## Facts

- Four Puerto Rico Police Department officers assigned to the Mayagüez Drugs and Narcotics Division were tried and convicted for misconduct involving seized narcotics.
- A cooperating officer testified that he maintained a secured container holding seized drugs and contraband within the unit.
- According to the government’s evidence, the cooperating officer removed narcotics from the secured container and provided them to other officers.
- The officers used the narcotics to plant drugs on targeted individuals or in locations associated with them, creating false probable cause to justify searches, seizures, and arrests.
- The officers prepared official police reports and gave accounts intended to make the staged arrests and searches appear legitimate.
- The prosecution characterized the conduct as repeated incidents rather than a single episode, involving multiple fabricated drug cases.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove a conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 241 to deprive individuals of constitutional rights through planted evidence and fabricated arrests.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to prove a conspiracy under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846 to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances where officers used seized drugs to frame civilians.
3. Whether asserted sentencing errors required reversal or remand.

## Decision

- The First Circuit affirmed all convictions for conspiracy to violate civil rights under 18 U.S.C. § 241.
- The First Circuit affirmed the drug-conspiracy convictions under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846 for the defendants convicted on that count.
- The court rejected the defendants’ sentencing challenges and affirmed the sentences.
- One judge dissented in part as to the affirmance of the drug-conspiracy convictions.

## Legal Principles

- A conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 241 may be supported by evidence of an agreement among officers to carry out unreasonable searches and seizures and related deprivations of constitutional rights through coordinated misconduct such as planting evidence and falsifying reports.
- Sufficiency review asks whether, viewing the evidence in the government’s favor, a rational juror could find the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.
- For a conspiracy under 21 U.S.C. § 846 tied to § 841(a)(1), the government must prove an agreement and knowing participation to possess a controlled substance with the requisite intent to distribute.
- “Distribution” under § 841 can be satisfied by intentional transfer or delivery of controlled substances, and a scheme that intentionally places drugs onto persons or premises can qualify even if the transfer occurs in the course of fabricating criminal cases.
- Disagreement within the panel reflected competing views on whether applying federal drug-distribution conspiracy law to officers’ misuse of seized drugs fits the statute’s scope, though the majority upheld the convictions.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit upheld convictions arising from a coordinated scheme in which officers used seized narcotics to plant evidence and fabricate arrests, concluding the proof supported a civil-rights conspiracy under § 241 and, for defendants charged on that count, a drug-distribution conspiracy under §§ 841 and 846, while also affirming the sentences.


United States v. Cortés-Cabán, 691 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2012)