State v. Cain

776 S.E.2d 374, 413 S.C. 508, 2015 WL 4269663, 2015 S.C. App. LEXIS 145
CourtCourt of Appeals of South Carolina
DecidedJuly 15, 2015
DocketAppellate Case No. 2013-000817; No. 5324
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 776 S.E.2d 374 (State v. Cain) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of South Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Cain, 776 S.E.2d 374, 413 S.C. 508, 2015 WL 4269663, 2015 S.C. App. LEXIS 145 (S.C. Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

WILLIAMS, J.

Charles Allen Cain appeals his conviction for trafficking methamphetamine, arguing the circuit court erred in (1) admitting testimony from the State’s forensic chemistry expert regarding the “theoretical yield” of methamphetamine he could have produced and (2) denying his motion for a directed verdict. We affirm.

FACTS/PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On January 17, 2012, Deputy Kevan Kyle and Deputy Chris Wilbanks, both of the Spartanburg County Sheriffs Office (the Sheriffs Office), encountered Cain and Tiphani Parkhurst while attempting to serve a family court bench warrant for Travis Kirby at a Spartanburg County home. Although the house had no running water or electricity, it appeared Cain and Parkhurst were illegally obtaining both through a drop cord and a hose pipe running from a neighboring trailer. Further, the house appeared to be under construction.

The deputies knocked on the backdoor of the house — which led to a single bedroom — because they saw a vehicle parked directly in front of that door. When Cain and Parkhurst came to the door, the deputies explained they were looking for Kirby and requested identification. Cain and Parkhurst produced their driver’s licenses but denied knowing Kirby. They also told Deputy Kyle they were “renting the bedroom from the owner of the house ... and they had nothing else to do with the rest of the house.” While it appeared Cain and Parkhurst had been living in the bedroom, which had no bathroom or kitchen, the deputies believed they had access to the rest of the house as well. Deputy Kyle further believed Cain and Parkhurst were hiding Kirby because they seemed nervous, were “making furtive gestures,” and did not want him to look inside the rest of the house.

Deputy Kyle showed Cain and Parkhurst the bench warrant and explained the deputies had a right to search the house if [516]*516they believed Kirby was inside. With the consent of Cain and Parkhurst, the deputies searched the bedroom as well as the rest of the house. During the search, Deputy Kyle observed a bottle resting on the counter that had “tubing coming from the top.” The tubing ran through a window and opened up outside. He also discovered several discarded bottles with multicolored pellets, coffee filters, tin foil, and batteries in the living room — all of which are “common [for] a one pot meth lab.” Based on the deputies’ training and experience, they determined the house was being used as a lab to manufacture methamphetamine.

When the deputies returned to Cain and Parkhurst’s bedroom, they found the interior door to the bedroom that led to the rest of the house was barricaded. Additionally, the deputies discovered Cain and Parkhurst had left the residence in Parkhurst’s vehicle. The deputies further noticed what appeared to be the contents of a one pot meth lab — multicolored pellets poured out onto the grass and concrete. The pellets were still fresh and wet.

Thereafter, Cain and Parkhurst were indicted for trafficking methamphetamine in violation of section 44-53-375(C) of the South Carolina Code (Supp.2014). The case was called for a jury trial in Spartanburg County. Because Cain and Park-hurst failed to appear at trial, they were jointly tried in their absence on February 28 and March 1, 2013.

During pretrial motions, Cain moved to dismiss his indictment, arguing the State could not establish the “attempt to manufacture” element for trafficking methamphetamine because no methamphetamine was found in the home. The State, however, sought to establish Cain’s guilt “through extrapolation from the aggregate components” found in the house to demonstrate the yield of methamphetamine would have been more than the trafficking quantity, arguing the plain meaning of the statute allowed it to proceed under a theoretical yield theory. Based on this theoretical yield calculation, the State argued Cain and Parkhurst had the necessary ingredients to produce between ten and twenty-eight grams of methamphetamine.1

[517]*517Subsequently, the State called Beth Stuart to testify. Stuart, a forensic chemist with the Sheriffs Office, examined the crime scene on January 17, 2012.2 Per the State’s request, the circuit court qualified Stuart as an expert in “forensic chemistry and chemical analysis” without objection.

Stuart explained that people often use common household products to manufacture methamphetamine. She then described the “one pot method” in great detail and stated Cain and Parkhurst employed this method to manufacture methamphetamine at the Spartanburg County home. According to Stuart, the Sheriffs Office photographed the components in and around the house — and a company specializing in the disposal of chemical waste came to the house to dispose of the meth lab components — because the components were too dangerous to bring back to the Sheriffs Office. She also said the Sheriffs Office does not fingerprint meth labs due to the inherent danger of the chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine.

Moreover, Stuart testified that “the only thing of significance” she found inside the bedroom was a piece of aluminum foil shaped to smoke methamphetamine. In the living room, however, Stuart found twenty empty pseudoephedrine packets (blister packs) in trash bags, each of which previously contained twenty-four 30-milligram tablets. She found four additional blister packs in a trashcan outside Cain and Parkhurst’s bedroom that each previously contained ten 120-milligram tablets of pseudoephedrine. Stuart concluded the blister packs previously contained a total of 19.2 grams of pseu-doephedrine. In addition to the empty blister packs, Stuart found the following items in and around the house: a bottle [518]*518with tubing in the bathroom, instant cold packs, a plastic funnel, a roll of aluminum foil, face masks, coffee filters, wrappings from lithium batteries, needles, several “one pot” bottles, and the “pink solid” dumped out of a “one pot.”

To calculate the theoretical yield, Stuart explained she “can see how much starting stuff they had and work [her] way to how much product they could [have] made with that starting stuff.” She further stated she uses “the weights of all the different compounds in [an equation] to determine theoretical yield.” The State then asked Stuart how much methamphetamine an individual could make with 19.2 grams of pseu-doephedrine. Cain objected to the admission of this testimony, questioning its reliability and doubting whether “some learned treatise” supported the theory. Cain argued Stuart’s theoretical yield testimony was outside the scope of her qualification as an expert in forensic chemistry. The circuit court overruled the objection subject to the State laying a proper foundation.

The State then established that — as part of earning her bachelor’s degree as well as her master’s in chemistry — Stuart worked in “actual research settings” with equations and theoretical yields “to determine how much product [she] wanted and how much [she] needed to start with” to perform reactions. On voir dire, Stuart explained the theoretical yield equation was “pseudoephedrine, plus lithium, plus ammonia gas yields methamphetamine.” She also stated she knew it is “a one-to-one molar ratio between pseudoephedrine and methamphetamine from the equations of how to make meth[am-phetamine].” The circuit court then qualified Stuart as “an expert in the field of chemistry to be able to give her opinion in the area of theoretical yields.”

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Related

State v. Cain
795 S.E.2d 846 (Supreme Court of South Carolina, 2017)

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Bluebook (online)
776 S.E.2d 374, 413 S.C. 508, 2015 WL 4269663, 2015 S.C. App. LEXIS 145, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-cain-scctapp-2015.