## Facts

- A deputy stopped a van in Memphis, Tennessee for speeding and obtained the driver’s consent to search.
- Officers found cocaine hidden in the van; an inventory search showed a total of 351 kilograms.
- Law enforcement permitted the couriers to continue traveling to Washington, D.C. as part of a controlled delivery plan aimed at identifying organizers and recipients.
- During the trip, the couriers made “check-in” calls to superiors; two calls between a courier and Josephine Ledezma at her Los Angeles-area home were recorded.
- The government’s theory was that Ledezma ran an interstate, family-based cocaine distribution conspiracy involving large shipments, including the seized load.
- Evidence linked Ledezma to organizing and supervising multi-participant shipments through recordings, testimony, and other investigative proof.
- Terry Zajac was alleged to be a subordinate participant in the conspiracy.
- Evidence against Zajac included assisting in moving about 244 kilograms of cocaine from one location to another and later paying a courier for the 351-kilogram load at another conspirator’s direction.
- A jury convicted Ledezma and Zajac of (1) conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and (2) aiding and abetting possession with intent to distribute 351 kilograms of cocaine.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support Ledezma’s and Zajac’s convictions for conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute.
2. Whether the evidence was sufficient to support Zajac’s conviction for aiding and abetting possession with intent to distribute the specific 351-kilogram shipment.
3. Whether the district court committed reversible sentencing error, including in drug-quantity attribution and role adjustments.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit affirmed Ledezma’s convictions and affirmed her life sentence.
- The Sixth Circuit affirmed Zajac’s conspiracy conviction.
- The Sixth Circuit reversed Zajac’s aiding-and-abetting conviction for insufficiency of the evidence.
- The Sixth Circuit vacated Zajac’s sentence and remanded for resentencing consistent with the reversal.

## Legal Principles

- Sufficiency review asks whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, any rational juror could find the essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt.
- For conspiracy, once the existence of an agreement is shown, comparatively slight evidence may connect a defendant to the conspiracy if it shows knowing and intentional association with the scheme’s essential scope.
- Aiding and abetting requires proof that the defendant associated with the specific substantive offense, participated in it as something he wished to bring about, and acted to make it succeed.
- Conduct supporting membership in a broad drug conspiracy does not, without more, establish aiding and abetting of a particular possession-with-intent-to-distribute offense when the defendant did not help plan, initiate, or carry out that specific possession and his conduct is remote from the charged act.
- When a conviction on one count is reversed, a sentence calculated on the assumption of guilt on both counts must be vacated and recalculated on remand based on the remaining conviction(s) and attributable conduct.

## Conclusion

The Sixth Circuit held that the government proved both defendants’ participation in an interstate cocaine conspiracy, but it did not prove that Zajac intentionally facilitated the specific 351-kilogram possession offense; his post hoc payment at another’s direction was too attenuated to support aiding and abetting, requiring reversal of that count and resentencing on the conspiracy conviction alone.


United States v. Ledezma, 26 F.3d 636 (6th Cir. 1994)