Cruzado-Laureano v. United States

146 F. Supp. 3d 445, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161455, 2015 WL 7720421
CourtDistrict Court, D. Puerto Rico
DecidedNovember 30, 2015
DocketCivil No. 3:15-CV-01930 (JAF)
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 146 F. Supp. 3d 445 (Cruzado-Laureano v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cruzado-Laureano v. United States, 146 F. Supp. 3d 445, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161455, 2015 WL 7720421 (prd 2015).

Opinion

ORDER ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF ERROR CORAM NOBIS

JOSE ANTONIO FUSTE, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE .

. “In federal courts, the maxim, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try,- try again’ does not [446]*446apply.” In re Moncier, 488 Fed.Appx. 57, 60 (6th Cir.2012). It is a maxim that petitioner Juan Manuel Cruzado-Laureano (“Cruzado”) has failed to accept. On July 13, 2015, Cruzado petitioned the court under 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a) for a writ of error coram nobis, which the First Circuit Court of Appeals has called the “criminal-law equivalent” of a Hail Mary pass because, like the football tactic, it is “made in desperation at the end of a game, with only a small chance of success.” United States v. George, 676 F.3d 249, 251 (1st Cir.2012). Like most desperate attempts, Cruzado’s fails. The facts and the law clearly dictate the outcome, and the court must deny Cruzado’s latest attempt to undo the underlying judgment of conviction in CrUza-do-Laureano v. United States, 3:01-cr-00690-JAF-l.

“It suffices to say here that Cruzado, the former mayor of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, was convicted by a jury in June 2002 on charges of embezzlement, extortion, money laundering and witness tampering stemming from conduct undertaken while he was in office, including demanding kickbacks on municipal contracts.” United States v. Cruzado-Laureano, 527 F.3d 231, 233 (1st Cir.2008) (Cruzado III). Over the next thirteen-odd years, Cruzado and his lawyer, Alexander Zeno, Esq., have generated an avalanche of related federal-court litigation. We will briefly survey this history in order to properly situate Cruzado’s new petition.

Cruzado appealed the judgment of conviction three times in a row. In his first appeal, the First Circuit affirmed Cruza-do’s conviction against challenges to the legal sufficiency of the trial evidence that the Court called “specious,” “little more than an implicit admission of guilt and a plea for leniency,” and “elevat[ing] coincidence to an art form.” United States v. Cruzado-Laureano, 404 F.3d 470, 485-86 (1st Cir.2005) (Cruzado I). The Court remanded the case for resentencing, nonetheless, because we had erroneously followed the Pre-Sentence Report in using the 2000 Sentencing Guidelines, instead of the 2002 Guidelines, to calculate the appropriate sentencing range.1 Id. at 488-89. On remand, we used the correct guidelines and then “imposed a sentence identical to the one earlier imposed.” United States v. Cruzado-Laureano, 440 F.3d 44, 47 (1st Cir.2006) (Cruzado II).

In his second appeal, Cruzado challenged the resentence, including on grounds that the First Circuit found “simply implausible.” Id. at 48 n. 9. In the end, the Court held that we had acted properly in “large part” in imposing the resentence, but had misapplied “two [guidelines] provisions that dealt with [Cruzado’s] abuse of his elected office,” and so the case was once again remanded for resentencing. Id. at 45. In sending the case back to us, the Court underscored that it did “not intend to intimate that the length of the sentence should necessarily be changed; what matters is that the [447]*447premise as to the Guideline range must be correct.” Id. at 50.

On remand, we corrected the guidelines range and once again imposed the same sentence, including restitution and fine. Cruzado III, 527 F,3d at 234. But, at that third sentencing proceeding, Gruzado wanted to achieve much more. In particular, he “sought to present witnesses to prove that he was ‘actually innocent,’ that he had been subject to malicious prosecution, and that there were no victims of his crime — and hence no need for restitution — because no loss had occurred.” Id. Rather than allow the proceeding to devolve into several mini-trials that would have gone far beyond our mandate, we let Cruzado submit the prepared direct examinations of the nine witnesses hé had wanted to call, submit an audit report from the municipality that purportedly disagreed with our specific findings of loss in the restitution order, and submit an dütline of the argument he would have made if he had fully questioned all nine witnesses. Id. at 238. When we permitted Cruzado to call four character witnesses to testify on his behalf, “only two of [them] turned out to know him personally.” ■ Id. Even then, they spoke mostly in platitudes, calling Cruzado a “good citizen” and “person” whose failings, if any, were “perhaps” caused by a “lack of orientation.” Id.

In his third appeal, the First Circuit affirmed the resentence against Cruzado’s usual list of complaints, though not without observing that his continuing “refusal to acknowledge that he [had] committed criminal acts ... giv[es] relevant' insight into his character and rais[es] concerns about" his respect for the law and his future conduct.” Id. at 237. The entire appellate process took more than six years to complete, finally ending in January 2009, when the United States Supreme Court denied Cruzado’s petition for a writ of certiorari on his third appeal. See Cruzado-Laureano v. United States, 555 U.S. 1099, 129 S.Ct. 970, 173 L.Ed.2d 108 (2009). Unfortunately, this does not come close to narrating the full history of plaintive litigation that Cruzado’s underlying conviction has spawned.

In this District Court alone, Cruzado has sued multiple people, governments, and organizations over the fact that he was ever suspected of criminal conduct, let alone prosecuted and convicted of it. For example, in May 2006, Cruzado filed suit against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the former Governor and the former Secretary of Justice of the "Commonwealth, the political party of the former Governor and Secretary (i.e., the Partido Popular Democrático), the former Secretary of the political party, and a local special prosecutor who had been appointed to investigate Cruzado, seeking damages from them for “malicious prosecution” because they had, among other things, “contemplated bringing charges against [him],” which, he claimed, “adversely affected the outcome of [his 2002] trial before the United States District Court for- the District of Puerto Rico, Case No. 01-690(JAF).”2 (3:06-cv-01471-ADC, ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 1, 12-13.) Now Chief Judge Aida M. Delgado-Colón ultimately dismissed the case with prejudice for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. (3:06-cv-01471-ADC, ECF Nos. 67, 71.)

In May 2006, Cruzado also filed suit against the United States of America, the former United States Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, several federal prosecutors and law-enforcement agents who had worked on the case that led to his underlying conviction, and many of the same Commonwealth officers -and institu[448]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
146 F. Supp. 3d 445, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161455, 2015 WL 7720421, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cruzado-laureano-v-united-states-prd-2015.