United States of America v. Romelly Dastinot

Not for Publication in West's Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 16-1272
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
ROMELLY DASTINOT,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. Jon D. Levy, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Selya and Kayatta,
Circuit Judges.
Daphne H. Donahue, with whom Timothy E. Zerillo and Hallett,
Zerillo & Whipple, P.A. were on brief, for appellant.
Renée M. Bunker, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom
Richard W. Murphy, Acting United States Attorney, and Margaret D.
McGaughey, Assistant United States Attorney, Appellate Chief, were
on brief, for appellee.
September 13, 2017

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SELYA, Circuit Judge. Following a protracted
investigation of drug-trafficking in and around Lewiston, Maine,
spearheaded by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
a federal grand jury handed up an indictment naming defendant-
appellant Romelly Dastinot and eleven codefendants. The
indictment charged Dastinot with, inter alia, conspiracy to
distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled
substances, see 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846, and conspiracy to
commit money laundering, see 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i). Some
of the evidence against Dastinot and his coconspirators was
gathered through court-authorized wiretaps, see id. §§ 2510-2522,
and Dastinot moved to suppress the evidence gleaned through
wiretapping. One of his codefendants, Dimitry Gordon, filed a
similar motion.
The district court denied both Dastinot's motion to
suppress and Gordon's motion to suppress. Thereafter, Dastinot
entered a conditional guilty plea to the lead count of the
indictment, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2), reserving the right to
challenge the district court's suppression ruling. Gordon, too,
entered a conditional guilty plea. After the district court
sentenced the two men, both of them filed timely notices of appeal.
We consolidated Dastinot's and Gordon's appeals and
heard oral argument on July 26, 2017. We rejected Gordon's appeal
by an opinion issued on September 8, 2017. See United States v.

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Gordon, ___ F.3d ___ (1st Cir. 2017) [No. 15-2087]. We noted at
that time that Dastinot's appeal would be decided separately. See
id. at ___ n.1 [slip op. at 2 n.1].
We now turn to Dastinot's appeal. It presents a narrower
subset of the issues already considered and resolved in Gordon's
appeal. No useful purpose would be served by repastinating soil
already well-plowed. Accordingly, we deny Dastinot's appeal for
substantially the reasons set forth in our earlier opinion. See
id. at ___ [slip op. at 16-20].
We need go no further. The judgment of the district
court is summarily
Affirmed. See 1st Cir. R. 27.0(c).

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