In United States v. Valois, et al., No. 17-13535
(Feb. 12, 2019) (Hull, Jordan, Grant), the Court affirmed the
defendant's MDLEA convictions over numerous challenges.
First, the Court rejected the defendants' constitutional
challenges to the MDLEA as foreclosed by circuit precedent. Specifically, it rejected their arguments
that Congress lacked authority to define and punish felonies on the high seas
where there is no connection to the U.S.; that due process prohibited the
prosecution of foreign nationals without a nexus to the U.S.; that the MDLEA
violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments by removing jurisdictional facts from
the province of the jury; and admission of the Secretary of State certificate to establish
jurisdiction violates the Confrontation Clause.
Second, the Court found no abuse of discretion in the denial
of the defendants' motion for a mistrial based on the prosecutor's reference in
closing arguments to a separate drug seizure.
The reference was not evidence and so did not violate Rule 404(b), and
it was the defendant who interjected the prior seizure. The prosecutor understandably sought to
refute the defendant's reliance on that prior seizure. And the defendants had not shown that the
comment was prejudicial given the court's curative instruction to the jury.
Third, the Court rejected the defendants' argument that
their Sixth Amendment rights were violated because their attorneys represented
defendants involved in the separate drug seizure, and thus had a conflict of
interest. At the time counsel was appointed,
there was no known connection between the two seizures; because a connection
first arose during the trial, the court was not required to hold a conflict-waiver
hearing before the trial began, and the court did hold such a hearing before
sentencing. Moreover, the defendants did
not show that their attorneys had any actual conflict because they in fact
tried to shift the blame on to the defendants involved in the other seizure. The Court noted that, in the future, when two
boat cases with cocaine are interdicted close in time and geography, and two
indictments are filed on the same day, the magistrate judge should consider
appointing separate counsel for each defendant because a conflict could have
arisen had a defendant one on boat testified against a defendant on the other
boat.
Fourth, and relying on prior precedent, the Court held that
the defendants were statutorily ineligible for safety-valve relief, and this ineligibility did not violate equal protection. The Court also suggested, without formally
deciding, that the safety valve did not violate the right against
self-incrimination by requiring defendants to provide the government with all
the information they had, relying on circuit precedent rejecting a similar
challenge to the acceptance of responsibility guideline.
Lastly, the Court upheld the denial of a minor-role
reduction.
