State v. Huerta

727 S.E.2d 881, 221 N.C. App. 436, 2012 WL 2545773, 2012 N.C. App. LEXIS 814
CourtCourt of Appeals of North Carolina
DecidedJuly 3, 2012
DocketNo. COA11-1401
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 727 S.E.2d 881 (State v. Huerta) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Huerta, 727 S.E.2d 881, 221 N.C. App. 436, 2012 WL 2545773, 2012 N.C. App. LEXIS 814 (N.C. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinion

ERVIN, Judge.

Defendant Vincente Juarez Huerta appeals from a judgment entered based upon his convictions for trafficking in more than 400 grams of cocaine by possession and maintaining a dwelling for the purpose of keeping and selling controlled substances. On appeal, Defendant argues that the trial court erred by admitting evidence identifying a substance seized from his house as cocaine; admitting a handgun and ammunition seized from his house into evidence; and denying his motion to dismiss the charges that had been lodged against him for insufficiency of the evidence. After a careful review of Defendant’s challenges to the trial court’s judgment in light of the record and the applicable law, we conclude that Defendant is not entitled to relief from the trial court’s judgment.

I. Factual Background

A. Substantive Facts

In April, 2003, Detective Alexander Williams of the Greensboro Police Department was assigned to the Department’s vice and narcotics section, which focused its attention upon “mid-level, higher level drug dealers” and “major drug traffickers that are operating in [the] area.” On the afternoon of 23 April 2003, Detective Williams was contacted by Detective Larry Marshall, a colleague in the vice and narcotics section of the Greensboro Police Department, who was, at that time, assigned to work as a liaison with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. On that occasion, Detective Marshall gave Detective Williams a list of street addresses in Greensboro that had been determined to be of interest during a recent DEA investigation, including 1409 Dorsey Street.1 As a result, Detectives Williams, [438]*438Marshall, and D.D. James went to 1409 Dorsey Street for the purpose of investigating the illegal activities that were alleged to be occurring at that location.

As the officers approached the Dorsey Street residence, which was a “very small” single-story house with an attic above the hallway, Defendant arrived in a pick-up truck and parked in the driveway. After Detective Williams, who had observed an Hispanic woman and several children in the house, identified himself as a law enforcement officer, Defendant stated that he lived in the house and that the individuals in the residence were his wife and children. When Detective Williams asked if Defendant would speak with them, Defendant invited the officers inside.

After the investigating officers entered the house, Defendant and his wife displayed their drivers’ licenses. At that point, Detective Williams explained that they “had a complaint about his residence being involved in narcotics, or narcotics activity, and at that point just asked if he would mind if we searched his house for any narcotics.” Defendant consented to the requested search.

As the officers began to search Defendant’s residence, Detective Williams asked Defendant if there were any guns in the house. In response to this inquiry, Defendant told Detective Williams that he had a firearm in his bedroom closet. At that location, investigating officers found a .40 caliber pistol and in excess of $9,000.00 in cash. Subsequently, investigating officers also found “two vehicle titles,” one of which listed Defendant as the owner and gave the Dorsey Street residence as his address; “paperwork, and . . . two loaded .40 caliber magazines” in the bedroom closet as well. Defendant admitted that he was in the United States unlawfully; acknowledged that he had purchased the gun illegally; stated that he, his wife, and children had lived at the Dorsey Street address for about three years; and claimed that the cash that the investigating officers had found had been earned by him and his wife.

After Detectives James and Marshall searched the ground floor, Detective Williams stood on a chair, moved a piece of plywood covering an opening leading from the hall into the attic, and looked into the attic. At that point, Detective Williams saw “a book-sized greenish-colored package” which appeared “to be a kilogram-sized package of narcotics” “within arm’s reach, not very far from the opening of the attic space.” After Detective Marshall opened the package, Detective Williams “observed that it contained [a] white powder substance, which [he] suspected to be cocaine.”

[439]*439At that point, Defendant was placed under arrest, and Detective Williams conducted a further search of the attic. During that process, Detective Williams found a plastic bag containing ten individually wrapped packets of white powder and a “grocery bag contain[ing] two large plastic ziplock bags,” each of which “contained [twelve] individually packaged amounts of the same white powdered substance.” Although the officers kept the powder for testing, they decided to have the packaging material subjected to fingerprint analysis. As Detective Williams explained:

.... In order to have these items fingerprinted, you can’t submit these items with the cocaine in the packaging. . . . [W]e would have packaged, for example, the kilogram amount, the book-sized amount I described, that would have been one package. One of the grocery bag items I described, that would have been a second package. And then the third grocery bag would have been a third package.

Patrick Sigafoos, a forensic specialist with the Greensboro Police Department, tested the packaging materials for the presence of fingerprints and found fifteen latent prints on a few of the plastic baggies. Amy Wild, a fingerprint examiner with the Greensboro Police Department, examined the latent fingerprints and determined that only five of them were identifiable and that none of the identifiable prints belonged to Defendant.

Special Agent Sheila Bayler of the State Bureau of Investigation tested the powder seized from Defendant’s residence. After receiving the powder in three separate plastic bags, Special Agent Bayler weighed the three bags and performed initial chemical testing on the material contained in each bag, ultimately determining that the response of the powder in each bag to the chemical reagent was “consistent with each other.” At that point, Special Agent Bayler combined the material contained in the three bags, explaining that, “when we are submitted evidence, if it is all collected from the same location, packaged in the same manner, appears the same, and gives us the same preliminary test, we combine the material for analysis to do one confirmation of the identity.” After combining the contents of the three bags, Agent Bayler performed an infrared spectrophotometer test and determined that the material in the bags contained cocaine hydrochloride, which is “typically what people think of as powder cocaine,” that had a combined weight of 1,729.5 grams. Although Special Agent Bayler tested the material in the bags for “a very broad range of [controlled and non-controlled] substances,” she did not find [440]*440any substances in the mixture other than cocaine hydrochloride. According to Detective Williams, the cocaine seized from Defendant’s residence would have had a street value of about $50,000.00 in 2003.

B. Procedural History

On 23 April 2003, magistrate’s orders were issued charging Defendant with maintaining a house for keeping and selling controlled substances and trafficking in than 400 grams of cocaine by possession.

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

Related

Heard v. Hooks
W.D. North Carolina, 2020
State v. Davis
Court of Appeals of North Carolina, 2014

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
727 S.E.2d 881, 221 N.C. App. 436, 2012 WL 2545773, 2012 N.C. App. LEXIS 814, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-huerta-ncctapp-2012.