Unpreserved Sufficiency Claims
Addullah Yusuf was convicted of human trafficking. He had moved for a judgment of acquittal at the close of the government’s case. The district court denied the motion. He then took the stand, and denied the essential allegations. The defense then rested, but he did not renew his motion for judgment of acquittal. The jury convicted him on all counts. He argued on appeal that the jury had insufficient evidence to convict.
The significance of the Fifth Circuit’s opinion is the “particularly exacting standard that applies to unpreserved sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges.”
The standard of review for insufficiency-of-the-evidence claims depends on whether the claims were preserved. For preserved sufficiency claims, the court gives “substantial deference to the jury verdict and affirms if a rational jury could have found each essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. In doing so, it views the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and draws all reasonable inferences from the evidence to support the verdict.
If a claim is unpreserved, the hurdle is even higher. The court applies the four-factor plain-error standard found in Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 135 (2009). The standard of review here is doubly difficult. That is because the “substantial deference” that the court generally affords verdicts combines with the “exacting” plain-error standard to create an exponentially more difficult standard of review than either one standing alone. That said, a sufficiency error satisfies the second prong of plain-error review only if “the record is devoid of evidence pointing to guilt.” Mere insufficiency isn’t enough. Rather, the defendant must prove that allowing the verdict to stand would be a “shocking” and “manifest miscarriage of justice.”
The court found Yusuf did not come close to meeting that burden.