United States v. Brache
Procedural entryThis page is a short order in United States v. Brache. Read the opinion of the Court — 46 F.3d 1114 →
Opinion
USCA1 Opinion
February 10, 1995
[NOT FOR PUBLICATION]
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
___________________
No. 94-1366
UNITED STATES,
Appellee,
v.
JUAN BRACHE,
Defendant, Appellant.
__________________
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
[Hon. Ronald R. Lagueux, U.S. District Judge] ___________________
___________________
Before
Torruella, Chief Judge, ___________
Cyr and Stahl, Circuit Judges. ______________
___________________
Francis X. Mackey on brief for appellant. _________________
Sheldon Whitehouse, United States Attorney, and Zechariah ___________________ _________
Chafee, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee. ______
__________________
__________________
Per Curiam. Juan Brache appeals from his convictions __________
for possession of a firearm after having been convicted of a
crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one
year, see 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1); possession of cocaine with ___
intent to distribute it, see 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1); and use ___
of a firearm during a federal drug trafficking crime, see 18 ___
U.S.C. 924(c)(1). We affirm.
I.
On several occasions in April 1993, narcotics detectives
from the Providence Police Department drove by a house
located at 154 Stanwood Street, and observed Brache, known to
them as "CUBA," seated by the second-story, front window. On
April 28, 1993, a team of five detectives made an entry into
the house. Detective Drohan proceeded first. He entered the
basement from the back of the house and positioned himself
there by the base of a chimney. The rest of the team arrived
in unmarked police cars, approached the house from the front,
entered a side door, walked up the stairs to the second-floor
apartment, and entered the kitchen. As Detective Drohan
heard the other detectives walk up the stairs, he observed a
Monarch cigarette pack and a pistol fall to the floor at the
base of the chimney. The cigarette pack contained numerous
small bags of cocaine. The pistol was loaded.
Detective Gannon, who entered the kitchen first,
testified that he saw two people there, an "older" male and a
"heavy set" female. He immediately looked to the left and
saw Brache approaching the kitchen from the living room.
-2-
Shortly after grabbing Brache and placing him in the kitchen,
Detective Gannon heard Detective Drohan radio that he had
found "something." Detective Gannon went into the living
room where he saw a space heater with a pipe that entered the
wall. He slid the pipe aside and dropped an ashtray down a
vent in the wall. The ashtray landed in the same place that
the cigarette pack and pistol had landed. According to
Detective Gannon, there was no one else in the living room.
Shortly after the experiment with the ashtray, Detective
Drohan came up to the second-floor apartment. He recognized
the "heavy set" female in the kitchen as Dawn LaCroix, a
prostitute. The "older" man in the kitchen was intoxicated.
Detective Drohan recognized him as someone he had seen
before, "hanging" in front of the liquor store on Elmwood
Avenue. Detective Drohan noticed that Brache was smoking
Monarch cigarettes and seized several empty packs from the
living room. While the detectives were present, a number of
customers knocked on the second-floor door, asked for "CUBA,"
and requested one or two bags of cocaine.
There was no fingerprint evidence linking Brache to
either the pistol or cigarette packs. The parties stipulated
that Brache had a prior conviction for a crime punishable by
imprisonment for a term exceeding one year. They also
stipulated that if the government proved beyond a reasonable
doubt that Brache possessed cocaine on April 28, 1993, then
-3-
Brache did so knowingly and intentionally, and with the
intent to distribute it.
The defense strategy was to raise a doubt about whether
the defendant was the only person who could have dropped the
cocaine and pistol down the vent. Towards this end, the
defense called Detective Soto, who had also participated in
the raid, as a witness. Based on Detective Soto's testimony,
the jury could have found that there were up to six or seven
persons in the apartment when the narcotics team entered it,
including several Hispanic males. Richard Slowe, a private
investigator hired by the defense, testified that the house
at 154 Stanwood Street has three floors. He also testified
that when he visited the site, someone appeared to be living
on the third floor.
II.
Brache raises two issues on appeal. First, he argues
that the district court erred in refusing to allow him to ask
a prospective juror on voir dire whether the juror felt that
police officers might ever stretch the truth.1 Second, he
argues that the government's failure to disclose, until the
first day of trial, the presence of the elderly drunken man
____________________
1. The question defense counsel posed to the prospective
juror was: "Do you think that when police officers arrest
somebody sometimes, and they write out their reports and they
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