United States v. Baltazar Camacho

631 F. App'x 285
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedNovember 2, 2015
Docket14-6405
StatusUnpublished

This text of 631 F. App'x 285 (United States v. Baltazar Camacho) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Baltazar Camacho, 631 F. App'x 285 (6th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

OPINION

HELENE N. WHITE, Circuit Judge.

Baltazar Camacho challenges his within-Guidelines 470-month aggregate sentence as procedurally unreasonable. We affirm.

I.

After a grand jury indicted Camacho and fifteen others with various drug and money-laundering charges, Camacho pleaded guilty of possession with intent to distribute more than 280 grams of cocaine base (crack) and five kilograms or more of a mixture containing a detectable amount of cocaine (count 1), 21 U.S.C. § 846, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(A), and conspiracy to commit money laundering (count 23), 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(A)®, (a)(1)(B)®, and (h).

*287 The Presentence Report (PSR) recommended a life sentence, capped at 470 months, calculated on a base offense level of 38 and criminal history category I. Camacho objected to the PSR’s description of the offense conduct (PSR paragraphs 17 through 21), the calculation of the drug quantity on which the base offense level was based (150 kilograms of cocaine), the four-level “organizer or leader” role enhancement, and the two-level enhancement for possessing a firearm in the commission of a drug trafficking crime.

II.

The district court held an evidentiary hearing at which the Government called several of Camacho’s co-conspirators and a member of the investigating FBI task force to address Camacho’s objections to the PSR. 1 That testimony included that in late 2010, Camacho met with an Atlanta-based cocaine supplier, Miguel Gomez (Miguel), who agreed to supply him with cocaine. Shortly after, Miguel sent two of his associates, Noe Perez Rosales (Perez) and Aquileo Vivanco Villa (Vivanco), to assist and keep an eye on Camacho. Miguel paid Vivanco for three weeks, at which point Camacho offered Vivanco a job. Camacho also had a driver, Ivan Hernandez (Hernandez), who drove him to cocaine deals and occasionally made deliveries for him. According to Vivanco, Miguel sent Camacho four to six kilograms of cocaine once or twice a week for about eight months until Miguel’s shipments stopped in early 2011.

During this first period (late 2010 to early 2011), Camacho paid Perez and Vi-vanco to assist him in receiving, measuring, packaging, and distributing the cocaine. Also during this period, Perez and Vivanco began dealing with Sergio Gomez, a low-level drug dealer who would become one of Camacho’s biggest clients. Sergio Gomez would buy cocaine from Perez and Vivanco before selling it to dealers including Kendall Cox (Cox), who would cook a portion into crack cocaine before selling it to his own customers. Sometime after his first buy from Sergio Gomez, Cox figured out that Sergio Gomez was getting his cocaine from Camacho and that Vivanco (whom Cox knew as “Primo”) and Perez were involved with Camacho. Cox estimated that during this period he bought three or four kilograms every one-and-a-half weeks for around three months from Camacho, through Sergio Gomez.

Before Miguel’s shipments stopped, Camacho had been looking for additional suppliers in Atlanta who could supply cocaine at a lower price than Miguel. After Miguel’s shipments stopped, Camacho began making trips once or twice a week to Atlanta, always with Perez, Vivanco, or Hernandez, and often returned with two kilos of cocaine.. This lasted for about three to four months, at which point Perez left Camacho’s employ, followed by Vivanco about six months later. Perez explained that he left because Camacho was a complicated, somewhat aggressive person, and Vivanco testified that Camacho would waive a black gun around when he drank and had fired it out of a car window at least once. Perez similarly testified that Camacho fired the weapon out a car window into the air.

Vivanco testified that Camacho always carried the black firearm when they “were drugging,” and Perez testified that he saw Camacho carrying the firearm during some drug deals. Both Perez and Vivanco testified that Camacho informed them that the weapon was a nine-millimeter pistol and that he carried it to keep the drugs safe.

*288 After leaving Camacho’s employ, Perez and Vivanco jointly distributed cocaine to Sergio Gomez and Cox, among others, for about one-and-a-half months. After Perez and Vivanco were arrested in Kentucky in October 2011, Sergio Gomez and Cox began dealing with Camacho again. Sergio Gomez brokered deals between Camacho and Cox, and Cox would test the cocaine’s purity by microwaving about an ounce of each kilo into crack cocaine. On one occasion, Camacho brought Cox a microwave for that purpose.

Cox testified that he would test an ounce of each kilo of cocaine by “cooking it up,” looking “[f]or the substance to come back to a certain weight and come back hard, real hard.” If he cooked an ounce (28.349 grams), he would need from twenty-six to twenty-eight grams to come back hard. While Cox cooked samplings of the various cocaine buys, Camacho was usually counting money; Cox always paid Camacho in cash. Cox testified that he could tell that Camacho was in charge of Vivanco and Perez because Camacho “always took the money with him.”

Cox testified that initially he would cook around seventy-five percent of the cocaine into crack, but that toward the end of the criminal enterprise, when he was buying up to six or seven kilograms of cocaine every week-and-a-half from Camacho via Sergio Gomez, he was selling more powder cocaine and the ratio was “[pjrobably like 50-50”.

Cox was arrested in August 2012 and entered into a plea agreement under which he pleaded guilty of conspiring to distribute powder and crack cocaine in exchange for the Government dropping five cocaine distribution charges. He faced about twenty years in prison when he testified at Camacho’s sentencing. He testified that in the period immediately preceding his arrest, when he was back purchasing cocaine from Camacho through Sergio Gomez, he bought “[p]robably like maybe 40, 50 kilos.” All told, he bought sixty to sixty-seven kilograms of cocaine from Camacho. Cox never saw Camacho brandish a weapon, but did see Camacho’s “shirt bulging out, you know, like a gun was right there.”

Detective Jarrod Whitson, a member of the FBI task force that investigated Camacho and others for one-and-a-half to two years, testified that that the first phone wiretapped was Cox’s and that about a month later, Cox referred to “Balta” during a phone conversation with Sergio Gomez, whose phones were also wiretapped. During a later phone conversation between Sergio Gomez and Camacho, Camacho said he was not happy that'Cox knew his real name and asked Sergio Gomez to refer to him as “Jose Luis.”

Detective Whitson testified that the task force learned that Camacho had been arrested previously in the Knoxville area when the name “Baltazar” was run through the Knox County Jail intake system, after which it obtained a photograph of Camacho, Whitson later saw Camacho appear on surveillance tapes.

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Bluebook (online)
631 F. App'x 285, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-baltazar-camacho-ca6-2015.