Appeals court vacates man’s conviction

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has vacated the conviction of a man who was slapped with a 63-month prison term for his role behind the shipment of 4.9 lbs of methamphetamine or “ice” in 2015 to the CNMI.

In a ruling on Thursday, Ninth Circuit judges Mary M. Schroeder, Eugene E. Siler, and Mary H. Murguia concluded that U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona made a reversible error when she told the jury that it could find Zhaopeng Chen guilty based on deliberate ignorance.

The 9th Circuit judges remanded Chen’s case to the District Court.

The judges said the evidence does not support an inference that Chen was aware of a “high probability” that his co-defendants, Xi Huang and Shicheng Cai, were distributing methamphetamine, but took steps to avoid learning all of the facts.

Citing precedent, the judges said the Ninth Circuit has upheld the deliberate ignorance instruction in cases where the facts strongly point toward illegal activity.

The judges said Chen communicating with the conspirators prior to arriving on Saipan, renting a car at Huang’s request, and driving around with Huang and Cai on the day in question are not the type of “high probability” facts where the Circuit has previously approved giving the deliberate ignorance instruction.

“Moreover, in light of our case law counseling that this instruction should be given only rarely to avoid conviction on a negligence standard, we conclude that the facts here did not support giving the deliberate instruction,” the judges said

Huang and Cai pleaded guilty. Chen went to trial.

On Sept. 7, 2016, a federal jury unanimously found Chen guilty of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine.

Shortly after the guilty verdict was announced, Chen cried and banged his head on the wooden wall next to his table. Two U.S. Marshals Service officers immediately tackled the handcuffed but resisting Chen to the floor. Two other officers jumped in to assist them. The jurors were already out of the courtroom when the brief commotion occurred.

On Dec. 19, 2016, Manglona sentenced Chen to 63 months in prison—five years and three months, with credit for 379 days of time served.

Chen, through counsel David G. Banes, appealed to the Ninth Circuit to reverse his conviction.

Banes asserted that Chen’s conviction is not supported by sufficient evidence and that Manglona erred by giving the jury a “deliberate ignorance” jury instruction.

In vacating the conviction, the 9th Circuit judges said taking the evidence presented in the U.S. government’s case—such as Chen’s communicating with the conspirators prior to arriving on Saipan, renting a car at Huang’s request, driving around with Huang and Cai on the day in question, and denying knowing the whereabouts of the green car—in the light most favorable to the U.S. government, they conclude that a reasonable jury could have found the essential elements of the conspiracy, and Manglona did not err in denying Chen’s motion for judgment of acquittal before submission to the jury.

The judges said before submitting the case to the jury, Manglona instructed the jury that it could find that Chen acted knowingly if it found “beyond a reasonable doubt that Chen was aware of a high probability that drugs were being picked up from the Sunleader warehouse, and Chen deliberately avoided learning the truth.”

The judges said the Circuit has explained that the “deliberate ignorance instruction” should rarely be given “because of the risk that the jury will convict on a standard of negligence: that the defendant should have known the conduct was illegal.”

Therefore, the judges said, although rare, the deliberate ignorance instruction is proper where the facts “support the inference that the defendant was aware of a high probability of the existence of the fact in question and purposely contrived to avoid learning all of the facts in order to have a defense in the event of a subsequent prosecution.”

Customs inspectors discovered the contraband hidden in one of nine paint buckets during a routine inspection of a container from China on Dec. 2, 2015.

Surveillance operation led to the arrest of Huang, Chen and Cai near Stanford Hotel in San Vicente on Dec. 4, 2015.

Authorities valued the seized “ice” at $850,000—at that time the second largest haul of illegal drugs in CNMI history.

Huang, who was tagged as the leader of the group, was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison. Cai was slapped with 41 months in prison.