In 2017, juries decided only three federal criminal cases in the United States District Court in Rhode Island. The federal courthouse is full of courtrooms, but rarely are those courtrooms full with juries. Today, Wednesday, August 8, a federal criminal jury trial starts at 9:00 a.m. in Courtroom 3 before Chief Judge William Smith, on the second floor of the federal courthouse (directions here). You’re more likely to see the Yankees beat the Red Sox when it counts than witness a jury trial at the federal courthouse, so you might as well head over to watch the trial.
The case is United States v. Roman, docket number 17-cr-0094. According to publicly-available documents on the court docket, the government charged the defendant with two counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, one count of felon in possession of a firearm, and one count of use, carry, or possession of a firearm in relation to or in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The defendant pleaded guilty to the two counts of possession with intent to distribute and the felon in possession charge. The sole issue for the jury is the charge for use, carry, or possession of a firearm in relation to or in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
The case has an interesting fact patten — according to the United States’ pre-trial filings in the case, the defendant was arrested in a car away from his home. He did not have a gun on him at the time of arrest, but authorities discovered a gun in his home in the proximity of controlled substances. Is this enough to convict him of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt that he used, carried or possessed a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime? The jury will decide. Interestingly, the government’s court filings indicate that it plans to call an expert witness on the use of guns in drug trafficking crimes. Given the extra persuasive power that experts can bring to a case, it will be interesting to see how much leeway the court allows for expert testimony.
The defendant’s decision to plead guilty to three counts and exercise his constitutional right to a jury trial on the gun charge might seem curious, but it is rational because of the strict mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes in the federal system. If the jury convicts the defendant for using, carrying or possessing a gun in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of at least five years that will run “consecutively” to any term of imprisonment he receives for the other crimes at issue in the case. In other words, if convicted, he would serve the sentence in prison for the two counts of possession with intent to distribute and the count for felon in possession, and then he will serve at least another five years on the “in furtherance of drug trafficking” crime. The United States Sentencing Commission recently published a study on mandatory minimums for firearms offenses. Among other things, the report concluded that criminal defendants convicted of gun charges similar to the one at issue in the jury trial “received exceptionally long sentences as a result of the statutory requirement that the sentence for each count be served consecutively.” By pleading guilty to the three other counts, the defendant has removed from the jury the charges for which the government probably has stronger evidence to support a conviction than the “in furtherance of drug trafficking” charge. The jury trial will now focus on it as a separate charge that it won’t consider as part of a package with the other counts. This strategy has the potential to increase the likelihood of an acquittal that will avoid a lengthy consecutive sentence.
According to the docket, Assistant United States Attorneys Richard Rose and Terrence Donnelly will represent the United States. John Calcagni III will represent the defendant. AUSA Rose has lectured at the District’s highly-successful Litigation Academy about opening and closing statements. Today’s trial might be a chance to observe him doing the real thing (read more about opening statements here).