Sixto Jorge Díaz-Colón, a media producer in Puerto Rico, was convicted by a federal jury on three counts arising from his interactions with Anthony Maceira, a high-ranking official in the administration of former Governor Ricardo Rosselló. The government alleged that Díaz-Colón attempted to extort Maceira by threatening to release a binder of damaging chat messages involving the governor and his administration unless Maceira arranged a $300,000 payment and secured government contracts for Díaz-Colón's companies. Díaz-Colón was also convicted of transmitting a threatening communication in interstate commerce and destroying records pertaining to a federal investigation after deleting chat messages from his phone during an FBI interview. Following his conviction and a sentence of fifty-one months, Díaz-Colón appealed, arguing that the evidence was insufficient, the government suborned perjury, the trial evidence varied from the indictment, and the court improperly limited his cross-examination and jury instructions.
The First Circuit, in an opinion by Circuit Judge Lipez, systematically addressed each of Díaz-Colón's arguments. First, regarding sufficiency of the evidence, the court applied the standard of viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. The court found that the jury could reasonably infer Díaz-Colón's intent to extort from his repeated demands for money and contract renewals during meetings with Maceira, as well as his assurance that he could prevent the release of damaging chats if paid. The court rejected the argument that the demand for contract renewals was not 'transferable property' under the Hobbs Act, noting that the primary target was the cash payment, which is clearly transferable. Second, the court addressed the claim of prosecutorial misconduct. It found no error in the government's handling of a partially inaudible recording from an initial meeting, as the government provided the raw file and the defense was free to enhance it. The court also found no evidence that the government knowingly allowed false testimony, noting that Maceira's testimony was consistent with the more clearly recorded second meeting where the extortion demand was explicit. Third, the court rejected the variance claim, holding that the indictment's language was broad enough to cover theories where Díaz-Colón sought the money for himself or as an aider and abettor. Fourth, the court upheld the district court's limitation on cross-examination regarding a phone call that was not introduced into evidence, ruling that the defense had ample opportunity to question witnesses and that the excluded evidence was not clearly prejudicial. Finally, the court found that the jury instructions, taken as a whole, adequately defined 'extortion' and 'attempt,' and any minor omission of the word 'wrongful' in one instruction was harmless error given the overwhelming evidence of intent to extort.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed, and Díaz-Colón's convictions stand. The decision reinforces the First Circuit's standard for sufficiency of evidence in extortion cases, confirming that a defendant's intent can be inferred from a pattern of conduct and that the 'transferable property' requirement under the Hobbs Act is satisfied by demands for cash even if ancillary contract renewals are also sought. The ruling also clarifies that a defendant cannot challenge the sufficiency of evidence by attacking the credibility of government witnesses or by claiming that excluded evidence would have changed the outcome, provided the jury had a plausible basis for the verdict.
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