State v. Chong-Aguirre

413 S.W.3d 378, 2013 WL 5979755, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 1354
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedNovember 12, 2013
DocketNo. SD 32108
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 413 S.W.3d 378 (State v. Chong-Aguirre) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Chong-Aguirre, 413 S.W.3d 378, 2013 WL 5979755, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 1354 (Mo. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

DON E. BURRELL, J.

Oscar F. Chong-Aguirre (“Defendant”) was convicted after a jury trial of first-degree drug trafficking. See section 195.222.1 Defendant contends the trial court committed reversible error by: (1) overruling his motion to suppress and admitting into evidence drugs seized during a search of his truck after a “second stop” because the officers did not have a reasonable suspicion “based upon specific articu-lable facts” that criminal activity was afoot; and (2) overruling his motion for judgment of acquittal because the State failed to produce sufficient evidence that he “intentionally possessed the cocaine found hidden among the boxes of lettuce in the [truck’s] trailer, or that he had an awareness of the drug’s presence and nature[.]”

Because Defendant agreed at trial to the admission of the evidence he now claims [380]*380should have been excluded, and there was sufficient evidence from which a reasonable juror could infer that Defendant was in possession and control of the drugs seized, we affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background2

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was as follows. On January 30, 2009, Defendant was traveling with Eddie Dorantes in a commercial truck owned by Defendant. Defendant and Mr. Dorantes were working as co-drivers.3 Linda Stafford, an officer with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, stopped the truck for an inspection when it passed through a weigh station near Joplin. Officer Stafford was not familiar with the company name listed on the truck, so she asked Mr. Dorantes, who was driving at the time, to show her the paperwork and permits associated with the truck. Inside the weigh station, Mr. Dorantes showed Officer Stafford his commercial driving license, log books, the truck’s registration, fuel permits, and other paperwork related to the truck’s cargo. Shortly thereafter, Defendant also entered the weigh station and presented his commercial driver’s license. Officer Stafford requested that Defendant return to the truck so that he would not be required to come on duty and record a break in his time in the sleeper berth.

Officer Stafford noticed “inconsistencies” in the paperwork presented to her. A bill of lading indicated that Mr. Do-rantes had picked up his shipment of lettuce in Arizona at 12:33 a.m. and “loaded out” at 1:22 a.m. on January 28th. His log book, however, indicated that he did not arrive to pick up the shipment until 2:00 a.m. A second bill of lading indicated that Mr. Dorantes picked up more cargo at 11:13 that morning in Yuma, Arizona and was ready to load out at 3:33 p.m. His log book was inconsistent with the bill of lading because the log book indicated that he was in the midst of a 12-hour off-duty period at the time.

Mr. Dorantes’s log book listed the location of the 12-hour off-duty period as “Fontana.” Because Mr. Dorantes’s driver’s license indicated that he lived in Las Vegas, Officer Stafford asked him how he got from Las Vegas to Fontana without driving. Mr. Dorantes said that his wife drove him. Officer Stafford knew that would have entailed an 8-hour round trip by Mr. Dorantes’s wife to pick him up in Fontana and return him to his home in Las Vegas, followed by another 8-hour round trip for her to take him back to Fontana. While these actions would not have been illegal, they didn’t “make sense” to Officer Stafford because they were not “cost efficient” — something an officer in her line of work looks for.

When she asked Mr. Dorantes to explain this oddity to her, he then changed his explanation and told her that after he loaded out from Yuma, he drove the truck west to Fontana. Mr. Dorantes’s log book also showed his status as “off duty” for over fifteen hours during and after the time the truck was loaded with lettuce — a perishable product that begins to wilt as soon as it is harvested. The perishable nature of the lettuce meant that Defendant and Mr. Do-[381]*381rantes had a limited number of days in which to deliver that product to the customer.4

The logs also indicated that after Mr. Dorantes picked up his cargo in Arizona— which was to be delivered east to New York — he went west through California. This seemed suspicious to Officer Stafford because that route added “at least eight hours of unnecessary driving” to the trip. When she questioned Mr. Dorantes about the route, he explained that in order to get onto 1-10 to get to his destination, he had to go back through California. Officer Stafford ran the route through a computer program which showed that Mr. Dorantes had not taken the most direct, cost efficient route after picking up the lettuce. When she showed the program’s results to Mr. Dorantes, he “became a little bit disturbed!,]” and she “got the impression he was trying to smooth talk” her. He then changed his explanation yet again and said he went back west to pick up Defendant in California. Based on these unusual circumstances and inconsistencies, Officer Stafford suspected that the records in Mr. Dorantes’s log book had been falsified.

While she was reviewing the log books, Officer Stafford suddenly became ill. She handed the paperwork back to Mr. Do-rantes and told him “I’ve got something more pressing. You better get on out of here before I change my mind.” Mr. Do-rantes then “hot footed it out to the truck[.]” On her way to the restroom, Officer Stafford informed other officers that she “felt like that truck needed to be looked at closer ... that there was a load of dope going down the road that [she had] just let go.”

Officer Ted Wilkins went outside and stopped the truck when it was thirty to forty feet from the weigh station. When he approached the cab of the truck, both Mr. Dorantes and Defendant were “visibly laughing.” Officer Wilkins re-examined their paperwork and noticed the same inconsistencies that had aroused Officer Stafford’s suspicions. Two DEA agents, who were working on the other side of the interstate, were summoned to examine the paperwork. Officer Wilkins also reviewed Defendant’s log book, which indicated that he had joined Mr. Dorantes in the truck after the cargo had been picked up in Arizona.

Defendant gave the DEA officers permission to search the truck and trailer. The trailer door was secured with a padlock. The officers located two keys to the lock, one on a key ring in the ignition and another in a cup holder in the cab’s dashboard. Once inside the trailer, the two officers observed pallets and boxes of produce stacked inside. The boxes were “very tightly compressed” in the trailer, but there was an open space of approximately two feet between the top of the boxes and the top of the trailer. The officers crawled on top of the boxes, checking with their flashlights for anything abnormal in the load. There were two different kinds of lettuce in the load, and they were separated by type. One of the officers discovered a black, duct-taped object when he shined his flashlight into the space between the two types of lettuce. There he found numerous “black kilo-size packagefs]” concealed in a produce box. When he cut into one of the packages, he found a white powder that he recognized as cocaine.

The officers then transported the truck to another location where they unloaded the cargo and discovered a total of 226 [382]*382packages of cocaine.5 Sean Henry, a special agent with the DEA, estimated that the cocaine seized had a street value of more than 20 million dollars.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

State of Missouri v. Horatio T. Harris
Missouri Court of Appeals, 2025
STATE OF MISSOURI, Plaintiff-Respondent v. ANGALINE RYAN
576 S.W.3d 326 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2019)
State v. Hooper
552 S.W.3d 123 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 2018)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
413 S.W.3d 378, 2013 WL 5979755, 2013 Mo. App. LEXIS 1354, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-chong-aguirre-moctapp-2013.