UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Domingo RAMOS-MEJIA, Defendant, Appellant.
No. 12-1738
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
July 1, 2013.
Rosa Emilia Rodriguez-Velez, United States Attorney, Nelson Perez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, and Juan Carlos Reyes-Ramos, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
Before TORRUELLA, SELYA and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.
SELYA, Circuit Judge.
Defendant-appellant Domingo Ramos-Mejia asseverates that he did not understand the criminal intent required as an element of the crime to which he pleaded and that the district court accepted his guilty plea to that charge without an adequate factual basis. For these reasons, hе urges us to vitiate his guilty plea. After careful consideration, we reject the appellant‘s asseverational array.
The travel of the case is easily traced. A federal grand jury sitting in the District of Puerto Rico indicted the appellant on a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine. See
The district court accepted the plea and subsequently imposed a 78-month incarcerative sentence. This timely appeal ensued.
Before turning to the meat of this appeal, we pаuse to note that the plea agreement contained a waiver-of-appeal provision. This provision purposed to foreclose any appeal as long as the district court accepted the plea and sentenced the appellant in accordance with the plea agreement‘s terms and recommendations.
But even though the district court sentenced the appellant within the parameters of the plea agreement, the waiver-of-appeal provision does not pretermit this appeаl. Where, as here, an appeal challenges the validity of the plea itself, a waiver-of-appeal provision lacks force. See United States v. Chambers, 710 F.3d 23, 27 (1st Cir. 2013). After all, if a plea is invalid, the plea agreement (and, thus, the waiver provision contained within it) disintegrates.
We begin our discussion оf the merits with the abecedarian proposition that a defendant has no absolute right to withdraw his guilty plea. See United States v. Mercedes Mercedes, 428 F.3d 355, 359 (1st Cir. 2005). When, as in this case, a defendant seeks for the first time to withdraw his plea in the court of appeals, his request will be granted only if he can show that the district court‘s acceptance of the plea was plainly erroneous. See United States v. Davila, ___ U.S. ___, 133 S.Ct. 2139, 2146-47, 186 L.Ed.2d 139 (2013). Plain error review imposes a heavy burden on the appellant, who must demonstrate: “(1) that an error occurred (2) which was clear or obvious and which not only (3) affected the defendant‘s substantial rights, but also (4) seriously impaired the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Duarte, 246 F.3d 56, 60 (1st Cir. 2001).
Against this backdrop, we turn to the appellant‘s assertion that his plea was not knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.
The charge to which the appellant pleaded guilty involved conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute drugs. Proof of such a charge entails proof of the existence of the charged conspiracy, the defendant‘s knowledge of it, and his voluntary partiсipation in it. See United States v. Nelson-Rodriguez, 319 F.3d 12, 27-28 (1st Cir. 2003). A conspiracy charge requires, at a minimum, the same degree of criminal intent as the underlying substantive offense. Ingram v. United States, 360 U.S. 672, 678, 79 S.Ct. 1314, 3 L.Ed.2d 1503 (1959). It follows that, for guilt to attach in a drug conspiracy case, a defendant must have conspired knowingly to possess the drugs with the intent to distribute them. See United States v. Echeverri, 982 F.2d 675, 677-79 (1st Cir. 1993).
The аppellant asserts that, when he entered his plea, he was unaware that the government had to prove his knowledge of a conspiracy to distribute drugs (as opposed to some other contraband) and his specific intent to effectuate the object of the conspiracy (distributing drugs). He suggests that the district court kept him in the dark by failing sufficiently to inform
In this case, the change-of-plea colloquy, though not a textbook model, was adequate. In order to satisfy
The court made certain that the appellant had read the indictment and understood both the charge and the terms of the plea agreement. The court also verified that the appellant had reviewed these materials with his attorney. Finally, the court read aloud the charge limned in the indictment, and the appellant agreed that he had knowingly participated in that activity.
This, we think, was enough.
This is not to say that merely reading the formal charge will be sufficient in every case. The process through which the court ensures the defendant‘s understanding of the charge may vary depending on the attributes of the particular defendant, the nature of the specifiс offense, and the complexity of the attendant circumstances. See Corporan-Cuevas, 244 F.3d at 203; see also
Here, however, the environmental factors were not extraordinary. This is a run-of-the-mine case, involving a mature defendant with a history of gainful employment. The appellant was facing only a single chаrge--and that charge was not a complicated one. Moreover, the circumstances attendant to the charged crime were straightforward. Given these considerations, we believe that a reading of the charge sufficed. See, e.g., United States v. Ramirez-Benitez, 292 F.3d 22, 27 (1st Cir. 2002).
If more were needed--and wе doubt that it is--the record in this case contains other indicia of the appellant‘s appreciation of the elements of the charged crime. The plea agreement contained a factual narrative that described what the government said it could prove. It further explained that the appellant was pleading guilty to “knowingly and intentionally combining, conspiring, and agreeing with others to ... possess with intent to distribute” co-
This brings us to the appellant‘s second claim of error. He contends that the record fails to establish an adequate factual basis for the mens rea element of the conspiracy charge. In his view, the record does not evince either his knowledge that drugs were involved in the conspiracy or his intent to distribute them. The government‘s proffered facts, he says, establish only that he was seen in the vicinity of a meeting and, three months later, in a vehicle loaded with fake drugs.
This claim of error implicates
The necessary showing, however, is fairly modest. To satisfy the “factual basis” requirement, the evidence need nоt conclusively demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Pimentel, 539 F.3d 26, 29 (1st Cir. 2008). Rather, the government need only show a rational basis in fact for the defendant‘s guilt. See id.; Delgado-Hernandez, 420 F.3d at 27. In other words, there must be some “basis for thinking that the defendant is at least arguably guilty.” Delgado-Hernandez, 420 F.3d at 27 (internal quotation marks omitted).
To meet the “factual basis” standard, the government is not required to support every element of the charged crime by direct evidence. See United States v. Marrero-Rivera, 124 F.3d 342, 352 (1st Cir. 1997). A smoking gun is useful, but not essential.
Of particular pertinence for present purposes, a court may infer “[t]he factual predicate for the requisite mens rea ... from all the evidence alluded to at thе Rule 11 hearing.” Id.; see Delgado-Hernandez, 420 F.3d at 31. “[A]s long as the government‘s proffered facts, conceded by the defendant to be true, touch all the bases, there is a sufficient factual basis for the tendered plea.” Jiminez, 498 F.3d at 87.
In this instance, the facts proffered by the government at the change-of-plea hearing (and аcquiesced in by the appellant) revealed that the appellant and two accomplices went to a shopping center parking lot on or about March 1, 2011. While there, one of the appellant‘s companions, Ruben Dario Paez-Fontana (Paez), met with two other individuals to
After some intervening communications, Paez met again with the CS. Paez told the CS that, after the drugs were retrieved at sea and brought to Puerto Rico, he would provide a truck for land transport. The CS would then stow the drugs in the truck and return the truck to Paez‘s henchmen.
The retrieval took place as planned. The CS, accompanied by undercover law enforcement officers, picked up a load of cocaine and heroin at the sea coordinates that Paez had provided. Shortly after the retrievers reached land, the appellant and another of Paez‘s associates, Marcelino Medina-Vasquez (Medina), met the CS with a truck. The CS and his confederates loaded the truck but, unbeknownst to the appellant and Medina, used ersatz drugs, not the real drugs that had been retrieved at sea. After the truck was loaded, the appellant and Medina drove it away, while Paez and a fourth accomplice followed in another vehicle. In short order, the authorities stopped both vehicles and arrested all four men.
These facts were more than adequate to allow the district court to conclude that the appellant was at least arguably guilty of participation in the charged conspiracy. Participation in a drug-trafficking conspiracy can be proved through circumstantial evidence. See United States v. Bergodere, 40 F.3d 512, 518 (1st Cir. 1994); Echeverri, 982 F.2d at 677-79.
Here, a rational factfinder could conclude that the appellant was privy to the drug-trafficking scheme. Drug traffickers do not normally bring innocent parties to clandestine mеetings set up to arrange for drug deliveries, see United States v. Ortiz, 966 F.2d 707, 711-12 (1st Cir. 1992); see also Echeverri, 982 F.2d at 677-78, and a factfinder could reasonably infer that the appellant‘s presence at the parking lot meeting was culpable. By like token, a factfinder could reasonably infer that the appellant‘s role in delivering the truck fоr loading--and leaving in it after the loading had been completed--was carried out with knowledge of the plot. The fact that only fake drugs were in the truck at the time of the arrest does not diminish the force of this inference. See United States v. Sanchez-Berrios, 424 F.3d 65, 77-78 (1st Cir. 2005).
To say more on this point would be to paint the lily. We conclude, without serious question, that the version of events proffered at the change-of-plea hearing was ample to ground inferences that the appellant knew that the conspiracy was arranging to import drugs and that he intended to facilitate the delivery by his role in trаnsporting drugs. The bottom line, then, is that there was a suitable factual basis for the appellant‘s guilty plea.
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above, we discern no error, plain or otherwise, in the district court‘s acceptance of the appellant‘s tendered guilty plea. The appellant is not, therefore, entitled to withdraw his plea.
Affirmed.