor talismanic." Id. (cleaned up).

The first factor is generally considered a "triggering mechanism" or gateway to analyzing the remaining three factors, Barker, 407 U.S. at 530, and the parties agree that the 49-month delay at issue here is sufficiently lengthy to trigger a speedy trial analysis. Turning to the second Barker factor, the delay in this case stemmed primarily from the multiple continuances filed by the defendants and the District Court's order suspending jury trials because of the Covid-19 global pandemic. Rodriguez-Mendez argues that those factors were outside of his control since his co-defendants filed the majority of the extensions without his consent,^[7] and he certainly did not cause a global pandemic.

While it is true that Rodriguez-Mendez did not join in many of the requests for extensions, neither did he file any objections to them nor a motion to sever. He also does not point us to where in the record he expressed concern over the multiple extensions. As to the pandemic delays, Barker clarifies that deliberate attempts to delay trial to hamper the defense are weighted heavily against the...