UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ALEJANDRO GARCIA-LAGUNAS
US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Diaz, Sept. 1, 2016,
Evidence – Ethnic/racial stereotypes – Officer’s expert testimony that “Hispanic drug traffickers” are “very modest living” because “they send the majority if not all of the proceeds back to their native countries” was an improper “injection of a defendant’s ethnicity into a trial as evidence of criminal behavior.”
(Dissent – Davis – The government hasn’t met burden of proving unconstitutional appeal to ethnic bias was harmless)
How would this opinion have been different if the government had submitted expert opinion regarding the tendencies of African-American drug dealers?
Case Summary: Defendant was arrested with a gun, body armor, and 800 grams of burn living in “squalid” living conditions, but was alleged to have been the distributor responsible for selling dozens of kilograms of cocaine. To counter this, officers testified to various versions of, as one put it, “It is consistent with Hispanic drug traffickers not to misuse the drug proceeds and to send or get rid of the proceeds, send them to their native countries or their next step over them in the drug trafficking organization.” This was reiterated in the prosecutor’s closing statement. Held to be harmless error in light of the substantial evidence against the defendant.
Evidence – Improper to admit into evidence that defendant was an illegal alien
Evidence – Commentary on defendant’s “fake” use of a translator was appropriate given that witnesses testified they only spoke to him in English
Expert – Where officer testified as to possible reason field-test was positive for CDS but lab test was negative, sufficient foundation for expert opinion where he testified that based on his training and experience he knew they would test only a portion of a controlled substance.
Conspiracy – A mere buyer/seller relationship is insufficient to charge conspiracy.
Conspiracy – However, evidence that the seller is selling to re-sellers (middle-men) may support a conspiracy conviction, especially where there are repeated transactions involving substantial quantities of drugs.
Davis makes an interesting point in dissent:
After this published opinion, future panels of this Court will be required to struggle with the issue of just how much evidence of guilt is enough evidence of guilt to permit the Court to give the Government a pass when it bolsters its pursuit of a conviction through resort to gratuitous racial and ethnic evidence intended to spur one or more jurors to convict. This case sets a very low bar, considering that the level of certainty that the constitutional violation had no effect upon any juror is agreed to be “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a standard that, interestingly, this Court has long refused to allow trial judges to define for ordinary jurors.