Lead Opinion
Luis Jose Aponte and Christian Tapia-Valentin were traveling in a sport utility vehicle near Omaha, Nebraska when law enforcement officers stopped them for a traffic violation. The officers found approximately one kilogram of a methamphetamine mixture inside the plastic lining of a round cooler located in the cargo area of the vehicle. Both men were convicted of possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of a methamphetamine mixture in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(l)(A)(viii). In this appeal, Aponte and Tapia-Valentin contend that the district court should have granted their motions for a judgment of acquittal because the evidence was insufficient for a jury to reasonably conclude that they knew of the drugs inside the lining of the cooler. We reverse.
I.
At approximately 2:30 P.M. on January 13, 2009, Deputy Jason Bargstadt of the Douglas County Sheriffs Department stopped a Nissan Xterra because the state name on the license plate was obstructed and because it was following closely behind another vehicle. Aponte was driving the vehicle and Tapia-Valentin was a front-seat passenger. Bargstadt asked Aponte
Aponte then accompanied Bargstadt back to the cruiser, where Bargstadt asked where the two men were going and why. Aponte stated that the two men were traveling to Cheyenne, Wyoming — although he mispronounced “Cheyenne” — to visit Aponte’s cousin for a couple of days. Bargstadt then asked Aponte about the owner of the vehicle. Aponte explained that her name was Victoria and that she used to work for Aponte at a restaurant that he owned in Chicago. Aponte could not recall Victoria’s last name, but he responded affirmatively after Bargstadt asked, “Is it Usuga?” Aponte offered to call the owner of the car, but Deputy Bargstadt said “that’s fine.” Bargstadt then asked if Aponte was employed, and Aponte explained that he had sold his restaurant in Chicago. Next, Bargstadt asked Aponte about his relationship with Tapia-Valentin. Aponte responded that the two knew each other for about two years and that Tapia-Valentin previously lived in New York. Aponte added that Tapia-Valentin was also a former employee at the restaurant.
Another Sheriffs Department officer arrived on the scene, and Bargstadt asked Aponte to go sit in the recently arrived cruiser. After Aponte exited Bargstadt’s cruiser, Bargstadt asked a DEA special agent via telephone to run criminal history checks on Aponte and Tapia-Valentin. Both checks came back negative for any record or warrants. By the time Bargs-tadt learned the results of the criminal history checks, a third officer arrived on the scene. While Aponte was in the second cruiser, he again said that the two men were traveling to Cheyenne to see Aponte’s cousin.
Bargstadt returned Aponte’s driver’s license and asked if everything in the vehicle belonged to him and Tapia-Valentin, and Aponte said yes. Bargstad asked whether the vehicle contained anything illegal, including drugs, or large amounts of money. Aponte responded no to each question. Bargstad then asked for consent to search the vehicle, which Aponte granted.
Bargstadt then approached the passenger side of the vehicle and had a short conversation with Tapia-Valentin, who stated that the two men were going to Cheyenne for a couple of days to see Aponte’s cousin. Tapia-Valentin also said that he lived in Chicago and used to live in New York. Upon Bargstadt’s request, Ta-pia-Valentin exited the Xterra and entered the first cruiser. Aponte remained in the second cruiser while the three officers began searching the vehicle on the side of the highway.
The officers focused primarily on the backseat and the area underneath the backseat, where the fuel sending unit is located. One officer opened the vehicle’s back hatch and searched the cargo area for approximately forty seconds. Later, a different officer searched the cargo area for fifteen seconds. After about seven minutes of searching the vehicle on the side of the road, the officers found no drugs or money. Due to the cold temperatures, the officers asked Aponte to drive the Xterra to the sheriffs office so the officers could continue the search indoors. Aponte complied and followed Bargstadt’s cruiser to the sheriffs office. While en route, Bargstad asked Tapia-Valentin, who was still in the first cruiser, why the two
The officers resumed searching the vehicle at the sheriffs office outside the presence of Aponte and Tapia-Valentin. The officers removed all items from the vehicle, but they did not diagram or photograph the location of items prior to removal. Bargstadt and Officer Jarrod Wineinger recalled that one bag containing clothing and toiletries was in the cargo area of the vehicle, but neither officer knew who the bag belonged to, who placed the bag in the cargo area, or where the bag was located in relation to other items in the cargo area.
The officers eventually turned their attention to a round cooler in the cargo area, which contained a bottle of water, two bottles of Gatorade, and water that one officer speculated was from melted ice. The officers first noticed that the cooler’s weight “didn’t seem right,” and then they noticed some non-factory glue seeping from the seam between the orange/red cooler exterior and the white liner. After dismantling the cooler, the officers found four baggies wrapped around the cooler’s inner core. In total, the baggies contained 1,047.7 grams of a substance containing a detectable amount of methamphetamine. No fingerprints of any value were found on the methamphetamine packaging or the outside of the cooler. Three latent fingerprints and one latent palm print were developed on the white liner of the cooler, but the prints did not match Aponte or Tapia-Valentin.
II.
Aponte and Tapia-Valentin were indicted and tried for possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of methamphetamine, its salts, isomers, or salts of its isomers, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(l)(A)(viii). During the government’s case in chief, the jury was shown a number of photographs of the vehicle and cooler as well as a video recording from Bargstadt’s dashboard camera, which included audio from a microphone on Bargstadt’s uniform.
The government’s final witness was Mark Lang, a criminal investigator and former police officer. Lang testified about the characteristics of a drug “mule,” which he identified as a person who knowingly transports drugs from one point to another. Lang testified that, in his experience, several of the circumstances in this case were not unusual for drug mules. For example, Lang stated it is not unusual for (1) two mules to be in a car owned by an absent third party, (2) none of the mule’s fingerprints to be found on the contraband, and (3) the mule to consent to search the vehicle. Lang further testified that the street value of the methamphetamine in
At the close of the government’s case, Aponte and Tapia-Valentin each moved for a judgment of acquittal, claiming that the evidence was insufficient to establish that they knew about the methamphetamine in the cooler. The district court overruled the motions, finding that there was enough evidence to satisfy the government’s “fairly minimal” burden on an acquittal motion. The court stated:
I agree with Mr. Lang’s assessment that drug dealers don’t usually lose track of $20,000 or $15,000 worth of drugs. Somebody knew there were drugs in that car and it’s got to be one or both these individuals. And the government has proven a relationship between those two individuals. Whether that’s enough for a jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt I think is for them to decide at this juncture....
Aponte testified at trial, but Tapia-Va-lentin did not. Aponte explained that he met Tapia-Valentin while they were playing on the same soccer team in Chicago. He also stated that a third person, Miguel Lira, was supposed to join them on the trip to Cheyenne, but that Lira could not go because he found work. Aponte explained that his father was using his car on January 13, 2009, and therefore he borrowed the Xterra from Lira’s mother, Maria Victoria Usuga. Aponte explained that he knew Usuga because she worked at his restaurant. Finally, Aponte testified that he did not see the cooler in the vehicle’s cargo area and that he did not know there was methamphetamine in the cooler. At the close of evidence, both defendants renewed their motions for acquittal, which the district court took under advisement.
The district court instructed the jury that one element of the charged crime was that “[t]he defendant knew that he was in possession of a controlled substance.” At Aponte’s request, the court also included a “mere presence” instruction:
You should understand that being present in a location where methamphetamine is found is not sufficient in itself to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person possessed that methamphetamine with intent to distribute as charged in the indictment.
The jury convicted both men of the single possession count. Tapia-Valentin renewed his motion for a judgment of acquittal and, alternatively, moved for a new trial. The court denied both motions, stating: “There was evidence from which the jury could infer that defendant Tapia-Valentin, as well as Aponte, knew the owner of the vehicle. Aponte testified that they all worked at his former restaurant.”
Aponte and Tapia-Valentin appeal the district court’s denial of their motions for acquittal, arguing that the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were aware of the drugs in the vehicle.
We review de novo the district court’s denial of a motion for a judgment of acquittal. United States v. Hernandez-Mendoza,
To prove a violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), the government was required prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Aponte and Tapia-Valentin knowingly possessed a controlled substance. See United States v. Blakey,
In previous cases where a defendant denied knowledge of drugs found in their vehicle, we have stated that the defendant’s ownership and control over a vehicle are sufficient to infer possession of drugs therein- — even if the drugs are concealed. See, e.g., United States v. Delvillar,
Before we address the government’s proof, we make two observations. First, the evidence shows that the drugs were well-hidden inside the cooler located in the cargo area of the Xterra. Our precedent instructs that, when drugs are found in a hidden compartment, an important consideration is whether the compartment was obvious to a member of the general public. Mendoza-Larios,
Indeed, we emphasize that three officers, who were trained to find narcotics, searched the vehicle for nearly seven minutes, approximately fifty-five seconds of which was spent searching the vehicle’s cargo area. In that time, the officers never turned their attention to the cooler, much less the problem with the cooler’s lining. Wineinger testified that the officers first recognized an irregularity with the cooler when they began removing the contents of the vehicle — specifically, when they lifted the cooler and “noticed that the weight of the cooler didn’t seem right.” It is highly unlikely that an unsuspecting member of the general public would have noticed a problem with the cooler in the small amount of time it takes to place a piece of luggage in a vehicle.
Our second observation is that the common indicia of guilty consciences were not present in this case. Bargstadt testified that Aponte and Tapia-Valentin answered his questions completely and without apparent nervousness. Cf. United States v. Timlick,
The government asserts that other circumstantial evidence supports the jury verdict. First, the government argues that the location of the luggage in the vehicle is enough to infer the Appellants’ knowledge of drugs within the cooler. Crediting the testimony from Bargstadt and Wineinger, we assume that there was one piece of luggage in the vehicle, it was located in the cargo area, and Aponte or Tapia-Valentin placed it there.
Second, the government argues that Aponte and Tapia-Valentin told inconsistent stories when asked about the purpose of their trip. To be sure, we have stated that a jury may infer knowledge of drugs in a vehicle based on inconsistencies within or between the defendants’ stories. See Delvillar,
Third, the government contends, and the district court agreed, that a jury could reasonably infer that Aponte and Tapia-Valentin knowingly possessed the drugs in the Xterra from the fact that both men knew the vehicle’s owner.
Fourth, the government stresses that Aponte and Tapia-Valentin were unemployed at the time they were arrested. The government cites no authority for the position that a reasonable jury may infer a criminal state of mind, in general, or knowledge of drugs concealed in a vehicle, in particular, based on someone’s employment status. Though drug dealing is surely profit-driven in some circumstances, being unemployed is not enough to reasonably infer that someone knows about drugs concealed in a borrowed vehicle.
Fifth, the government relies on Officer Lang’s testimony that the drugs in the
Read narrowly, the government’s argument is that the drugs here were valuable enough to reasonably infer that the defendants were aware of the drugs in the vehicle. Our court has endorsed this logic. In Serrano-Lopez, the police found nearly six kilograms of cocaine in hidden compartments in the defendants’ vehicle.
We must disagree, however, that guilty knowledge may be inferred solely from the quantity or value of drugs seized in this case. While we appreciate Officer Lang’s logic, we are unaware of any case in which the drugs’ value was the only circumstantial evidence to indicate the occupants were aware of drugs in their vehicle. Neither Serrano-Lopez nor Hernandez-Mendoza relied exclusively on the quantity or value of drugs in the vehicle — both of those cases involved abundant circumstantial evidence proving that the defendants knew about the drugs’ in their vehicles. Moreover, if we held that $25,000 worth of methamphetamine is sufficient to infer knowing possession, we could not reconcile that result with Mendozar-Larios, in which police found eight kilograms of cocaine hidden in the vehicle.
The government could, but does not, argue that Aponte’s representation to Bargstadt that everything in the Xterra belonged to him or Tapia-Valentin is direct evidence of knowing possession. However, the record is still lacking any
Finally, even considering all of these circumstances in their totality, we conclude the evidence is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Aponte or Tapia-Valentin knew about the drugs within the cooler.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that a reasonable jury must have had reasonable doubt as to Aponte’s and Tapia-Va-lentin’s awareness of the drugs inside the cooler in the back of the Xterra. The district court erred by denying their motions for a judgment of acquittal. The convictions are reversed.
Notes
. There is no video of the search that occurred at the sheriff's office, and the photographs of the vehicle and cooler were all taken after the officers removed items from the vehicle.
. Aponte and Tapia-Valentin assert several other bases for reversal that we do not address in this opinion. Both appellants argue the district court abused its discretion by admitting the generic modus operandi testimony from Lang. In addition, Aponte contends that the prosecutor improperly shifted the burden of proof during closing argument and that his sentence was unreasonable. Tapia-Valentin asserts that the district court erred by admitting evidence demonstrating that he was not a U.S. citizen. However, none of these issues merit further discussion in light of our resolution of the acquittal issue.
. This analysis is consistent with the leading approach among our sister circuits, which is to require additional proof of knowledge in cases involving hidden compartments. See United States v. Ortega Reyna,
. This is not an exhaustive list of circumstances that may establish that a defendant knowingly possessed a controlled substance. We have also relied on a defendant’s lack of surprise when drugs are discovered, see Hernandez-Mendoza,
. Aponte testified that he placed his luggage in the back seat of the vehicle. However, our standard of review requires that we resolve this conflict in favor of the government. Gomez,
. This argument is actually the reverse of what the government argued at trial. During closing arguments, the government asserted that Aponte’s inability to quickly recall Ms. Usuga’s name was evidence of guilt.
. See Massachusetts v. Garcia,
. Although there is no evidence in this record about the value of cocaine, we have little doubt that eight kilograms of cocaine would be worth much more than $25,000.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
The majority opinion accurately summarizes the traffic stop, the consensual search of the vehicle Luis Aponte was driving from Chicago to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the discovery of a significant quantity of methamphetamine secreted inside the lining of a cooler found in the Nissan Xter-ra’s cargo area. The majority also fairly recounts the government’s case-in-chief and Aponte’s trial testimony, except it omits his significant admission on cross-examination that he never told the investigating officers that Miguel Lira, purportedly the son of the vehicle’s owner, Maria Victoria Usuga, originally intended to join Aponte and Tapia-Valentin on the trip to Wyoming but got a job the day before they departed and simply delivered Usuga’s vehicle to Aponte. The majority fails to consider, however, what a jury could reasonably conclude if it rationally disbelieved all or substantially all of Aponte’s self-serving testimony. I conclude disbelief is entirely rational on this record. Therefore, as we are obliged to draw all reasonable inferences and resolve all evidentiary conflicts in favor of the jury verdict, I submit we must assume the jury discredited Aponte’s testimony. Combined with the government’s circumstantial evidence, this provides sufficient evidence to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendants knowingly possessed the methamphetamine. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
Aponte testified at trial that he and his passenger, Tapia-Valentin, were unemployed after Aponte’s restaurant closed and were driving to Cheyenne to attend a party at his cousin’s home, though he did not know her address. According to Aponte, Miguel Lira intended to make the trip to Cheyenne but did not because he had found work. Instead, Lira loaned Aponte a car that belonged to Lira’s mother, who was a former cook at Aponte’s restaurant, and delivered the vehicle to Aponte’s house the night before Aponte and Tapia-Valentin began the trip. Aponte claimed that he put his bag in the back seat of the Xterra, never saw the cooler in the cargo area, and had no knowledge of the cooler’s contents. He admitted that he owned or had access to two other vehicles at the time he borrowed Usuga’s car for the trip.
There are many reasons a rational jury could disbelieve Aponte’s testimony that he did not know what was hidden, not too carefully, in the cooler’s lining.
—The jury viewed a video recording of the traffic stop that impeached Aponte’s testimony in several respects. When first asked why he was going to Cheyenne, Aponte said that his cousin lived there, but did not mention a party. Tapia-Valentin then gave an inconsistent answer about the purpose of the trip, telling Officer Bargs-tadt they were going to attend a party with Aponte’s cousin. When Aponte was then asked whether he planned to party in Cheyenne, Aponte said yes but added, “we’re not going crazy.” When Tapia-Valentin was then asked again about the purpose of the trip, he replied, “I don’t know, because they closed the restaurant ... [inaudible] ... We don’t got work now.”
—Aponte testified he knew Usuga’s last name when the police questioned him, an assertion directly contradicted by the video.
—Aponte testified that he put his bag in the back seat and never saw the cooler in the cargo area, but the video showed a bag in the cargo area, and the officers testified there was only one bag in the vehicle when they searched it.
The majority improperly analyzes these pieces of evidence in isolation; the issue is whether a reasonable jury could draw an inference of knowledge from the totality of the circumstances. See United States v. Serrano-Lopez,
—Perhaps most significantly, as the government emphasized in closing argument, Aponte’s story carefully avoided incriminating either Lira or Usuga despite describing a scenario in which someone connected with the closed restaurant almost surely was responsible for the shipment of methamphetamine that left Chicago. This is not a case like United States v. Pace,
In these circumstances, a reasonable jury could find that Aponte’s explanation for the trip was a cover story to hide what Aponte and Tapia-Valentin knew was their true purpose, to deliver the methamphetamine hidden in the cooler. It was for the jury to determine whether Aponte’s denial of knowledge was too implausible to be true. Its credibility finding is, according to a host of Eighth Circuit decisions, “virtually unreviewable on appeal.” E.g., United States v. Morris,