## Facts

- Fausto Aguero Alvarado worked for less than a year as a DEA confidential informant in Central America under written cooperation agreements defining his duties and limits.
- The agreements warned he could be prosecuted for illegal acts not ordered by his DEA handler.
- After several months, his supervising agent terminated the relationship and told him to leave Colombia.
- Alvarado remained in Colombia and, over the next 16 months, participated in a weapons-for-cocaine conspiracy with traffickers, without reporting the activity to the DEA.
- Supervising agents did not learn of his involvement until other law enforcement uncovered the conspiracy.
- At trial, Alvarado did not dispute participation in the conspiracy but claimed he believed he was still acting as an informant gathering intelligence and that his handler had treated the non-authorization clause as a “formality.”
- The district court refused a requested public-authority-defense jury instruction, excluded proposed expert testimony about DEA informant procedures, gave an “innocent intent” instruction permitting acquittal if he honestly believed he was helping law enforcement, and the jury convicted him.
- The court imposed a 360-month sentence.

## Issues

1. Whether Alvarado was entitled to a jury instruction on the public authority defense based on claimed DEA authorization or reliance on perceived authorization.
2. Whether excluding expert testimony on DEA informant procedures was an abuse of discretion.
3. Whether the 360-month sentence was imposed in error, including guideline-related challenges.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed Alvarado’s conviction and 360-month sentence.
- The court held Alvarado was not entitled to a public-authority instruction because he failed to produce evidence that an authorized government official actually authorized the charged criminal conduct or that he reasonably relied on such authorization.
- The court held exclusion of general expert testimony on DEA informant procedures was within the district court’s discretion because it did not supply evidence of case-specific authorization.
- The court upheld the sentence as not erroneous or unreasonable given the scope and seriousness of the conspiracy.

## Legal Principles

- A public authority defense requires evidence of actual, explicit authorization by a government official with authority to approve the defendant’s specific illegal conduct, plus reasonable reliance on that authorization.
- A defendant’s honest or subjective belief that conduct aided law enforcement is insufficient without proof of actual authorization, particularly where written agreements and subsequent conduct negate authorization.
- A district court may refuse a specialized defense instruction when the evidentiary foundation is lacking, so long as the instructions as a whole allow the jury to consider the defendant’s theory (e.g., “innocent intent”).
- Expert testimony about general law-enforcement or informant practices may be excluded when it is not sufficiently probative of the dispositive issue (here, whether the defendant was actually authorized to commit the charged acts).

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit held that, absent evidence of explicit government authorization for the charged conspiracy, Alvarado was not entitled to a public-authority instruction, could not use generalized expert testimony to replace missing authorization proof, and his conviction and 360-month sentence were properly affirmed.


United States v. Alvarado, 808 F.3d 474 (11th Cir. 2015)