United States v. Romero.
No. 23-8056. 3/26/2025. D.Wyo. Judge Hartz. Guilty Plea—Change of Plea—Affirmative Defense of Duress—Discretion to Accept or Reject Plea—Plea Colloquy—Factual Basis to Support Plea.
March 26, 2025
Romero was indicted on charges of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute. He initially pleaded not guilty to both counts, but two weeks before trial, he agreed to plead guilty to the conspiracy charge in return for dismissal of the distribution charge. At the change-of-plea hearing, he said that he was only partially guilty because he joined the conspiracy under duress from a threat from a Mexican cartel, which had agreed to help him smuggle his sister-in-law’s daughter into the United States if Romero handled a drug transaction in the United States. The district court rejected the guilty plea. The government subsequently moved in limine to preclude Romero from raising a duress defense at trial. The district court granted the motion because Romero failed to show that (1) he faced imminent threats against himself or his family; (2) he did not recklessly or negligently place himself in a situation where he would probably be forced to choose criminal conduct; (3) no reasonable legal alternative existed to help his family member migrate to the United States; and (4) a causal relationship existed between participating in the drug conspiracy and avoiding harm. Romero proceeded to trial and was convicted on both charges.
On appeal, Romero argued that his plea colloquy provided a sufficient factual basis to support his guilty plea and failed to establish a duress defense. He maintained that the flaws in his duress defense were sufficiently apparent during the plea colloquy, so the judge should have rejected the duress defense from the outset and accepted his plea. A district court has discretion to accept a defendant’s guilty plea where the elements of the offense are established, even if the proffered facts support an affirmative defense. The court may also reject a defendant’s guilty plea where the defendant claims innocence. Here, during his plea colloquy, Romero testified that he contacted Mexican cartel members for help in smuggling his sister-in-law’s daughter into the United States; the cartel members said they would help him if he first handled a drug transaction in the United States; Romero knew that the cartel members had a history of distributing drugs; and Romero picked up a laundry bag with 12 pounds of methamphetamine in California, drove it to Nevada, delivered it to Ortega, rented a car for her, instructed her to go to a Minnesota address, and gave her credit cards to use during her trip. The Tenth Circuit assumed that these statements provided a sufficient factual basis to support a guilty plea for drug conspiracy, so the district court could have accepted or rejected Romero’s guilty plea despite his claim of duress. And Romero failed to show that the court plainly or obviously erred by not exploring or ruling on the merits of his duress claim at the plea hearing.
Romero also argued that even if he had established a duress defense, the district court failed to recognize its discretion to accept guilty pleas accompanied by affirmative defenses, and that it should have accepted his guilty plea. Trial judges are presumed to know the law and apply it when making their decisions. Accordingly, the Tenth Circuit presumed that the district court knew that it had discretion. And the district court’s statements do not suggest that it believed it could not accept a guilty plea accompanied by the affirmative defense. Here, Romero failed to establish that the district court plainly erred, so there was no abuse of discretion.
The judgment was affirmed.