Guerrero v. State

305 S.W.3d 546, 2009 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1814, 2009 WL 4696103
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 9, 2009
DocketPD-1661-08, PD-1662-08
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 305 S.W.3d 546 (Guerrero v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Guerrero v. State, 305 S.W.3d 546, 2009 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1814, 2009 WL 4696103 (Tex. 2009).

Opinions

OPINION

HERVEY, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court

in which KELLER, P.J., PRICE, and KEASLER, JJ., joined.

We granted discretionary review in this “multiple-punishments” double-jeopardy case to decide whether appellant may lawfully be convicted and punished (two 45-year concurrent prison terms) in the same proceeding for manufacturing and also for possessing with intent to deliver more than 4 but less than 200 grams of the same controlled substance (methamphetamine). We decide that these convictions and punishments do not violate double-jeopardy principles.

In cause number 2006-CR-9269, appellant was indicted for manufacturing more than 4 but less than 200 grams of methamphetamine. In cause number 2006-CR-4524, he was indicted for possessing with intent to deliver more than 4 but less than 200 grams of methamphetamine (count 1) and also for possessing more than 4 but less than 200 grams of methamphetamine (count 2). These cases were tried together in a single proceeding. The evidence shows that the police discovered appellant operating a methamphetamine lab in his home where the police seized three glass [548]*548containers containing a total of 80.45 grams of methamphetamine that appellant had manufactured (74.62 grams in one container, 4.49 grams in another container, and 1.34 grams in the other container). This methamphetamine had not yet been converted into a final, usable product. A Department of Public Safety Chemist (Budge) testified that the methamphetamine in each container was in a single layer of a two-layered, liquid solution. Budge testified:

Q. [STATE]: I want to draw your attention specifically to a few, I guess, specific items and — located within an exhibit, State’s Exhibit Number 40 in one of the buckets, was a Converse Number 06-220, a number that they assigned the evidence there at the police station?
A. [BUDGE]: Yes.
Q. And that bucket also contains your lab number of 345971. Did you conduct an analysis on that item found under Number 06-220?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And what kind of test did you perform on that item?
A. I did obtain a weight. I did a preliminary test on the substance. And I also did the confirmation test on it. And I also did a test because — it’s a quantitative test to determine the percentage of the active ingredient in the substance also.
Q. And Exhibit 06-220, what was the exhibit?
A. The exhibit was a glass container containing a two-layered solution. It was a top layer and a bottom layer. And I did tests on both layers. And my testing indicated that the meth would have been on the top layer. So that’s the net weight that I have given is just of the top layer.
Q. And what weight did you obtain for the top layer?
A. It was 74.62 grams.
Q. And what substance — controlled substance did it come back as being? A. It did contain methamphetamine in that solution.
Q. Next, I want to draw your attention to the Converse Evidence Number 41, which is a bucket that also contains the Lab Number 345971. Did you conduct testing on 06-229?
A. Yes.
Q. And what was 06-229 — the items in it that was submitted?
A. It was a — like a soda-water plastic bottle containing — once again it was a two-layer liquid. And I did tests on both solutions and determined that the bottom layer would have been the one that contained the methamphetamine, so my net weight indication is of just the bottom layer.
Q. And what was the weight?
A. It was 4.49 grams.
Q. And, again, what was the substance that it tested for?
A. And I did do the similar — the test as I did on the other exhibit, the preliminary test and the GCMS, and it did contain also methamphetamine.
Q. Next, I’d like to draw your attention to Converse Exhibit 06-235, which is located within State’s Exhibit Number 39, which is also a bucket with the Lab Number 345971. Did you conduct an analysis on 06-235?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And what was the item that was submitted for testing under that number?
A. It was a glass jar containing a two-layer liquid. And I tested the bottom layer. And it was 1.34 grams. And it did contain methamphetamine.

Budge also described the process for manufacturing methamphetamine and the process for converting this manufactured methamphetamine into a final, usable product.

[549]*549Q. The ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, is that the — is that used in the manufacturing process of methamphetamine?
A. Pseudoephedrine or ephedrine happens to be the immediate precursor to the methamphetamine, so, yes, it’s the chemical we see mostly associated— mostly — -or associated mostly with the manufacturer [sic] of methamphetamine. Q. Could you talk the jury through the process of manufacturing methamphetamine or at least the process you believe would have been used based on the items seized from this laboratory.
A. The procedure very, very short— quickly, I’ll try to go through it as quickly as I can — encompasses taking pseu-doephedrine tablets and crushing them up, extracting the pseudoephedrine out of them, and when you do that, it leaves behind this — what we call pill dough that would be the — it would be similar to 06-0241 — the Converse Number 06-241, that would be what would be left over. Q. The blue powder?
A. Yes.
And then once you extract the pseu-doephedrine out of the tablets, what you would do is you would take that and you would add a couple of other chemicals to it. And then the one procedure that this — what this appeared to be would be using iodine and red phosphorous [sic]. And iodine could be attained from — usually it’s being attained from tincture of iodine. And the procedure how to do that is that you take tincture of iodine and you take hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid and you mix them together and the iodine will come out of the solution as gray powder or powdery — it’s actually a metal-looking substance. And you take this iodine, and they mix it with the red phosphorus. And red phosphorus is quite easily attained from the striker pads off matches — of safety matches. And there is red phosphorus on those striker pads so it’s quite easy to extract it out using some land of organic solvent.
You mix pseudoephedrine, iodine, red phosphorus together — and typically it’s heated in some type of container on a hot plate. And once you do this, you actually create methamphetamine from the pseudoephedrine. I mean, that’s how simple it really is. It’s a one-step-type thing.
And then from there, there’s a series of procedures that you use to get rid of the iodine and the red phosphorous [sic] cause you don’t want those in your finished product. And there’s an extraction procedure to get rid of those.

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Guerrero v. State
305 S.W.3d 546 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, 2009)

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Bluebook (online)
305 S.W.3d 546, 2009 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1814, 2009 WL 4696103, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/guerrero-v-state-texcrimapp-2009.