United States v. Nancy Mageno

786 F.3d 768, 91 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1575, 15 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 4932, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 8198, 2015 WL 2369814
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedMay 19, 2015
Docket12-10474
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 786 F.3d 768 (United States v. Nancy Mageno) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth 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. Nancy Mageno, 786 F.3d 768, 91 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1575, 15 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 4932, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 8198, 2015 WL 2369814 (9th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

ORDER

In our prior opinion in this case, we vacated Nancy Mageno’s drug conspiracy conviction because of what appeared from the record to be the prosecution’s misstatement of the evidence during closing arguments. See United States v. Mageno, 762 F.3d 933 (9th Cir.2014). The court reporter’s official transcript has since been corrected, and we now know that no misstatements actually occurred. The government has brought these transcript corrections to our attention for the first time in a petition for rehearing, asking us to vacate our prior opinion and affirm Mage-no’s conviction. We hold, first, that we have authority under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 40 to grant a petition for rehearing for the purpose of recognizing corrections in the trial transcript raised at this stage of the proceedings and, second, that this case presents extraordinary circumstances that warrant doing so. Because Mageno was properly convicted following a fair trial, vacating her conviction would not serve the interests of justice. Accordingly, we grant the government’s petition for rehearing, vacate our prior opinion and affirm Mageno’s conviction.

BACKGROUND

In 2011, a federal grand jury indicted Nancy Mageno on one count of conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 and one count of distribution of a controlled substance in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(l)(A)(viii) and 18 U.S.C. § 2.

The charges against Mageno arose principally from her role in translating phone calls regarding methamphetamine transactions for her Spanish-speaking godson, Jesus Guadalupe (“Virrio”) Felix-Burgos, in 2010. At trial, Mageno denied knowingly conspiring to distribute methamphetamine, testifying she had been unaware that her godson was involved in illegal drugs or that the phone calls she was translating involved drug transactions.

To help prove Mageno’s knowledge, the government elicited testimony from Bur-gos that he had been deported for drug trafficking three years before the phone calls in question and, significantly, that Mageno knew the reason for his deportation:

Q. Well, you were in the United States in 2007, were you not?
A. Yes.
Q. You were living with Ms. Mageno during that time frame, too, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. How long did you live with her in 2007?
A. It was for about a year as well.
Q. And then you had to go back to Mexico, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You were deported, right?
A. Yes.
Q. Ms. Mageno knew why you were deported?
*771 MR. YAMPOLSKY [Mageno’s counsel]: Objection, calls for speculation.
A. Yes.[ 1 ]
THE COURT: If he can answer it, he can answer it.
[Sidebar held.]
Q. Mr. Burgos, going back to the 2007, the reason why you were deported was because you were trafficking in methamphetamine, isn’t that right?
A. Yes.

In closing arguments, the government relied in part on this testimony to establish Mageno’s knowledge. It argued, for example, that the jury should infer Mageno knew the phone calls involved drug transactions because, “[b]eginning in 2007 when Virrio was living with her, he was arrested and deported for distributing methamphetamine. This is something Virrio explained to you she knew because he was living with her, then he comes back.” In the government’s view, Mageno had to know the phone calls involved illegal drugs because she “already in her head knew that Virrio, the person she was translating for, has a history of distributing methamphetamine.” It argued to the jury that “in 2007, she already knows. Is it past is prologue? He’s been deported because he was trafficking methamphetamine while he was living with her. He testified she knew why he was deported.” 2

The jury convicted Mageno on the conspiracy charge and acquitted her of the distribution charge. The district court sentenced Mageno to 87 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release.

Mageno appealed, raising as her sole claim of error that the evidence against her was insufficient to sustain the conviction. Assistant United States Attorney Adam Flake, assigned to draft the government’s answering brief, had not been present at trial and relied solely on the reporter’s transcript of the proceedings. While reviewing' the trial transcript, he discovered what appeared to be misstatements by the trial prosecutors. As noted, the government attorneys stated in their closing arguments that Burgos had testified that Mageno knew why he had been deported in 2007. The trial transcript, however, indicated (incorrectly, we now know) that, although Burgos had been asked whether Mageno knew why he had been deported, he had not answered that question.

In consultation with his supervisor, Flake concluded he should bring these apparent misstatements to the court’s attention even though Mageno had not raised the issue in her opening brief. Accordingly, the government argued in its answering brief:

Although not raised by Mageno, the Government has discovered that during closing argument, the prosecutors incorrectly claimed that Felix-Burgos had testified that Mageno knew that he had been previously deported for dealing methamphetamine. The Government believes its duty of candor requires it to bring this fact to the Court’s attention. This mistake does not warrant reversal, *772 however[,] because the prosecutors’ misstatements were apparently inadvertent, because Mageno did not object and has not attempted to show prejudice, because the district court instructed the jury that the attorneys’ arguments were not evidence, and because regardless ■whether the jury believed that Mageno knew why Felix-Burgos had been deported, the other evidence against her amply demonstrated her guilt.

Mageno did not file an optional reply brief, and so did not address the misstatement-of-the-evidence issue raised by the government in any of her briefing..

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Bluebook (online)
786 F.3d 768, 91 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1575, 15 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 4932, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 8198, 2015 WL 2369814, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-nancy-mageno-ca9-2015.