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The admission of a screenshot of a defendant’s texts with a contact during his trial on a drug-related conspiracy charge was harmless and only one piece of an “overwhelming” amount of evidence supporting his conviction, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in affirming his conviction.
According to court records, from March 2020 until his arrest in August 2020, Elvis Medrano engaged in a conspiracy to distribute mixtures and substances containing detectable amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA. A drug supplier shipped drugs from California to Indiana, where Medrano and others used the United States Post Office and a post office employee to distribute the drugs.
During this time, Medrano was a fugitive. Officers tracked and attempted to arrest him on several occasions.
On June 1, 2020, officers found Medrano at a motel in Indiana. When officers attempted to arrest him, he fled and led officers on a high-speed chase.
Medrano evaded arrest, but officers found his truck and took a co-conspirator, Nikki Foster, into custody. They later obtained a warrant to search Medrano’s motel room.
There officers found his burner phone, as well as drug paraphernalia including scales, baggies and substances used to dilute meth. They also recovered the key to a post office box, which officers later determined Medrano had received from Christina Johnson, a post office employee.
Around July 2020, officers tracked Medrano to another motel in Indiana. Once again, Medrano led officers on a high-speed chase and avoided arrest.
Officers executed a search warrant for Medrano’s motel room and again found drug paraphernalia. They also located another phone belonging to Medrano.
Officers finally arrested Medrano at a residence in Indiana. There they discovered meth and drug paraphernalia.
They also found a third phone belonging to Medrano. That phone contained text messages between Medrano and a contact identified as “Rob Marshalltown.”
A grand jury returned a superseding indictment charging Medrano with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute controlled substances.
At the ensuing trial, the government introduced several exhibits. Medrano objected to the admission of several of those exhibits, including a text message conversation with Marshalltown.
Medrano argued the text message conversation was hearsay, but the Indiana Southern District Court overruled his objection, concluding the exhibit was admissible.
The jury then found Medrano guilty on the drug-related charge, as well as a charge of being a felon in possession of ammunition.
The district court sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
Medrano appealed, objecting to the district court’s admission of the text messages between him and Marshalltown as non-hearsay statements of a co-conspirator under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E). He argued that the statements were hearsay and represented only a buyer-seller relationship, not a co-conspirator relationship.
The 7th Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment, with Judge Michael Brennan writing for the appellate court.
According to Brennan, while abundant evidence supported the finding that Medrano participated in a larger conspiracy, the government did not provide independent evidence that Medrano conspired with Marshalltown or that Marshalltown otherwise participated in the larger conspiracy.
“The district court stated it ‘studied’ Exhibit 218(B) (the texts) and ‘in the context of th[at] specific exhibit, and with all of the other facts and circumstances of the evidence that has been admitted,’ it found that ‘the factors articulated for co-conspirator statements are satisfied,’” Brennan wrote.
That raised the question of whether a district court can rely solely on hearsay statements and evidence of the larger conspiracy involving the defendant, but not the declarant, to find that a conspiracy between the defendant and declarant existed.
The 7th Circuit ultimately determined it did not need to resolve the independent-evidence question because any error in admitting Exhibit 218(B) was nonconstitutional harmless error.
“Though Medrano argued at trial and argues on appeal that the admission of the exhibit violated the Confrontation Clause — and thus, the admission was a constitutional error — the text messages in that exhibit are nontestimonial, and thus do not implicate the Constitution,” Brennan wrote, citing Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). “… A nonconstitutional error committed at trial that is unlikely to have altered the outcome of the trial is harmless.
“… The disputed exhibit was one small piece of the substantial physical, electronic, and testimonial evidence supporting a conviction against Medrano on the drug count,” the appellate court concluded. “Even assuming the district court erred in admitting the exhibit, any error was harmless.”
Judges Amy St. Eve and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi concurred in United States of America v. Elvis C. Medrano, 22-3219.
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