Sufficiency of Evidence

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Euripides Caguana

Case No.: 15-3453; 16-4152

Officials: RIPPLE, MANION, and SYKES, Circuit Judges

Focus: Sufficiency of Evidence

A grand jury charged Euripides Caguana with four counts of using a facility of interstate commerce with the intent that the murder-for-hire of two individuals be committed, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a). After a five-day trial, the jury rejected Mr. Caguana’s entrapment defense and found him guilty on all counts. The district court sentenced him to a total of 210 months’ imprisonment and one year of supervised release.

After filing a timely appeal of his convictions and sentence, Mr. Caguana filed a motion in the district court under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33, requesting a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. We ordered a limited remand. See Fed. R. App. P. 12.1. After a full evidentiary hearing, the district court denied the motion for a new trial. Mr. Caguana timely appealed from that ruling.  We consolidated his two appeals.

We now affirm the judgments of the district court. Mr. Caguana’s challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, with respect to both his intent to pay for a murder-for-hire and his entrapment defense, fail as a matter of law. Our case law clearly forecloses his argument that the intent element of § 1958(a) requires a legally binding contract. Here, there was sufficient evidence that Mr. Caguana had the requisite intent that a murder-for-hire be committed. The jury was entitled to credit the testimony of the informant and to make reasonable inferences from the evidence, which included a number of recorded conversations introduced by the Government.

The evidence also was sufficient to permit the jury to reject Mr. Caguana’s entrapment defense. The district court thoroughly examined this matter in adjudicating Mr. Caguana’s motion for a new trial, and Mr. Caguana does not meaningfully challenge the denial of that motion on appeal. Based on the existing trial record, we are convinced that the jury acted reasonably in finding that Mr. Caguana was not entrapped by a government agent.Mr. Caguana’s challenge to his sentence must also fail. The district court followed the plain wording of the applicable guidelines provisions and correctly applied those provisions to the facts of this case. There is no question that the sentence is substantively reasonable.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.