AP: (Supreme) Court upholds conviction in border bust

Posted on Tue, Jan. 09, 2007

Court upholds conviction in border bust
MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of a man caught
trying to enter the country illegally in a case that initially was seen as a test of
whether a flawed indictment could violate a defendant's rights.

But in an 8-1 opinion, the court said that the indictment of Juan Resendiz-Ponce itself
was sound. The indictment "did not deprive him of any significant protection that the
constitutional guarantee of a grand jury was intended to confer," Justice John Paul
Stevens said.

Resendiz-Ponce, a Mexican national, sought to persuade the justices that there was a
problem so serious in his indictment that it warranted reversing his conviction. Justice
Antonin Scalia, the lone dissenter, agreed.

-snip-

Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, however, told justices at oral argument that
this error was harmless because Resendiz-Ponce received a fair trial at which a jury
determined that the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had displayed
two false pieces of identification in an effort to enter the country.

The case is U.S. v. Resendiz-Ponce, 05-998.