IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE
LEONARDO MALDONADO, §
§ No. 172, 2016
Petitioner Below- §
Appellant, §
§ Court Below: Superior Court
v. § of the State of Delaware
§
STATE OF DELAWARE, § C.A. No. N13M-12-075
§
Respondent Below- §
Appellee. §
Submitted: August 5, 2016
Decided: October 6, 2016
Before HOLLAND, VALIHURA, and VAUGHN, Justices.
ORDER
This 6th day of October 2016, upon consideration of the parties’ briefs
and the record below, it appears to the Court that:
(1) The appellant, Leonardo Maldonado, filed this appeal from the
Superior Court’s denial of his petition for return of property. After careful
consideration, we find no merit to Maldonado’s issues on appeal.
Accordingly, we affirm.
(2) Maldonado was arrested in November 2013 on charges that
included Drug Dealing. In December 2013, Maldonado filed a petition for
return of property that was seized from him as a result of his arrest. The
petition sought the return of $4000 in cash and $39,000 seized from a
Citibank account. Proceedings in the civil matter were stayed pending the
resolution of the criminal matter.
(3) In April 2014, Maldonado pled guilty to Aggravated Possession
of Marijuana. As part of his plea agreement, the State indicated that it
would seek habitual offender sentencing but would cap its sentence
recommendation to eight years of unsuspended prison time. Maldonado
agreed to forfeit the $4000 in cash that was seized from his person and also
agreed to forfeit the vehicle that was seized by police during the course of
his arrest, unless he could prove legitimate ownership.
(4) At his sentencing in September 2014, the Superior Court judge
sentenced Maldonado as a habitual offender to a total period of three years at
Level V imprisonment, with credit for thirty days served. The Superior
Court ordered that the vehicle and the $4000 seized from Maldonado’s hotel
room and from his person at the time of his arrest be forfeited. The Superior
Court held that it would not order that the money in Maldonado’s bank
account be forfeited.
(5) A hearing in the civil forfeiture matter was held before a
Superior Court Commissioner in September and November 2015. The State
presented evidence that a confidential informant working for the State had
made multiple controlled drug purchases from Maldonado in the autumn of
2
2013. Upon his arrest, the police found several pounds of marijuana in
Maldonado’s motel room. Maldonado told the police that he would buy two
to three pounds of marijuana per week and would repackage the drugs in
quarter ounce increments, which he sold for $25 each. Police also found
over $4000 in cash in Maldonado’s motel room and deposit slips for a
Citibank account showing that Maldonado had made several cash deposits
into the account in three to four thousand dollar increments, with an ending
balance in the account of over $39,000.
(6) The State presented the testimony of an expert in financial
crimes, who testified that Maldonado’s last reported employment was at a
grocery store between September 2007 and December 2010, earning $11 per
hour. By April 2011, all of Maldonado’s bank accounts were overdrawn and
later were closed. In October 2011, Maldonado opened a new Citibank
account and, by April 2012, had made multiple cash deposits of varying
amounts and at varying intervals, totaling over $14,000. During the same
time period, no withdrawals were made from that account.
(7) Between April 2012 and August 2012, the activity on the
account changed. The bank records showed multiple withdrawals from the
account made in Hampton, Virginia for food, motels, and utilities. There
were no deposits made. The pattern of large cash deposits into the account
3
in Delaware, with no withdrawals, resumed between August 2012 and April
2013. The pattern of withdrawals from the account in Virginia, with no
deposits, began again in April 2013 until August 2013. The pattern of large
cash deposits in Delaware, with no withdrawals, resumed in August 2013
until Maldonado’s arrest in November 2013.
(8) Maldonado’s last tax return had been filed in 2009. It reported
gross income of $13,462. On the return, Maldonado listed Shawna Lawson
as his dependent sister. At the forfeiture hearing, Maldonado testified that
Shawna Lawson, in fact, is his wife. Maldonado testified that following his
employment at the grocery store, he received income by working various
cash jobs in Georgia and in Virginia, where his wife lived. He also claimed
to have received income from rental property in Puerto Rico. He further
testified that he was the only person who had access to his Citibank account.
Although he admitted making thousands of dollars in profits during each
month that he sold marijuana, he testified that none of his drug profits was
ever put into his Citibank account. The State countered this contention by
presenting evidence that Maldonado had admitted to his presentence officer
that he had deposited thousands of dollars of drug profits into his Citibank
account.
4
(9) Maldonado called his wife, Shawna Lawson, to testify at the
forfeiture proceeding. Lawson testified that Maldonado was very frugal and
saved a lot of money, which he earned from working odd jobs and from his
rental property in Puerto Rico. Lawson also testified that she gave
Maldonado money to deposit, which included money that she had received
as settlements from lawsuits, child support, and government loans.
(10) Following the presentation of all the evidence, the Superior
Court Commissioner concluded that the State had met its burden of
establishing probable cause that the money in the Citibank account was
subject to forfeiture as a profit of Maldonado’s drug sales.1 Moreover, the
Commissioner found that Maldonado had not sustained his burden of
showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the money was not subject
to forfeiture.2 Accordingly, Maldonado’s petition for return of property was
denied. Maldonado appealed the Commissioner’s decision to a Superior
Court judge, who affirmed the Commissioner’s decision after conducting a
de novo review. This appeal followed.
(11) Maldonado raises three issues in his opening brief on appeal.
First, he contends that the State should be collaterally estopped from seeking
1
See 16 Del. C. § 4784(a)(7) (Supp. 2014) (providing, among other things, that profits
from drug sales are subject to forfeiture).
2
See Brown v. State, 721 A.2d 1263, 1265 (Del. 1998) (establishing the relative burdens
of proof in a forfeiture proceeding).
5
forfeiture of the money in his Citibank account in view of the Superior
Court’s refusal to forfeit the funds during the criminal proceedings. Second,
Maldonado contends that he did not receive proper notice of the State’s
seizure of his assets under Superior Court Criminal Rule 71.3. Third,
Maldonado contends that the State did not present sufficient evidence to link
the money seized from his Citibank account to his criminal activity.
(12) We review the Superior Court’s decision that Maldonado’s
property was subject to forfeiture under a clearly erroneous standard.3
Maldonado first claims that the State should be collaterally estopped from
seeking forfeiture of the money in his Citibank account because of the
Superior Court’s refusal to order those funds forfeited as part of his criminal
sentencing. In support of his claim, Maldonado attached to his opening brief
a copy of a letter from the sentencing judge to the lawyers who represented
Maldonado and the State in the criminal proceedings.4 The letter states that
Maldonado’s sentence limited forfeiture to the car and the cash and that if
“the police did seize additional money, it should be returned to the
defendant.”5 Maldonado fails to acknowledge, however, that the sentencing
3
Id. at 1266.
4
Letter from sentencing judge to parties, State v. Maldonado, Cr. ID No. 1311009435
(Del. Super. Feb. 18, 2015).
5
Id.
6
judge wrote a subsequent letter to the parties indicating that he would not
interfere with the forfeiture proceedings.6
(13) This Court previously has held that an individual who has been
subjected to criminal prosecution also may be subjected to a civil forfeiture
proceeding.7 Whether the State is precluded from seeking civil forfeiture of
Maldonado’s property by the Superior Court’s sentencing order in his
criminal case turns on whether the parties had fully litigated this issue in the
course of the criminal proceedings.8 In this case, the issue of whether the
funds in Maldonado’s Citibank account could be subject to civil forfeiture
was not fully litigated during his criminal proceedings. Although the
Superior Court judge stated at Maldonado’s sentencing that he would not
order that the Citibank funds be criminally forfeited as part of Maldonado’s
sentence, the issue of whether the funds were subject to civil forfeiture was
not addressed in the parties’ plea agreement and was not otherwise litigated
during the criminal proceedings. To the extent Maldonado now claims that
the State violated its plea agreement with him, such an issue cannot be raised
in this civil proceeding. We thus reject Maldonado’s first claim on appeal.
6
Letter from sentencing judge to parties, Maldonado v. State, C.A. No. N13M-12-075
(Del. Super. Mar. 9, 2015).
7
In re 1982 Honda, 681 A.2d 1035, 1038-39 (Del. 1996).
8
Brown v. State, 721 A.2d at 1265 (“We review questions of collateral estoppel to
determine if the parties had fully litigated the issue in question before another court.”).
7
(14) Maldonado next claims that the State failed to give him proper
notice of the seizure of his assets under Superior Court Civil Rule 71.3(a).
Maldonado, however, failed to raise this issue until the third day of trial in
the forfeiture matter. Under the circumstances, we agree with the Superior
Court that Maldonado waived this issue by failing to raise it before trial.9
Moreover, given that Maldonado filed his petition for return of property
under Rule 71.3(c) within the required 45 day period, he could not establish
any prejudice from the allegedly improper notice. Accordingly, we reject
this claim on appeal.
(15) Maldonado’s final claim is that the State failed to meet its
burden of proving that the money in the Citibank account was linked to
Maldonado’s drug activity. We review the Superior Court’s findings under
a clearly erroneous standard.10 In order to establish “probable cause” for
forfeiture, the State must prove that a “reasonable ground” exists to believe
that the property seized constituted profits from Maldonado’s drug sales.11
(16) After hearing the testimony, the Superior Court found that that
the large cash deposits being made into Maldonado’s Citibank account
9
See Del. Super. Ct. Civ. R. 12(h)(i) (defense of insufficiency of service of process
deemed waived if not raised by motion or responsive pleading).
10
Brown v. State, 721 A.2d at 1265.
11
See In re One 1985 Mercedes Benz Auto., 644 A.2d 423, 428 (Del. Super. 1992).
8
occurred during the months that Maldonado, by his own admission, was
earning a large amount of cash selling marijuana in Delaware. The large
cash deposits stopped during the months that Maldonado went to stay with
his wife in Virginia. Although Maldonado claimed to have earned money
doing odd jobs and collecting rent and also deposited money given to him by
his wife, the Superior Court did not find his explanation credible. Under the
circumstances, we find no error in the Superior Court’s conclusion that the
State had probable cause to seize the Citibank funds as profits of
Maldonado’s drug sales under 16 Del. C. § 4784(a)(7) and that Maldonado
failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the money in his
Citibank account was legally earned. Consequently, we find no error in the
Superior Court’s denial of Maldonado’s petition for return of property.
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the
Superior Court is AFFIRMED.
BY THE COURT:
/s/ Karen L. Valihura
Justice
9
Maldonado v. State
Combined Opinion