Bravo-Fernandez v. United States

137 S. Ct. 352 (2016)

Purchase the Printed Copy at bsmsphd.com

Nature of the Case

To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.

Facts

D, an entrepreneur, gave Hector Martínez-Maldonado (Martínez), then a senator serving the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas, including a $1,000 seat at a professional boxing match featuring a popular Puerto Rican contender. D intended a bribe to secure Martínez’s help in passing a bill that would “provide substantial financial benefits” to D’s enterprise. Before the trip, Martínez submitted the legislation for the Senate’s consideration and issued a committee report supporting it. Martinez issued another favorable report and voted to enact the legislation. A federal grand jury indicted Ds for federal-program bribery, conspiracy to violate §666, in violation of §371, and traveling in interstate commerce to further violations of §666, in violation of the Travel Act, §1952(a)(3)(A). A jury convicted D and Martínez of the standalone §666 bribery offense but acquitted them of the related conspiracy and Travel Act charges. Each received a sentence of 48 months in prison. The Court of Appeals vacated the §666 convictions or instructional error. The jury had been erroneously charged on what constitutes criminal conduct under that statute. The charge permitted the jury to find D and Martínez “guilty of offering and receiving a gratuity,” but, the appeals court held, §666 proscribes only quid pro quo bribes and not gratuities. The jury was instructed on both theories of bribery, and the evidence at trial sufficed to support a guilty verdict on either theory. The court could not say with confidence that the erroneous charge was harmless, so it vacated the §666 convictions and remanded them for further proceedings. Based on issue-preclusion D and Martínez moved for judgments of acquittal on the standalone §666 charges. They reasoned the jury necessarily determined that they were not guilty of violating §666 when it acquitted them of conspiring to violate §666 and traveling in interstate commerce to further violations of §666. Ds contend that the only issue was whether D had offered, and Martínez had accepted, a bribe within the meaning of §666. “There was no dispute that they agreed to go to a boxing match together”; nor was there any dispute “that to get to Las Vegas from Puerto Rico, you have to travel” across state lines. The District Court denied the motions because “the jury [had] acted irrationally.” “The verdict simply was inconsistent.” The First Circuit affirmed; the jury’s inconsistent returns were fatal to Ds’ issue-preclusion plea. The Court of Appeals rejected the argument that the eventual invalidation of the bribery convictions rendered the inconsistent-verdicts rule inapplicable. The court recognized that a hung count reveals only a jury’s failure to decide, and therefore cannot evidence actual inconsistency with a jury’s decision. Ds appealed.