Barrera v. State

2017 WY 123, 403 P.3d 1025, 2017 WL 4564001, 2017 Wyo. LEXIS 129
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 13, 2017
DocketS-16-0296
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 2017 WY 123 (Barrera v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Barrera v. State, 2017 WY 123, 403 P.3d 1025, 2017 WL 4564001, 2017 Wyo. LEXIS 129 (Wyo. 2017).

Opinions

DAVIS, Justice.

[¶1] Mario Barrera appeals his felony, conviction for taking a controlled substance into a jail.1 The statute governing that offense, Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-5-208 (LexisNexis 2017), proyides in pertinent part, “Except as authorized by a person in charge, a person commits a felony ... if that person takes or passes any controlled substance or intoxicating liquor into a jail[.]" We affirm.

ISSUES

[¶2] Barrera raises three issues. We restate and rearrange them as follows.

I. Can an arrestee, whose presence at a jail is involuntary, nevertheless voluntarily take controlled substances into the jail in violation of § 6-5-208?
II. Is a booking area part of a jail for purposes of § 6-5-208?2
III.' Did, the State’s theory and argument deprive Barrera of his Fifth Amendment right to be free from compelled self-incrimination?

FACTS

[¶8] Gillette police officers Overton, Dillard, and Foutch responded to a reported bar fight at approximately 2:13 a.m. on January 30, 2016. Several men had allegedly left the scene, leaving one man unconscious, in the establishment’s parking lot. After interviewing witnesses and obtaining descriptions of some of the participants in the fight, the officers began to check vehicles in the parking lot to determine whether any of those involved—particularly, a heavy-set Hispanic male and a female who had left her purse behind—might still be present.

[¶4] Eventually, Officer Overton encountered the heavy-set Barrera, a female driver, and a second man in a red Chevrolet pickup truck. He detected a faint odor of marijuana, and Officer Foutch spotted a pistol in a map pocket on the driver-side door. Consequently, the officers asked all of the occupants to get out of the vehicle and patted them down for weapons. When Barrera exited from the front passenger seat, he handed the officers two open bottles of beer. Officer Dillard then ran his drug dog around the car, and upon the dog’s alerting to the presence of controlled substances, the officers searched the interior of. the truck. In the woman’s purse they found approximately four grams of marijuana and a small baggie containing what they suspected to be methamphetamine. She was arrested for possession of those- substances. The officers also located marijuana residue in the cup holders in the front console.

[¶6] Shortly thereafter, Officer Foutch arrested Barrera for a violation of Gillette’s open container ordinance and searched him to a limited extent incident to that arrest. After discovering cigarette rolling, papers during that search, Foutch advised him twice that he would be searched more thoroughly at the jail and that-he would face additional charges if he had any drugs on him and took them into the jail. On both occasions Barrera said he had nothing on him. The officer similarly advised Barrera a third time while transporting him to the jail, and he again received the same response.

. [¶6] After proceeding into the county detention facility’s secured garage, Foutch turned Barrera over to Detention Officer Kellison, who showed and read him a sign on a door to the secured passageway leading into the jail. The sign advised that he would be charged with a felony if he brought any illegal substances or liquor into the jail. Kelli-son asked whether he had any such items on his person, and Barrera said, “No.”, The three, men then entered the passageway, and the- jail control center remotely closed. and secured the door behind them and opened a door at the other end of the passage into the jail’s booking area. The second door had a sign with the same warning as the first. ■ Officer Foutch remained in the booking area to prepare his initial intake paperwork relating to Barrera.

[¶7] In the meantime, Officer Kellison searched Barrera, emptying his pockets and inventorying the personal items he found. Kellison found a very small baggie in the watch pocket on the right side of Barrera’s pants. It contained slightly more than 1.8 grams of what was later identified as methamphetamine.

[¶8] On February 1, 2016, Barrera was charged with the felony of taking methamphetamine into a jail under the statute noted above. In mid-June, the parties stipulated to the joinder of that charge with a misdemean- or count of possessing methamphetamine that had been filed in the circuit court.

[¶9] On April 16, 2016, Barrera filed a motion to dismiss the felony charge. He argued that § 6-5-208 required proof that he voluntarily took or passed a controlled substance- into the jail, but that he could not have done so voluntarily because he was under arrest and -under the physical control of law enforcement officers when he entered the jail.

[¶10] A hearing was held on May 2, 2016, and on July 15 the district court issued an order denying the motion. The court concluded that Barrera’s argument echoed the position of the minority of courts that found that an arrested person did not voluntarily enter a jail. However, the court preferred the majority view to the contrary because it focused on and did not discount the fact that, in seemingly all of the reported cases, the defendants had been advised of the consequences of introducing drugs into the jail and made a choice to do so. In short, regardless of what caused Barrera to be in the position of having to make that choice, the district court believed that the majority view recognized that the decision to continue to conceal drugs was itself a voluntary act sufficient to support a conviction under § 6-6-208. It also concluded that the minority position would exclude arrestees and inmates from the reach of that statute, to the detriment of the legislative intent of preventing the introduction and use of drugs in jails and penal institutions.

[1111] On July 8,2016, at the conclusion of a two-day jury trial, Barrera was found guilty of both offenses: He was sentenced to twenty to thirty-six months of incarceration and a $3,000 fine on the felony conviction. The prison sentence was suspended in favor of three years of supervised probation. On the misdemeanor conviction, he was sentenced to time served. He timely perfected this appeal.

DISCUSSION

Can an Arrestee Voluntarily Take Controlled Substances into a Jail?

[¶12] Barrera and the State both correctly note that Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-5-208 describes a general intent crime, and that such crimes must be committed voluntarily. Barrera argues, as he did below, that for the purposes of that statute he could not voluntarily take methamphetamine into the jail in Gillette because he was an arrestee, and his presence in the jail was involuntary. He thus raises a question of statutory interpretation subject to de novo review by this Court. Vance v. City of Laramie, 2016 WY 106, ¶ 11, 382 P.3d 1104, 1106 (Wyo. 2016). When interpreting statutes, we focus on legislative intent as expressed by the ordinary and obvious meaning of the language employed therein. Id. ¶ 12, 382 P.3d at 1106.

• [¶13] As noted above, Barrera’s argument invokes a minority position that a defendant’s presence in a jail must be voluntary to violate the statute.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2017 WY 123, 403 P.3d 1025, 2017 WL 4564001, 2017 Wyo. LEXIS 129, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/barrera-v-state-wyo-2017.