Ocasio v. United States

Background

Ronald Ocasio sought relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, a procedure allowing a federal prisoner to challenge a sentence based on constitutional or other fundamental legal errors. A jury convicted Ocasio in 1997 of racketeering, violent crimes committed to support racketeering, and firearm offenses. Judge Deborah A. Batts sentenced him to life imprisonment plus a consecutive forty-five-year term. Ocasio had previously filed a § 2255 motion, which was denied. The Second Circuit later authorized him to file this second motion but stated that the district court still had to determine whether each claim satisfied the requirements for a successive motion.

Ocasio raised three groups of claims: (1) that his racketeering and violent-crime convictions were unconstitutionally vague under Supreme Court decisions concerning vague statutory definitions of violent crimes; (2) that his firearm convictions were invalid under United States v. Davis because they relied partly on murder conspiracies; and (3) that the Government violated Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States by withholding evidence concerning witness Luz Acevedo and an unidentified witness to the murder of Carl Norris.

RICO and VICAR claims

The court dismissed Ocasio’s challenges to his Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act convictions and his Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering convictions because they did not rely on a new, retroactive constitutional rule of the type required for a second § 2255 motion. The court also stated that the claims failed on the merits. It held that the racketeering statute was not unconstitutionally vague as applied to Ocasio’s conduct, given the evidence that he directed a narcotics enterprise and organized or committed acts of violence. The court reached the same conclusion regarding the violent-crime statute. It further rejected Ocasio’s argument that a conspiracy to distribute controlled substances could not qualify as a racketeering predicate act.

Firearm convictions

Ocasio’s challenge under Davis satisfied the threshold requirement for review, so the court considered its merits. Davis invalidated the residual clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which defined a crime of violence by the risk that physical force might be used. After Davis, a firearm conviction under § 924(c) must rest on a predicate offense that qualifies under the statute’s elements clause—an offense requiring the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force.

Each of Ocasio’s three firearm convictions was based on both murder conspiracies and substantive murders. The court accepted that a murder conspiracy generally would not qualify as a crime of violence under the elements clause. It nevertheless held that the substantive murders did qualify. Applying the modified categorical approach, which permits review of limited case documents to identify the specific offense underlying a conviction, the court determined that Ocasio was charged with and found guilty of intentional second-degree murder under New York Penal Law § 125.25(1). The indictment and jury instructions did not rely on reckless or depraved-indifference murder. Intentional murder therefore supplied a valid crime-of-violence predicate for each firearm conviction, even though conspiracy to murder was also included. The court also rejected Ocasio’s argument that aiding-and-abetting liability made the murder convictions invalid predicates.

Brady and Giglio claims

Brady requires prosecutors to disclose material evidence favorable to the accused, and Giglio applies that disclosure rule to impeachment evidence. Ocasio alleged that the Government withheld Acevedo’s investigative file concerning accusations that she stole money from a parent-teacher organization and an NYPD DD-5 report describing an unidentified woman’s account of the Norris murder.

The court held that these claims did not satisfy the successive-motion requirement for newly discovered evidence. The Acevedo file showed that she had been indicted before the charges were dismissed after restitution, but the court found that this did not materially change the fact that she had not been convicted and did not contradict her testimony that she had not been convicted. The DD-5 report did not identify the witness’s address, and the court found no basis for assuming that the witness had encountered Ocasio at the location proposed by Ocasio.

The court also held that the evidence would not undermine the convictions. Norris’s murder was one of nine racketeering predicate acts supporting the two RICO convictions, and the jury found Ocasio guilty of all nine. The jury needed to find only two predicate acts to establish the required pattern of racketeering activity. Thus, even if the evidence concerning Norris’s murder had been excluded, the RICO convictions would have rested on the other eight predicate acts. The court concluded that the alleged withholding did not meet the clear-and-convincing-evidence standard for a successive motion and, independently, was not material under Brady and Giglio.

Disposition

The court denied Ocasio’s § 2255 motion in its entirety and found that an evidentiary hearing was unnecessary. It directed the Clerk of Court to close the related motions and civil case. The court also declined to issue a certificate of appealability because Ocasio had not made a substantial showing that a federal right was denied, and it denied permission to appeal without paying court fees.