United States v. Monteiro

871 F.3d 99, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 17927
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedSeptember 15, 2017
Docket15-2065P
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 871 F.3d 99 (United States v. Monteiro) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Monteiro, 871 F.3d 99, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 17927 (1st Cir. 2017).

Opinion

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

In 2011 appellant Francisco Monteiro and his accomplice Joseph Guarneri planned and executéd a robbery of fellow drug traffickers Stanley and Joshua Gon-salves. Guarneri subsequently became a customer of Monteiro’s, purchasing fifty to one hundred grams of heroin from him on a weekly basis. In early 2013, Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) agents apprehended Guarneri for drug trafficking and convinced him to turn government’s witness against his former co-conspirator.

After an eight-day trial, a jury found Monteiro guilty on one count relating to the 2011 robbery and three counts relating to the subsequent drug conspiracy. Mon-teiro challenges his conviction and sentence on numerous grounds. Finding none of his contentions meritorious, we affirm.

I. Background

We provide a summary of the essential facts of this case, framed in the light most compatible with the jury’s verdict, saving additional detail for the analysis that follows. See United States v. Manor, 633 F.3d 11, 12 (1st Cir. 2011).

A. The 2011 Robbery

Monteiro first became friendly with fellow Boston-area drug trafficker Joseph Guarneri in 2009, and Guarneri began selling him oxycodone. Eventually, Monteiro told Guarneri that he could supply him pills at a better price. Soon ’ after, the buyer-seller relationship flipped and Guar-neri began purchasing batches of fifty to one hundred oxycodone pills from Montei-ro to resell.

Guarneri then began travelling to Florida to purchase larger quantities of oxyco-done from another supplier. He eventually introduced two other Boston-area drug traffickers, the brothers Stanley and Joshua Gonsalves, to his Florida supplier. After Stanley Gonsalves purchased a large batch of pills from Guarneri’s supplier, he asked Guarneri to set up another purchase. Guarneri and Monteiro responded to this request by formulating a scheme to rob the Gonsalves brothers.

Guarneri told Stanley Gonsalves that he could secure 10,000 oxycodone pills in exchange for $225,000. On May 13, 2011 Guarneri lured the Gonsalves brothers to Monteiro’s home to execute the purported drug purchase. When the Gonsalves brothers arrived, Guarneri brought Stanley into Monteiro’s home, while Joshua remained in his brother’s blue Mercedes SUV with another associate and approximately $225,000 in cash. Inside the home, Stanley told Monteiro that he wanted to see the pills so that he could examine and count them. Monteiro told Stanley that he would not show him the pills until Stanley showed him the $225,000. Stanley agreed, and sent Guarneri out to his car to fetch his brother Joshua and the money.

After Guarneri reentered the home with Joshua and the money, two other accomplices who had been lying-in-wait—Ta-vares Bonnett and Michael Fula—drew their guns and trained them on the Gon-salves brothers. Initially, Stanley refused to hand over the cash to Monteiro. To overcome this resistance, Bonnett hit Stanley on the side of the head with his gun. Stanley then handed the money over to Monteiro and his accomplices. At Montei-ro’s instruction, Guarneri again went outside to the Gonsalves vehicle to secure any weapons the brothers might have brought with them. After Guarneri found a gun in the vehicle, Monteiro, Bonnett, Fula, and Stanley all rushed out of the house, and Guarneri handed the weapon to Monteiro.

Disarmed, the Gonsalves brothers got into their Mercedes and drove away. At that point, four other individuals who had been hiding in the house rushed out, jumped into a parked Volvo, and sped off in the same direction as the Mercedes. Eventually, the Volvo passed the Gon-salves brothers’ Mercedes, and the Mercedes rammed the Volvo off the road. Meanwhile, Monteiro, Guarneri, Bonnett, and Fula traveled to the home of Montei-ro’s grandmother, where they divided the proceeds of the robbery. Monteiro kept most of the money. Guarneri collected $70,000, and the remaining cash was split between Bonnett and Fula.

B. The 2013 Drug Conspiracy

By 2012, Monteiro had begun selling heroin to Guarneri in batches of either fifty or one hundred grams. Sometimes Monteiro sold him powdered heroin. At other times the heroin was solid, either in the shape of a hockey puck or a tall, narrow cylinder.

In early 2013, the DEA approached Guarneri and informed him that he would soon be facing a federal indictment for drug trafficking. Agents told Guarneri that he could reduce his prison sentence if he cooperated in an investigation against Monteiro, and Guarneri agreed to assist them.

Guarneri first called Monteiro while serving as a DEA informant on February 14, arranging to purchase 100 grams of heroin at a price of $6,500. The following day, Guarneri drove to New Bedford, Massachusetts and picked up Monteiro and Monteiro’s cousin, Manuel Lopes, to initiate the heroin sale. Monteiro and Lopes directed Guarneri to a building, and Lopes took Guarneri into an apartment there. Inside, Guarneri gave Lopes and another individual $6,500 in exchange for 96.4 grams of heroin.

On February 20, Guarneri again met with Monteiro, this time to set up a fifty-gram heroin purchase. The two spoke again by phone two days later, and Mon-teiro directed Guarneri to purchase the drugs from Lopes in New Bedford. When Guarneri met Lopes later that day, however, Lopes told Guarneri that his source was not able to procure the heroin, and Guarneri left empty-handed.

Guarneri again spoke with Monteiro by phone several days later on February 25, and Monteiro confirmed that the sale would go forward that day. He also told Guarneri that they would not be conducting the sale in the same apartment as the previous transaction because Monteiro had robbed the occupant in the interim. When Guarneri traveled to New Bedford to purchase the drugs, he found Lopes rather than Monteiro at the site. Lopes tried to coax Guarneri to advance him the money without providing the heroin, but Guarneri refused. Lopes left the site, and Monteiro showed up and berated Guarneri for not trusting his accomplice. Monteiro convinced Guarneri to hand over the money, and he purportedly left to get the heroin. However, Monteiro never came back. Later, Monteiro called Guarneri and falsely told him that he had been stopped by the police and they had seized the purchase money.

Days later, law-enforcement authorities secured arrest warrants for Monteiro and Lopes, and search warrants for their respective residences. Police executed the warrants on March 1. At Monteiro’s home, police found $1,300 in currency with serial numbers matching the money that DEA agents had given to Guarneri. They also discovered seven small envelopes of heroin stamped with the word “Future” in green ink. At Lopes’s residence, police found thousands of identically packaged envelopes with the green “Future” identifier.

In September 2014, a federal grand jury in Massachusetts issued a five-count superseding indictment charging Monteiro, Lopes, and another individual with conspiring to possess with intent to distribute one hundred grams or more of heroin, in violation of 21 U.S.C.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
871 F.3d 99, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 17927, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-monteiro-ca1-2017.