United States v. Jose Sierra-Villegas

774 F.3d 1093, 2014 FED App. 0306P, 2014 WL 7271420, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 24389
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedDecember 23, 2014
Docket13-2513
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 774 F.3d 1093 (United States v. Jose Sierra-Villegas) 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. Jose Sierra-Villegas, 774 F.3d 1093, 2014 FED App. 0306P, 2014 WL 7271420, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 24389 (6th Cir. 2014).

Opinion

OPINION

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

Jose Sierra-Villegas appeals his conviction and 325-month sentence for possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and conspiracy. Sierra-Villegas was arrested shortly after the failure of a massive drug sale to an undercover officer that had been coordinated in part by a confidential informant. Sierra-Villegas allegedly played a leadership role in the attempted sale, coordinating the delivery of methamphetamine to his coconspirators and personally travelling from Kansas City, Missouri to Michigan to ensure the transaction would go forward. All of Sierra-Villegas’s alleged coconspirators agreed to plea bargains, and three testified against Sierra-Villegas at trial. The prosecution’s evidence allowed Sierra-Villegas to deduce the identity of the confidential informant, but the district court, citing the informant privilege, denied Sierra-Ville-gas’s motion to compel the government to disclose the informant’s name on the record and allow the informant to testify. Sierra-Villegas challenges his conviction on the grounds that this denied him the opportunity to present his defense effectively. Additionally, Sierra-Villegas challenges the evidentiary basis for applying sentencing enhancements for leadership, firearms possession, and obstruction of justice, and challenges his 325-month sentence as unreasonable. Because all of Sierra-Villegas’s claims are without merit, his conviction and sentence must be upheld.

I.

In June 2012, a confidential informant (hereafter “the Cl”) contacted the Department of Homeland Security regarding a group of suspects selling large quantities of crystal methamphetamine in Michigan. *1096 The Cl identified Alejandro Garcia as the person selling locally, and identified Sierra-Villegas as also being involved. The Cl arranged a meeting between an undercover officer posing as a meth dealer and Garcia, at which the undercover officer offered to purchase 20 pounds of crystal methamphetamine, which Garcia promised to provide. On July 2, 2012 Sierra-Ville-gas sent a text message to Garcia containing directions to a truck stop near Fremont, Indiana. Garcia and Thomas Streich, his associate and coconspirator, drove there and met a truck driver who gave Streich 20 pounds of crystal methamphetamine. Streich stored the meth in a barn on his property in Van Burén County, Michigan. On July 12, after completing a smaller meth transaction with the officer but before selling the 20 pounds, Garcia became suspicious that he was under police surveillance, changed his phone, and, via the Cl, asked the undercover officer to hold off on the transaction. Garcia continued to dither through August 2. The next day the undercover officer asked the Cl to put pressure on Garcia to complete the transaction. On August 7 the Cl informed the undercover officer that Sierra-Villegas would shortly travel to Michigan from Kansas City to facilitate the deal. The undercover officer arranged for the Cl to make a recorded call to Sierra-Villegas to discuss the trip and the transaction; the call took place on August 9, and Sierra-Villegas appeared to confirm that he would ensure that the deal would happen.

Sierra-Villegas arranged to travel to Michigan with the help of his associate and alleged coconspirator Jon Jeannin, Jr. According to Jeannin, Sierra-Villegas had contacts in Arizona who could provide crystal methamphetamine. Sierra-Ville-gas and Jeannin had an arrangement under which Sierra-Villegas would sell meth to Jeannin in Kansas City at a discounted rate if Jeannin arranged for drivers to bring the meth from Arizona to Kansas City. Sierra-Villegas provided a green Ford Expedition, not registered under his name and fitted with hidden compartments, for this purpose. In early July, a driver returned from Arizona without meth. Sierra-Villegas told Jeannin he could get at least five pounds from Garcia in Michigan. The regular driver was unavailable, so Brent Kellerman, a coconspir-ator and associate of Jeannin’s who did not know Sierra-Villegas, offered to go instead. On August 11, after the recorded call between the Cl and Sierra-Villegas, Jeannin told Kellerman to make the trip and take Sierra-Villegas with him. Kel-lerman and Sierra-Villegas travelled to Michigan in the green'Explorer, arriving on the morning of August 12. Kellerman and Sierra-Villegas first met up with Garcia and then with the Cl. Through the Cl, Sierra-Villegas and Garcia informed the undercover officer that they would only be able to sell 15 pounds of meth, and they wanted to do the transaction that day. As they prepared to make the deal, they became suspicious that police were following them and called off the deal. Garcia, Kel-lerman, and Sierra-Villegas then went to Streich’s property in the green Expedition. There, Kellerman packed cash and methamphetamine that Streich had been storing in the barn into the hidden compartments in the wheel wells of the Expedition. Kellerman sealed the compartments with a product called Bondo.

The next morning, August 13, Kellerman began driving the Expedition back to Kansas City alone. Before he got far, he was pulled over by state police, who conducted a consented search and discovered the meth hidden in the wheel wells. The same day, Garcia had arranged for his wife, Rosa, to take Sierra-Villegas to the Chicago airport or to buy a car that Sierra-Villegas could drive back to Kansas City. *1097 Garcia gave Rosa $10,000 in cash that included some marked bills from one of the transactions with the undercover officer. While looking at an SUV that was being offered for sale, Sierra-Villegas was stopped by police; he denied knowing about Rosa’s cash and claimed he planned to use bank cards to get money to pay for the car. Streich and Garcia were also arrested on the same day. A search of Streich’s property revealed five packages of crystal meth, a scale, and firearms. A search on August 15 of Sierra-Villegas’s house in Kansas City yielded multiple firearms including two assault rifles, ammunition, a vacuum sealer, black rubber bands, black tape, and over $2,000 in cash in the master bedroom. In other parts of the house there was a further $11,000 in cash, Bondo, digital scales, and a money counting machine.

Sierra-Villegas was charged with one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine and one count of possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine. Streich, Jeannin, Garcia, and Kel-lerman were also charged, but all agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the government before trial; all but Streich testified against Sierra-Villegas.

Sierra-Villegas testified in his own defense. Sierra-Villegas stated that he had moved out of the Kansas City house four months before he was arrested and moved to Arizona. He was renting out some of the house, but not the master bedroom. Prior to travelling to Michigan with Keller-man, he stayed two nights at the house. Sierra-Villegas said he owned the guns, but that they were not where he had left them when the house was searched on August 15, and that the other allegedly drug-related materials found in the house were not his. According to Sierra-Ville-gas, he had a substantial amount of non-drug related business with the Cl, including owning racing horses and a, planned purchase of a bar. He said that the recorded conversation with the Cl related to the planned purchase of the bar, not to drugs.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
774 F.3d 1093, 2014 FED App. 0306P, 2014 WL 7271420, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 24389, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-jose-sierra-villegas-ca6-2014.