## Facts

- Federal prosecutors charged Ariadna Puerto and co-defendants, including Eduardo Orlansky, with multiple offenses arising from decade-long, multi-million-dollar fraud schemes involving financial institutions.
- The charged conduct spanned roughly 1994–2003 and involved sustained deception to conceal the true condition of accounts and loans.
- After the offense period, Orlansky pursued an insanity defense under the Insanity Defense Reform Act (IDRA), 18 U.S.C. § 17, and also sought to use mental-condition evidence to negate fraudulent intent.
- Orlansky proffered expert testimony from:
  - Dr. Gelblum (neurologist), who diagnosed progressive vascular dementia in 2004, relied substantially on retrospective accounts for the earlier period, and conceded he could not determine whether Orlansky could act to deceive during 1994–2003.
  - Dr. Crown (psychologist/neuropsychologist), who conducted neuropsychological testing in 2004 indicating severe impairment at that time, but conceded he could not determine whether Orlansky was insane during 1994–2003.
- The district court excluded both experts’ testimony under the Federal Rules of Evidence, finding the opinions insufficiently reliable and not adequately tied to Orlansky’s mental state during the charged conduct.
- The defendants were convicted in the Southern District of Florida, and they appealed; the appeal included challenges to the exclusion of the mental-health expert evidence.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court abused its discretion, or violated the right to present a defense, by excluding expert mental-health testimony where the examinations occurred after the offense period and the experts could not reliably opine on the defendant’s mental state during 1994–2003.
2. Whether post-offense dementia-related evidence, without a reliable linkage to the offense period, was admissible to support an IDRA insanity defense.
3. Whether the same evidence was admissible to negate mens rea (specific intent) even if insufficient to establish legal insanity.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences.
- The court held the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the proffered expert testimony.
- The court concluded the experts’ opinions were temporally remote, speculative as to the offense period, and insufficiently helpful to the jury on sanity or intent during 1994–2003.
- The court rejected the argument that exclusion of the testimony violated the right to present a defense.

## Legal Principles

- Under the IDRA, a defendant must prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence, and the relevant inquiry is the defendant’s mental condition at the time of the charged acts.
- Federal Rule of Evidence 702 permits exclusion of expert testimony that lacks a reliable basis and does not fit the facts at issue, including where opinions rest on post-offense evaluations and retrospective lay accounts without a reliable connection to the offense period.
- The constitutional right to present a defense does not require admission of unreliable or speculative expert evidence; ordinary evidentiary rules limiting such proof generally do not violate due process or compulsory-process rights.
- Mental-condition evidence offered to negate mens rea may be excluded when it does not reliably bear on the defendant’s ability to form intent during the charged conduct and risks inviting speculation.

## Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed fraud convictions in a multi-defendant prosecution and upheld exclusion of post-offense mental-health expert testimony because the experts could not reliably connect later dementia findings to the defendant’s sanity or intent during the 1994–2003 offense period, making the evidence inadmissible under Rule 702 and insufficient under the IDRA.


United States v. Puerto, 392 F. App’x 692 (11th Cir. 2010)