U.S. v. Stafford

Full title: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. HAROLD STAFFORD

Court: United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, Nashville Division

Date published: Feb 18, 2009

Criminal No. 3:07-00221 (M.D. Tenn. Feb. 18, 2009)

Opinion

Criminal No. 3:07-00221.

February 18, 2009

MEMORANDUM and ORDER

ALETA TRAUGER, District Judge

The defendant has filed a Motion For Judgment of Acquittal and New Trial pursuant to Rule 29(c), FED. R. CRIM. P., (Docket No. 130), to which the government has responded in opposition (Docket No. 132). The two-and-one-half-page Memorandum of Law in Support (Docket No. 131) argues that the evidence was insufficient for the jury to properly convict the defendant of all 51 counts alleged in the Indictment.¹

1 The defendant also reasserts as a ground for this motion the contact that a juror had with one of the prosecutors after the verdict was returned. The court has ruled on that separate motion made by the defendant (Docket No. 119) in a separate Memorandum and Order and, therefore, will not discuss this additional ground in this opinion.

A motion for judgment of acquittal on the basis of insufficient evidence calls upon the court to examine "whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . This review is quite limited. . . . [The] court does not weigh evidence, make credibility determinations, or substitute its judgment for that of the jury." United States v. Owusu, 199 F.3d 329, 341-42 (6^th Cir. 2000) (internal citations omitted).

The defendant maintains generally that there was insufficient evidence that the defendant (1) entered into a criminal conspiracy, (2) forged documents, made false statements or caused monies to be transmitted by wire communications, or (3) was guilty of the substantive crimes under the Pinkerton Doctrine. The court has reviewed its notes of the evidence produced at trial as well as the detailed recitation of the proof supporting each charge contained in the government's Response (Docket No. 132) under the standard announced above. The court finds that a rational jury could have found the essential elements of the crimes alleged in Counts 1 though 51 of the Indictment beyond a reasonable doubt. For these reasons, the defendant's Motion For Judgment of Acquittal and New Trial (Docket No. 130) is DENIED.

It is so ORDERED.