Carlos Cardenas-Ramirez v. United States

This case arises from a one-day drug investigation in which the jury acquitted petitioner Carlos Petitioner of possessing with intent to distribute the very cocaine later used to support his sentence yet convicted him of conspiracy based on the same events. The Fifth Circuit affirmed because it concluded that United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997), bound it to permit consideration of acquitted conduct, while separately holding that the jury could infer knowledge and foreseeable drug quantity from sealed, opaque speaker boxes, their weight, their value, a car swap, and a false identification during a traffic stop. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments permit a federal sentencing court to rely on conduct underlying a charge of which the jury acquitted the defendant when that conduct supplies the factual basis for the punishment imposed, or whether United States v. Watts should be overruled or limited. 1

2. Whether, in a § 846 drug-conspiracy prosecution triggering § 841(b)(1)(A)'s ten-year mandatory minimum, a general guilty verdict may be treated as an individualized drug-quantity finding where the verdict form contains no separate quantity finding, the alleged drugs were concealed inside sealed, opaque 1 Candor requires the Undersigned to point out that the jury instructions in the conspiracy count one requires the jury to make findings that are also contained in count two possession charge.