United States v. Boncy

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 20-1400
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellant,
v.
JOSEPH BAPTISTE,
Defendant, Appellee.
No. 20-1401
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellant,
v.
ROGER RICHARD BONCY,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Allison D. Burroughs, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Thompson, Circuit Judge,
and Arias-Marxuach, District Judge.*
* Of the District of Puerto Rico, sitting by designation.
Alexia R. De Vincentis, Assistant United States Attorney,
with whom Brian C. Rabbitt, Acting Assistant Attorney General,
Robert A. Zink, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Jeremy
R. Sanders, Appellate Counsel, Fraud Section, Criminal Division,
United States Department of Justice, and Andrew E. Lelling, United
States Attorney, were on brief, for appellant.
Daniel N. Marx, with whom William W. Fick, Amy Barsky, and
Fick & Mark LLP, were on brief, for appellee Baptiste.
Jay A. Yagoda, with whom Jared E. Dwyer and Greenberg Traurig,
P.A., were on brief, for appellee Boncy.
August 9, 2021
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.
Overview
Meet Roger Boncy and Joseph Baptiste. Boncy once served
as chairman and CEO of a U.S.-based investment company called Haiti
Invest, LLC. And Baptiste once sat on that company's board of
directors. We use the past tense, because everything changed when
the feds accused them of conspiring to bribe Haitian officials
into approving an $84 million port project in that country — one
involving cement factories, a shipping-vessel repair station, an
international transshipment station, and a power plant (among
other things). Prosecutors tried them jointly. And each had their
own lawyer. We will save lots of details about the trial and its
aftermath for later. But for now it is enough to note the
following.
The government claimed (based in large part on
undercover recordings played at trial) that Baptiste and Boncy
solicited money from undercover agents (posing as investors in
Haitian infrastructure ventures), which they promised to funnel to
Haitian bureaucrats through a Baptiste-controlled nonprofit that
supposedly helped Haiti's poor — 5% of project costs would be
allocated to bribe Haitian authorities. And as a further way to
grease the project's skids, the duo — again according to the
government's theory — promised to pay off Haitian officials with
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campaign contributions, offers of future jobs, and money to fund
their favorite social programs. At the trial's end, the jury
convicted them of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act and the Travel Act (count 1), and convicted Baptiste
(but not Boncy) of violating the Travel Act (count 2) and
conspiring to violate the Money Laundering Act (count 3).1
After firing his original attorney and hiring a new
lawyer, Baptiste moved under Criminal Rule 33 for a new trial on
the counts of conviction based on (according to the motion)
ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment.2
Simplified somewhat, and as relevant here:
1 the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act criminalizes bribing foreign officials, see
15 U.S.C. § 78dd-2(a); the Travel Act criminalizes traveling in
"foreign commerce" with an intent to commit an "unlawful activity,"
see 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a)(3); and the Money Laundering Act
criminalizes transferring funds from the United States to another
country with the intent to bribe a foreign official, see 18 U.S.C.
§ 1956(a)(2)(A).
2 Rule 33 reads in full:
(a) Defendant's Motion. Upon the defendant's
motion, the court may vacate any judgment and
grant a new trial if the interest of justice
so requires. If the case was tried without a
jury, the court may take additional testimony
and enter a new judgment.
(b) Time to File.
(1) Newly Discovered Evidence. Any motion for
a new trial grounded on newly discovered
evidence must be filed within 3 years after
the verdict or finding of guilty. If an appeal
is pending, the court may not grant a motion
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Likewise invoking Criminal Rule 33, Boncy asked for a separate new
trial on the count of conviction because (the motion argued)
Baptiste's lawyer's "ineffective[ness]" influenced how the jury
"view[ed] . . . both defendants" and so impaired his (Boncy's)
Fifth Amendment "due process right" to a "fair" proceeding. The
government opposed both motions.
Following an evidentiary hearing, the district judge
found that Baptiste had shown deficient performance of counsel and
that the cumulative effect of counsel's deficiencies caused him
(Baptiste) prejudice. Not only that, but the judge also found
Baptiste's attorney's shortcomings prejudiced Boncy by (among
other things) requiring "Boncy's counsel . . . to play an outsized
role at trial rather than pursue his preferred defense strategy."
And noting that a joint trial of alleged coconspirators is
presumptively appropriate and that "severance [was] not
warranted," the judge ordered a joint retrial in the interest of
"justice" because neither defendant got "a fair" first trial — the
for a new trial until the appellate court
remands the case.
(2) Other Grounds. Any motion for a new trial
grounded on any reason other than newly
discovered evidence must be filed within 14
days after the verdict or finding of guilty.
See Fed. R. Crim. P. 33 (emphasis added).
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significance of the "justice" buzzword (pulled from Rule 33) will
be apparent later.
From that decision, the government now appeals. After
setting out the guiding legal principles, we turn directly to the
issues that confront us — adding additional details necessary to
put matters into workable perspective. When all is said and done,
we affirm.
Guiding Legal Principles
Judges can grant a new trial if required in "the interest
of justice," see Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(a) — though they should grant
these motions only "sparingly" and to prevent "a perceived
miscarriage of justice," see United States v. Veloz, 948 F.3d 418,
437 (1st Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Gramins, 939 F.3d
429, 444 (2d Cir. 2019)). Applying abuse-of-discretion review,
United States v. Gonzalez, 949 F.3d 30, 34 (1st Cir.), cert.
denied, 141 S. Ct. 327 (2020), we can affirm a judge's new-trial
decision even if "there was sufficient evidence to convict," United
States v. Rothrock, 806 F.2d 318, 322 (1st Cir. 1986). This review
standard is multifaceted, requiring us to inspect "fact findings
for clear error, legal issues de novo (in nonlegalese, with fresh
eyes), and judgment calls with some deference." United States v.
McCullock, 991 F.3d 313, 317 (1st Cir. 2021). Showing an abuse of
discretion is especially difficult when, "as here, the judge who
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hear[d]" the new-trial motions "is the same judge who presided
over the trial," because in that scenario, "substantial deference
is due to the judge's perceptions." See Gonzalez, 949 F.3d at 34
(emphasis added). And we ultimately will reverse "only when left
with a definite conviction that 'no reasonable person could agree
with the judge's decision,'" see McCullock, 991 F.3d at 317
(quoting United States v. Cruz-Ramos, 987 F.3d 27, 41 (1st Cir.
2021)) — a rule that stops us from switching our discretion for
the judge's, see Rothrock, 806 F.2d at 321-22. But at the same
time (and as the government is quick to note), a material error of
law is never discretionary and so always is an abuse of discretion.
See Gonzalez, 949 F.3d at 34.
To grant a new trial on an ineffective-assistance claim,
a judge must find that counsel performed objectively unreasonably
and that prejudice followed. See, e.g., United States v. Silvia,
953 F.3d 139, 142 (1st Cir. 2020). Deficient performance "requires
showing that counsel made errors so serious that [he] was not
functioning as the 'counsel' guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth
Amendment." Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984).
And deficient performance prejudices the defense when it is
reasonably probable "that, but for counsel's unprofessional
errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different" —
i.e., "a probability sufficient to undermine confidence" in the
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result. Id. at 694. The probability "of a different result must
be substantial, not just conceivable." Harrington v. Richter, 562
U.S. 86, 112 (2011). But that does not require a showing that
counsel's actions "more likely than not altered the outcome."
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 693 (emphasis added); see also Williams v.
Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000) (stating that this standard is
a lesser showing than a preponderance of the evidence). And when
assessing prejudice, a judge "must consider the totality of the
evidence before the . . . jury," because "a verdict . . . only
weakly supported by the record is more likely to have been affected
by errors than one with overwhelming record support," Strickland,
466 U.S. at 695-96 — though we judges must never forget that the
purpose of the prejudice prong is to ensure a defendant has not
suffered a fundamentally unfair or unreliable outcome, see id. at
687.
Arguments and Analysis
The government does not quarrel with the judge's
deficient-performance findings — findings premised on a long list
of failures on Baptiste's lawyer's part (we hit the highlights,
quoting from the judge's decision):
• He could not "open discovery produced by the [g]overnment."
• He "did not provide copies of documents or audio and video
recordings to . . . Baptiste, nor did they ever sit down
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together to review all of the materials that the [g]overnment
had provided."
• He did not "'thoroughly review' certain documents."
• "[H]e [did] not investigate[]" the case "sufficiently to
understand the import" of the government's evidence or to
craft an appropriate response.
• He did not get English translations of Haitian-Creole
recordings, even after learning about "potential errors" in
one of the government's translations.
• He "did not subpoena any witness" or "formulate his own list
of potential witnesses in support of . . . Baptiste's
potential defenses."
• "[H]e did not . . . identify or contact any expert witnesses
that could have provided evidence on Haitian law or business
practices."
• He "continued to pursue an entrapment defense," even though
"others had previously told him that the defense was not
available to . . . Baptiste on the facts of the case" — a
mistake that essentially put Baptiste in the thick of the
conspiracy. 3
3Consider this snippet from Baptiste's lawyer's opening
statement:
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[T]he FBI undercover agents . . . were
predisposed, predisposed to thinking that the
only way to invest successfully in Haiti was
to commit a bribe. The FBI agents fixated on
the concept of pay-to-play [and] sought to
manufacture a crime and criminals out of men
who had impeccably, impeccably clean records.
Remember, the FBI agents solicited . . .
Baptiste and . . . Boncy to travel to Boston,
and they came here on their own dime. They
solicited them to travel to Boston to receive
the FBI's pitch for them to engage in criminal
activity.
In short, the FBI did not care about
benefiting Haiti or having a profitable
investment. What the FBI hoped for, what they
had hoped for was for corruption to occur.
Conversely, . . . Baptiste and . . . Boncy
sought to operate legally while bringing
foreign direct investment into Haiti that
would benefit the people of Haiti.
What you have going on in all of this
fake investment talk is the undercover agents
repeatedly asking whether Haiti is pay-to-
play, a pay-to-play country.
. . .
While you are carefully listening to the
government's evidence, ask yourself how many
times does the government need to be told by
an American citizen that he will not commit a
crime before the government leaves him alone
and goes away but continues to attempt to
manufacture a new criminal and a new crime.
Testifying at the hearing on the new-trial motions, Baptiste's
attorney admitted raising the entrapment theory even though other
"people" told him he "didn't have the elements to establish that
defense.
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• He "only cross-examined two of the [g]overnment's six
witnesses, none of whom [he] had contacted or sought to
interview prior to trial."
• He "elicited damaging testimony" from the two he did cross.
• And he deferred to Boncy's lawyer on the "cross-examinations
of the remaining witnesses," even though Boncy's "trial
strategy was to portray . . . Baptiste as the primary driver
of the alleged conspiracy" — a conspiracy that Boncy's
attorney insisted Boncy was not a part of.
But while the government makes no argument against the deficient-
performance finding, the arguments it does present do not persuade
us to reverse.
A.
The government starts off by insisting that "[t]he
evidence of Baptiste's and Boncy's guilt was overwhelming,"
claiming that "[i]n call after recorded call" they "agreed to bribe
Haitian officials" to grease the skids for the project. And
according to the government, the evidence underpinning "Baptiste's
convictions for violating the Travel Act and conspiring to commit
money laundering was no less compelling." Yet the judge never
"addressed the weight of this evidence" — or so the government
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continues, with a nod to Strickland — and thus "erred as a matter
of law." We see several problems with this argument, however.
First off, the government's thesis suggests that
sufficiently strong evidence can sink any ineffective-assistance
claim. No one denies that the strength of the prosecution's case
is a factor in the prejudice analysis. See Turner v. United
States, 699 F.3d 578, 584 (1st Cir. 2012). But it is not the be-
all and end-all, for (after all) the chief "focus" remains "on the
'fundamental fairness of the proceeding.'" See Dugas v. Coplan,
506 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2007) (emphasis added and quoting
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 696). To put it in slightly different
terms, the prejudice probe is not designed to be applied
"mechanical[ly]" — because "when a court is evaluating an
ineffective-assistance claim, the ultimate inquiry must
concentrate on 'the fundamental fairness of the proceeding.'"
Weaver v. Massachusetts, 137 S. Ct. 1899, 1911 (2017) (quoting
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 696). And while the government is
convinced of Baptiste's and Boncy's guilt based on its own —
basically unchallenged — evidence, "we have never intimated that
the right to counsel is conditioned upon actual innocence," because
actually "[t]he constitutional rights of criminal defendants are
granted to the innocent and the guilty alike." See Kimmelman v.
Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 380 (1986). "The prejudice essential to
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a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance
of counsel is not being convicted though one is innocent, although
that is the worst kind," we explained recently, echoing a sibling
circuit — "it is being convicted when one would have been
acquitted, or at least would have had a good shot at acquittal,
had one been competently represented." United States v. Mercedes-
De La Cruz, 787 F.3d 61, 67 n.6 (1st Cir. 2015) (quotations omitted
and quoting Owens v. United States, 387 F.3d 607, 610 (7th Cir.
2004) (per Posner, J.)). And in the context of a new-trial motion,
courts recognize that Rule 33's standard "is the interest of
justice" — a standard that "comprehends the interests of the law-
abiding as well as those of possibly guilty defendants." See
United States v. Morales, 902 F.2d 604, 609 (7th Cir. 1990) (per
Posner, J.).
Quoting Strickland, the government's papers below also
spent a lot of time emphasizing how the judge had to — but did not
— "consider the 'totality of the evidence' at trial because errors
are less likely to create prejudice when a verdict has
'overwhelming record support.'" But with the government's having
put this all front and center before the judge, we think it fair
to infer that she considered and rejected the government's points
— rather than ignoring them. See generally United States v.
Jimenez-Beltre, 440 F.3d 514, 519 (1st Cir. 2006) (en banc) (noting
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that we can conclude that the judge analyzed a defendant's claim
"by comparing what was argued by the parties . . . with what the
judge did"). And as for the government's "overwhelming evidence"
refrain, we need only point out again that a judge can grant a new
trial under Rule 33 to prevent "a miscarriage of justice" — even
if "there [is] sufficient evidence to convict." See Rothrock, 806
F.2d at 322.
On top of all that, we "presume" — per Supreme Court
directive — that judges "know" and correctly "apply" the law "in
making their decisions." Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 653
(1990), overruled on other grounds by Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S.
584 (2002). So we presume the judge considered the totality of
the evidence as required, particularly since the government offers
no persuasive reason not to apply that presumption here.
B.
The government next faults the judge for not
"consider[ing]" Baptiste's counsel's failings "in light of Boncy's
complementary defense." Boncy's lawyer, the government writes,
"took the lead on cross-examining witnesses and, through his
skilled questioning, advanced an argument" that no "conspiratorial
agreement" ever existed — which matters because Baptiste could not
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be convicted of any conspiracy without a coconspirator. The
government, however, cannot win under this theory either.
Hurting the government here is that other supposed
coconspirators existed, albeit unindicted ones (as even the
government concedes). Putting that point aside does the government
no good, however. Even granting that Boncy's lawyer tried on
cross-examination to play up the no-conspiratorial-agreement
angle, the government is still stuck with the judge's finding —
based mostly on Baptiste's counsel's evidentiary-hearing testimony
— that the two defense teams "did not 'coordinate' . . . or see
'eye to eye'" on "their defense strategy." And the judge so found
because Boncy's attorney had "'his direction'" and Baptiste's
attorney had his own "'in terms of how [they] were proceeding with
the trial'" (the internal quotations are from Baptiste's counsel's
testimony at the new-trial motion hearing, by the way).
This finding does not rest on thin air either — for the
record shows that Boncy's counsel spent much energy trying make
Baptiste the real culprit in this conspiracy while distancing Boncy
from Baptiste's deception. Boncy's lawyer, for example,
emphasized recordings in which Baptiste — not Boncy — was "[t]he
person who's talking about . . . how" bribery is "done in Haiti."
And Boncy's attorney suggested that Baptiste — not Boncy —"raised"
the bribery idea by demanding that "something had to be put on the
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table" for bribes (that "something" according to the government,
being payola). More, Boncy's counsel accused Baptiste of "chiding"
Boncy about Boncy's "unwillingness to put money on the table" for
bribes. More still, Boncy's lawyer elicited agent testimony that
Baptiste and Boncy said "two different things" about the "pay-
offs" to Haitian officials — Baptiste, according to the agent, was
talking about "pay-offs" while Boncy was not. Boncy's counsel did
all this while also painting Boncy (himself a lawyer) as "very
strict" on compliance issues compared to Baptiste. And more still,
Boncy's lawyer alternatively suggested that Baptiste was trying to
"hustle[]" some money from the feds — that Baptiste wanted "5
percent" built into the project cost (a key part of the
government's conspiracy theory; recall our "overview" remarks at
the opinion's beginning) simply to enrich himself rather than to
buy off Haitian politicos. Boncy's attorney returned to this theme
during closing arguments, calling Baptiste a liar who told the
undercover agents what they "wanted to hear . . . to keep the money
flowing" and adding that if Baptiste "was scamming the FBI, it's
reasonable to conclude that he was scamming . . . other so-called
co-conspirators," including "Boncy."
The bottom line is that despite what the government
thinks, Boncy's lawyer was hardly defending Baptiste. So this
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facet of the government's reversal argument does not assist its
cause.
C.
The government does not like how the judge used the
cumulative-error doctrine. To hear it tell it, that doctrine
simply provides "that there need not be any singularly dispositive
deficiency." But it believes that the judge failed to find
"concrete ways" that any of "counsel's deficiencies . . .
contribute[d] to a substantial likelihood of a different result,"
and because "none would, the cumulative error doctrine" is not in
play. We, however, see things differently.
The cumulative-error doctrine holds that errors not
individually reversible can become so cumulatively. See, e.g.,
United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1195-96 (1st Cir. 1993).
That is because "[i]ndividual errors, insufficient in themselves
to necessitate a new trial, may in the aggregate have a more
debilitating effect" and thus add up to prejudice. See id. (double
emphasis added). And we have long held that the prejudice inquiry
under Strickland can be a cumulative one as to the effect of all
of counsel's slipups that satisfy the deficient-performance prong
— meaning that a defendant need show it more likely than not that
the several blunders, even if not prejudicial on their own,
prejudiced him when taken together. See Dugas v. Coplan, 428 F.3d
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317, 335 (1st Cir. 2005) (proclaiming that "Strickland clearly
allows the court to consider the cumulative effect of counsel's
errors in determining whether a defendant was prejudiced" (quoting
Kubat v. Thieret, 867 F.2d 351, 370 (7th Cir. 1989))).
The government makes much of language in United States
v. Sampson that "the cumulative error doctrine finds no foothold"
if no individual error "worked any cognizable harm to [the
defendant's] rights." See 486 F.3d 13, 51 (1st Cir. 2007). But
we have read that passage as saying that if the combined errors
resulted in an unfair trial, the cumulative-error doctrine
"requires the vacation of a defendant's conviction even though the
same compendium of errors, considered one by one, would not justify
such relief." See United States v. Padilla-Galarza, 990 F.3d 60,
85 (1st Cir. 2021) (double emphasis added, citing Sampson, 486
F.3d at 51).
So what matters is the cumulative effect of counsel's
errors (even if no error in isolation suffices to establish
qualifying prejudice) — i.e., the focus must be on the collective
impact of counsel's deficiencies, some of which we have mentioned:
• His raising an entrapment theory, despite being told it had
no legs — a blooper that essentially put Baptiste in the
middle of a bribery scheme.
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• His not challenging a photo of cash sent from Baptiste's phone
(a picture counsel first saw at trial, despite getting it
from prosecutors in discovery), which the government argued
showed money Baptiste used for bribes — even though Baptiste
told counsel during the trial that the money represented
Christmas bonuses for Baptiste's staff, not bribes for
Haitian functionaries.
• His not effectively contesting agent testimony labeling
certain words by Baptiste (captured on tape) code for bribes
(e.g., "tips," "tak[ing] care of . . . people on the ground,"
"leeway," "unforeseen expenses," "something," "anything,"
"stuff on the table," "social programs," and "Christmas
bonuses") — a failure that tacitly endorsed the idea that the
agents were not simply speculating about what the words meant.
• And his not calling any witnesses, including a 20-year
acquaintance of Baptiste and a Haitian legal expert — the
first of whom (according to an affidavit filed with Baptiste's
new-trial motion) would have testified that Baptiste had an
excellent reputation with Haitian officials and so had no
need to bribe his way into their circle, and the second of
whom (according to another affidavit) would have testified
that certain actions (making political contributions,
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lobbying officials by promising them to fund social programs
to help local communities, etc.) were legal in Haiti.
The government believes the judge should have found counsel's
inadequacies "harmless." But the government attacks each gaffe
item by item, without providing any convincing basis to question
the judge's conclusion that the defects as a group cast a shadow
on the verdict's integrity — which dooms its argument.
In the same section of its opening brief, the government
calls the judge's prejudice finding too "hypothetical" because, at
least in its view, the record lacks a sufficient "description" of
the tack the defense might take at a retrial and so prevents us
from doing a prejudice analysis on appeal. But our discussion of
the deficiencies bulleted throughout the opinion (in the beginning
of the "arguments and analysis" section and in preceding paragraph)
sheds sufficient light on what the defense could do differently at
a do-over trial.
D.
Last but not least is the government's claim that the
judge reversibly erred by finding that Baptiste's lawyer's
ineffectiveness prejudiced Boncy. This claim has three subparts.
The first is the government's contention "that the Sixth Amendment
right to counsel is personal and cannot be asserted vicariously"
by Boncy (which is the government's "principal argument"). The
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second is the government's insistence that "[e]ven if" we "construe
Boncy's claim as an argument that he was prejudiced by joinder of
the trials due to the presentation of conflicting defense
strategies," his claim would still "fail" because the judge "found
no such prejudice here" when she ordered them retried together.
And the third is the government's suggestion that "the prejudice
the [judge] did find" has no "factual basis." Nothing the
government says, however, moves the needle in its favor.
Before getting into the nitty-gritty, it is worth going
over some of the new-trial basics again — while also amplifying
some of our earlier points.
Rule 33 lets a defendant file a new-trial motion "based
on newly discovered evidence" (Rule 33(b)(1)) or "on any reason
other than newly discovered evidence" (Rule 33(b)(2), emphasis
ours). Rule 33 also says a judge "may" grant a new trial in "the
interest of justice" (Rule 33(a), emphasis again ours).
The "interest of justice" catchphrase is undefined. But
according to a leading treatise on criminal procedure, Rule 33's
words vest a judge with "broad powers to grant a new trial" if she
"concludes for any reason that the trial resulted in a miscarriage
of justice" (with the caveat that a new-trial motion is "to be
granted with caution"). 3 Sarah N. Welling, Federal Practice and
Procedure § 581 (4th ed. 2021) [hereinafter Federal Practice and
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Procedure] (emphasis added). See generally Veloz, 948 F.3d at 437
(using the "miscarriage of justice" idiom). We ourselves have
stressed the "broad discretion" Rule 33 gives a judge — contrasting
(in a way that provides some insight into what this means) the
spacious "interest[] of justice" lingo in Rule 33 with a federal
habeas statute that lets a judge grant postconviction relief if
(for example) she "finds . . . that there has been . . . a denial
. . . of constitutional rights." Trenkler v. United States, 268
F.3d 16, 24 (1st Cir. 2001) (quotations omitted). Or to steal a
line from the same leading treatise, "[t]he grounds for relief are
broader under Rule 33 than under [the habeas statute]," because
"[t]he Rule allows a new trial whenever the interest of justice
requires it, while the statutory [habeas] remedy . . . for the
most part reaches only constitutional defects in the proceedings."
3 Federal Practice and Procedure § 591. Which is why Rule 33 is
"likely more enticing to a" defendant than the statute. Trenkler,
268 F.3d at 24 (quotations omitted). And a somewhat related line
of cases elsewhere — not challenged by the government here —
recognizes that the "interest of justice" empowers a judge to grant
a new trial based on perceived unfairness of something not
amounting to reversible error. See United States v. Vicaria, 12
F.3d 195, 198-99 (11th Cir. 1994) (holding that the district judge
had the discretion to grant a new trial after "conclud[ing]" that
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he "should have given [a jury] instruction [he] had declined [to
give]" — even though the judge did not legally err in not giving
that instruction); Morales, 902 F.2d at 606 (noting that if a
district judge believes "there is a serious danger that a
miscarriage of justice has occurred," she can grant a new trial —
"even if [she] does not think that [she] made any erroneous rulings
at the trial" (citing our Rothrock opinion, 806 F.2d at 321-22)).
A judge's handling of a Rule 33 motion "is ordinarily a
'judgment call.'" United States v. Connolly, 504 F.3d 206, 211
(1st Cir. 2007) (quoting United States v. Maldonado-Rivera, 489
F.3d 60, 65 (1st Cir. 2007)). So when the judge deciding the
motion is the judge who ran the trial, we owe "an appreciable
measure of respect . . . to '[her] sense of the ebb and flow of
the recently concluded'" proceedings. Id. (quoting United States
v. Natanel, 938 F.2d 302, 313 (1st Cir. 1991)); see also United
States v. Paniagua-Ramos, 135 F.3d 193, 197 (1st Cir. 1998)
(commenting that our review "is deferential to the district court"
because "the court was present at the trial and had the opportunity
first hand to observe the evidence, the witnesses, and the jury").
What this means here is that the government must meet the high
threshold of showing the judge abused her discretion. See
Connolly, 504 F.3d at 211; see also United States v. Rodríguez-
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Soler, 773 F.3d 289, 294 (1st Cir. 2014) (calling abuse of
discretion a "difficult standard[]").
With all that in mind — and knowing too that our job is
to focus on the arguments that an appellant like the government
actually makes, not to think up other ones besides, see Cruz-
Ramos, 987 F.3d at 40; Rivera-Corraliza v. Morales, 794 F.3d 208,
226 (1st Cir. 2015) — we turn to our analysis of the government's
multidimensional thesis.
Contrary to the government's position, Boncy did not
pursue a Sixth Amendment claim keyed to Baptiste's lawyer's
ineffective assistance. Instead, he pursued a Fifth Amendment
claim tied to the denial of his own due-process rights — to quote
again from his motion (emphasis ours, though), he argued that
"deficiencies in the conduct of Baptiste's trial counsel
necessarily affected the jury's view of both defendants in this
joint trial, thereby depriving Boncy of a fair trial in violation
of his due process right to a fair trial." So we need not worry
about the government's Sixth Amendment-based first sub-argument.
Nor need we spend time on the government's second sub-
argument. And that is because we accept (without further ado) the
government's claim that the judge's prejudice analysis did not
turn on Boncy's being tried jointly with Baptiste, given how she
(as the government notes) found severance unnecessary.
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Which leaves us with the government's final sub-
argument, i.e., that the judge's prejudice finding lacks
evidentiary support — this, despite the fact that the judge cited
to the record lots of times. Anyway, the government's initial
brief does not tie its attack to the controlling clearly-erroneous
standard — a hard-to-satisfy test, seeing how a "challenger must
show that the contested finding stinks like 'a 5 week old,
unrefrigerated, dead fish.'" See United States v. Rivera-
Carrasquillo, 933 F.3d 33, 42 (1st Cir. 2019) (quoting Toye v.
O'Donnell (In re O'Donnell), 728 F.3d 41, 46 (1st Cir. 2013)),
cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 2691 (2020); see also United States v.
Oliveira, 907 F.3d 88, 92 (1st Cir. 2018) (stating that the
challenger's arguments must cause us to form "a strong, unyielding
belief that a mistake has been made" (quotation omitted)); United
States v. Cates, 897 F.3d 349, 352 (1st Cir. 2018) (highlighting
how clear error's "heights are difficult to scale"). And it should
now go without saying (though we say it anyway) that an appellant
risks waiver if its opening brief does not properly develop
arguments showing how its claims can succeed under the proper
review standard. See Cruz-Ramos, 987 F.3d at 40 (collecting
authority); see also Rivera-Carrasquillo, 933 F.3d at 53.
But even brushing waiver away, we cannot stamp the
challenged findings clearly erroneous. As noted several pages
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ago, the judge found (again, with specific citations to the record)
that Boncy's lawyer wanted to expose Baptiste to the jury "as the
primary driver" of the charged conspiracy to bribe foreign
officials — a strategy, to quote the government's lower-court
papers, that "Boncy's counsel" pursued as he basically "led the
defense side of the case," almost from the start. And "[g]iven
that . . . Boncy played a different role in the charged conspiracy
than . . . Baptiste" — to quote some more from the judge's order
— "his counsel might well have decided to say and do considerably
less during trial to emphasize [Boncy's] more minor participation
in the alleged conspiracy had he not had to carry the defense so
much on his own." Looking to deflect the force of the judge's
finding, the government says that Boncy's lawyer also sometimes
portrayed Baptiste as running an uncharged conspiracy to rip-off
the FBI (as we intimated above in section B, Boncy's counsel
occasionally theorized that "the 5 percent" was Baptiste's self-
serving scam to line his pockets — and his alone). Still, no one
can seriously doubt that Boncy's counsel worked to show that the
charged conspiracy did not exist. Yet, Baptiste's lawyer basically
conceded the charged conspiracy's existence by hyping an
entrapment theory (and to be perfectly clear: by charged
conspiracy, we mean the conspiracy involving Baptiste and Boncy).
Also conflicting with his bid to show his client had no part in
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the charged conspiracy, Boncy's counsel — as the judge supportably
found — had "to play an outsized role at trial rather than pursue
his preferred defense strategy for his own client." Which explains
why the government's arguments do not provoke a strong, unyielding
belief that the judge botched the prejudice finding. And to the
extent the government thinks a plausible view of the facts supports
its no-prejudice position, we need only say that a judge's choice
among supportable alternatives cannot be clearly erroneous. See
Cooper v. Harris, 137 S. Ct. 1455, 1465 (2017) (emphasizing that
"[a] finding that is 'plausible' in light of the full record —
even if another is equally or more so — must govern" (emphasis
added and citation omitted)).
The district judge (not we) actually heard the
witnesses, saw how each counsel performed, and watched the jurors
as the proceedings unfolded. That put her (not us) in the best
spot to decide if the interest of justice demanded a new trial.
See Connolly, 504 F.3d at 211. For, to borrow the words of Judge
Posner, "[t]he trial judge will always be in a better position
than the appellate judges to assess the probable reactions of
jurors in a case over which [she] has presided," because she can
understand, "as we cannot, . . . the atmosphere of the trial —
that congeries of intangibles that no stenographic transcript can
convey." See United States v. Bruscino, 687 F.2d 938, 941 (7th
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Cir. 1982) (en banc) (per Posner, J.). Perhaps if we had been
there we would have decided matters differently. Or perhaps not.
See generally Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863, 881 (2015)
(instructing us not to "overturn a finding 'simply because [we
are] convinced that [we] would have decided the case differently'"
(alteration in original and quoting Anderson v. City of Bessemer
City, 470 U.S. 564, 573 (1985))). But because our job is not to
play district judge, we cannot substitute our judgment for her
discretion and ring-side insights — unless those insights sunk to
an abuse of discretion. See Veloz, 948 F.3d at 437. And as with
its other claims, this multilayered argument does not satisfy the
government's heavy burden of showing an abuse of discretion.
We end this segment by again emphasizing a fundamental
point. "The premise of our adversarial system is that appellate
courts do not sit as self-directed boards of legal inquiry and
research, but essentially as arbiters of legal questions presented
and argued by the parties before them." See NASA v. Nelson, 562
U.S. 134, 147 n.10 (2011) (quoting Carducci v. Regan, 714 F.2d
171, 177 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (per Scalia, J.)); accord Greenlaw v.
United States, 554 U.S. 237, 243 (2008) (stating that "we rely on
the parties to frame the issues for decision and assign to courts
the role of neutral arbiter of matters the parties present"). So
in doing what judges are paid to do, we have taken — and, it turns
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out, rejected — the government's arguments as we have found them.
Maybe there is a better argument for why a new trial would not
serve "the interest of justice" — e.g., maybe there is some other
limiting principle to that legal standard's broad reach. But if
a better argument does exist, we need not deal with it today: it
is enough for us to hold (as we do) that the arguments the
government does make do not convince us that the reach of this
broad standard should be circumscribed in this instance.
Wrap Up
No one doubts (at least, no one should doubt) that "[t]he better
the lawyers at a trial are, provided they are evenly matched, the more likely
is the trier of fact to find the truth." See Morales, 902 F.2d at 609. So
while both sides here face the expense of retrial, "[t]he result will be a .
. . proceeding much more likely to render a verdict in which the legal system
and the public can have confidence."4 See id.And thus, for the reasons recorded above, we affirm the judge's
grant of new trials.
4 Given our holding, we need not consider Baptiste's and Boncy's
alternative grounds for affirmance — e.g., Baptiste's argument that a judge
can grant a new trial even if counsel's performance did not fall into the
category of a Sixth Amendment violation; or Boncy's argument that he should
get a new trial based on the government's destruction of certain evidence.
See generally PDK Labs. Inc. v. DEA, 362 F.3d 786, 799 (D.C. Cir. 2004)
(Roberts, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (declaring
that "if it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide
more").
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