United States v. Callejas

66 F. App'x 826
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedJune 6, 2003
Docket02-2016
StatusUnpublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 66 F. App'x 826 (United States v. Callejas) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth 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. Callejas, 66 F. App'x 826 (10th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

EBEL, Circuit Judge.

Defendant-Appellant, Carmelo Callejas, appeals his conviction by a jury of multiple *828 crimes involving the manufacture and sale of crack cocaine, and his sentence of imprisonment for 248 months. The district court increased Callejas’s sentence both through the conversion of cash recovered during searches of his residences to a quantity of drugs (a so-called “cash-to-drugs” or “cash-to-crack” conversion as permitted under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, comment. 12), and through a finding that he had obstructed justice.

Callejas objects specifically to the sufficiency of the jury’s verdict, to the judge’s decision to admit certain evidence at trial, to the jury instructions, and to the calculation of his sentence. We find substantial evidence to support the jury’s verdict and no error on the part of the district court judge. We therefore AFFIRM Callejas’s conviction and sentence.

BACKGROUND

On April 25, 2001, a jury found Callejas guilty on five related drug charges. The first count of his conviction was for maintaining a place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, and using controlled substances, including crack cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 856 and 18 U.S.C. § 2. The second count was for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five grams or more of crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. The third count was for manufacturing less than five grams of crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C), as well as 18 U.S.C. § 2. The fourth count was for possession with intent to distribute less than five grams of crack cocaine in violation of the same statutes as the third count. The fifth count was for possession of firearms in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).

At trial, the main witness against Callejas was one of his customers in the drug trade, Gilbert Trujillo. On or shortly after September 9, 1999, Trujillo recognized Callejas in a convenience store in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Callejas offered to sell him crack and powder cocaine that Trujillo believed he manufactured himself. Over the next five days, Trujillo went to Callejas’s residence up to ten times per day to buy crack cocaine. At least once during these drug purchases, Trujillo noticed that Callejas had a 9mm handgun. On September 14, 1999, however, Trujillo arrived at Callejas’s house to discover police executing a search warrant against Callejas and was arrested. During the execution of this search warrant, police found ingredients and tools for manufacturing crack cocaine, a .45 caliber handgun, a box of .38 caliber ammunition, $750 in cash on Callejas’s person, and $4,990 in cash in the glove compartment of his car. State prosecutors brought charges against Callejas after that search, but dismissed the charges and released Callejas in favor of building a federal case against him instead.

On February 9, 2000, an undercover narcotics agent attempted a controlled “buy” of crack cocaine from Callejas. Wearing a wire, he negotiated the purchase of a $500 “rock” from Callejas. Callejas wore a .38 caliber semiautomatic handgun during the exchange.

Callejas, though, insisted that the agent smoke drugs in front of him before he would complete the transaction. The agent declined and, in a tense confrontation, Callejas told him to leave. As the agent turned to leave, Callejas’s associate lifted up the back of the agent’s shirt to reveal the body wire. The agent backed *829 away from the scene with his hand on his gun and drove away.

Continued surveillance of Callejas’s residence in March 2000 revealed additional traffic patterns typical of drug sales. For example, in a two-hour span on March 25, 2000, police observed ten individual people enter Callejas’s apartment, each departing within five minutes of their arrival. In a forty-minute span on April 3, 2000, four different people went into Callejas’s residence, each leaving within two minutes. The next day, in a two-hour span, police observed thirteen different people enter Callejas’s apartment, all but one of whom left again within two minutes of arrival.

During the execution of a second search warrant on April 5, 2000, Callejas was warned shortly before the arrival of the police by his girlfriend, who kept watch on the front porch. When officers broke down the door, one of Callejas’s associates was found manufacturing crack cocaine in the kitchen sink. Officers found Callejas crouched in the bathroom, having just flushed something down the toilet. Collected in this second search of the house was the crack cocaine Callejas’s associate had been manufacturing, further instruments for manufacturing drugs, a loaded 9mm handgun, extra ammunition for the gun, a loaded .38 caliber semiautomatic handgun, $5,010 in cash divided into small bundles tucked into the wall under the bathroom sink in the room where officers found Callejas, $452.74 in cash on Callejas’s person, and $2,020 in cash divided into small bundles in Callejas’s car.

After the introduction of the items seized, a police officer, Lieutenant Romero, testified at trial for the limited purpose of discussing the drug trade in the Las Vegas, New Mexico area, the types of instruments that are commonly used to manufacture drugs, the types of weapons usually found on people who manufacture drugs, and other patterns that sometimes mark drug dealers. Callejas offered alternative jury instructions on the meaning of possession, but the district court employed pattern jury instructions instead. The jury returned a verdict finding him guilty after slightly more than two hours of deliberation.

At his sentencing on December 6, 2001, Callejas took the stand to object to the Presentence Report’s (PSR) recommended enhancement of his sentence by conversion of cash to drugs on the ground that the cash seized had not been his. The total amount of cash recovered in the two searches had been $12,020, but the PSR reduced the amount of cash to be considered in the cash-to-drugs conversion by $1,000 to avoid double-counting the proceeds of drugs sold to Trujillo in Callejas’s total. The remaining $11,200 in proceeds from drug sales were converted to a weight of 560 “rocks” or 56 grams given the street value of $20 a rock. Adding this figure to the amount of actual cocaine recovered in buys and searches, Callejas sentence was based on a level of 65.6 grams.

In his objection at the sentencing hearing that the cash had not been his, Callejas did not explain who else might have stowed the cash on his person, in his car, or in his bathroom. He had, for example, the only key to the glove box of the car in which the cash had been found, and his name had been on the utility bill of the residence in which officers found cash on April 5.

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Related

United States v. Callejas
221 F. App'x 772 (Tenth Circuit, 2007)

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66 F. App'x 826, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-callejas-ca10-2003.