United States v. Juan Valadez-Munoz

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 12 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 18-50275
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
2:17-cr-00702-RGK-1
v.
JUAN CARLOS VALADEZ-MUNOZ, MEMORANDUM*
AKA Marcos Perez-Orosco, AKA Juan
Carlos Valadez,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted July 8, 2019**
Pasadena, California
Before: M. SMITH and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and AMON,*** District
Judge.
Defendant-Appellant Juan Carlos Valadez-Munoz appeals his conviction for
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
***
The Honorable Carol Bagley Amon, United States District Judge for
the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.
illegal reentry following deportation, in violation of 8 U.S.C. §§ 1326(a), (b)(2).
Valadez-Munoz argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to
dismiss the indictment as time-barred and erred in declining to hold an evidentiary
hearing. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.
1. Section 1326(a) applies to any removed alien who “enters, attempts to enter,
or is at any time found in, the United States.” 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a)(2) (emphasis
added). The five-year statute of limitations for “[t]he offense of being found in the
United States [begins to run] when an alien is discovered and identified by the
immigration authorities.” United States v. Zamudio, 787 F.3d 961, 966 (9th Cir.
2015) (alterations in original) (quoting United States v. Hernandez, 189 F.3d 785,
791 (9th Cir. 1999)). We have not yet addressed whether discovery may be based
on constructive, as opposed to actual, knowledge, id., but we need not decide that
here because under either analysis, the statute of limitations had not yet run on
Valadez-Munoz’s offense.
Valadez-Munoz contends that the government did not charge him within the
five-year statute of limitations because it had constructive knowledge of his
presence in 2010 when he renewed his driver’s license but nonetheless failed to
charge him until 2017. But even assuming constructive knowledge triggers the
statute of limitations, the record does not show that the government delayed the
investigation or ignored datasets in its possession. As the district court determined,
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the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center (NCATC) received 250,000
datasets in 2015 and discovered Valadez-Munoz’s presence in the country only
after it used those datasets to conduct a targeted search for Valadez-Munoz in
several databases in 2017. The record does not suggest that typical law
enforcement diligence required NCATC to have acquired or searched this data any
sooner.
Valadez-Munoz suggests that the process that led to his discovery in 2017
could have led to his discovery after his 2010 renewal if the government had
exercised due diligence. However, because the government did not have the
means to search the databases “until after it received the data set with his
information in 2015,” we cannot conclude that the failure to discover Valadez-
Munoz before 2017 demonstrates a lack of typical law enforcement diligence.
2. The district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to hold an
evidentiary hearing. The government’s misstatement of NCATC’s capabilities in
an initial discovery letter did not create a contested issue of fact because the
NCATC unit chief’s declaration corrected the misstatement. See United States v.
Ramirez-Garcia, 269 F.3d 945, 947 (9th Cir. 2001).
AFFIRMED.
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