United States v. Martin Molina Oviedo, Jr.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that our jurisprudence does not permit the punishment of a person’s “thoughts, desires, or motives, through indirect evidence, without reference to any objective fact”
• instructing that defendant’s objective acts may not be equivocal in nature
• sale of uncontrolled substance incorrectly believed to be controlled substance
• sale of uncontrolled substance incorrectly believed to be controlled substance
• defendant not guilty of attempting to distribute controlled substance where chemical analysis revealed substance was a legal duplicate, because it was objectively reasonable to conclude that, as defendant testified, he was merely trying to “rip off” the government agent
• “Thus, we demand that in order for a defendant to be guilty of a criminal attempt, the objective acts performed, without any reliance on the accompanying mens rea, mark the defendant’s conduct as criminal in nature.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).