stating “it is axiomatic that you cannot have a conspiracy without an agreement between two or more culpable conspirators.”
How later courts described this case
- stating “it is axiomatic that you cannot have a conspiracy without an agreement between two or more culpable conspirators.”
- jury instructed that other acts evidence of intent could be considered only if the jury first found that the remaining evidence established that the defendant committed the charged acts
- government must prove that defendant came to a “meeting of the minds” with someone else to achieve the unlawful result
- “[A] criminal defendant cannot defeat personal jurisdiction by asserting the illegality of the procurement of his presence in the relevant jurisdiction—here, the United States.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CONWAY, District Judge,
concurring specially:
I concur in the result. There is sufficient circumstantial evidence that Arbane agreed with Velez (the confidential informant) to import cocaine into the United States from Ecuador. There is also sufficient circumstantial evidence that other persons identified by the Government in its brief were participants in the conspiracy to import drugs out of Ecuador. There is no evidence that any of the other unin-dicted co-conspirators knew that the drugs were to be imported into the United States. In order to have a conspiracy to import drugs into the United States at least one person, other than the confidential informant, had to agree with Arbane to that essential element of the conspiracy.