Whether federal joinder laws permit the expansive joinder of two unrelated cases with no factual commonality apart from one defendant's involvement in both instances

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Petitioner played a relatively minor role in the extortion of $550 from a third party, acting as the "delivery boy" of the funds on behalf of known MS-13 gang members who Petitioner feared would injure or kill him or those he loved if he did not comply. Coordination of the pick-up and delivery of the extorted funds was arranged between the parties on cellular phones, all within the state of Virginia. Subsequently, after Petitioner had cut all contact with the gang members, fled Virginia, and moved across the country to avoid further involvement with them, certain of the same MS-13 gang members and others conspired to and did kidnap and violently murder a suspected member of a rival gang. Despite Petitioner moving the trial court to have the case severed prior to trial, the indictments and trials for the two disparate offenses were joined, thereby exposing the jury that convicted Petitioner of conspiracy to extort and extortion to testimony and evidence of the unrelated gruesome stabbing of the rival gang member. Petitioner was also convicted of violation of 18 U.S.C. §§1952(a)(2) and (a)(8) of the Travel Act, which makes it a federal offense to use "interstate facilities" in aid of specified unlawful activity, in this case, extortion in violation of Va. Code Ann.§ 18.2-59. Petitioners' conviction was based upon the theory that a party uses an "interstate facility" when he or she uses a cellular phone to contact another person within the same state with regard to criminal activity that did or will take place entirely within that same state. ii The following questions are presented: 1. Do federal joinder laws permit the expansive joinder of two unrelated cases with no factual commonality apart from one defendant's involvement in both instances, where the facts of one of the crimes of so extreme and abhorrent as to inherently cause "spillover" prejudice to defendants only charged with the lesser crime? 2. Does a cellular phone constitute an "interstate facility" to the extent that the mere intrastate use of a cell phone automatically converts any crime identified in § 1952(a) into a federal offense?