United States v. Jean Alvarado

My friends in the majority affirm the district court’s judgment against Jean Paul Alvarado, who was convicted of violating 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and sentenced to a mandatory minimum of twenty years’ imprisonment pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C) for distributing heroin to Eric Thomas that resulted in Thomas’s déath. The majority holds that the district court’s jury instructions as to the meaning of § 841(b)(l)(C)’s requirement that “death ... results from” the use of the distributed substance were' adequate and that the district court neither abused its discretion nor committed plain error…