United States v. Rodriguez

636 F. Supp. 1522, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24198
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Indiana
DecidedJune 13, 1986
DocketNo. HCR 85-27(9)
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 636 F. Supp. 1522 (United States v. Rodriguez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Indiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Rodriguez, 636 F. Supp. 1522, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24198 (N.D. Ind. 1986).

Opinion

[1523]*1523ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR NEW TRIAL

KANNE, District Judge.

The defendant, Roberto Rodriguez, filed a motion for a new trial raising a number of issues. The court has previously disposed of all but one. The sole matter, remaining to be decided with regard to defendant’s motion, concerns the admission into evidence of identification of the defendant resulting from an investigatory stop. For the sake of clarity, the court will again set forth the factual background relating to this issue.

Defendant, along with 30 other codefendants, was charged with conspiring to distribute cocaine and with possessing cocaine with the intent to distribute it. These charges arose from an ongoing investigation of a drug distribution organization headed by codefendant Jesus Zambrana, Sr. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in cooperation with the Indiana State Police, the Lake County Sheriff’s Police, Gary Police and East Chicago Police conducted an intensive investigation of the Zambrana family and those individuals associated with the Zambranas. The investigation involved extensive use of electronic wire intercepts and surveillance.

In the course of this investigation, DEA and the cooperating law enforcement agencies intercepted a shipment of six kilograms of cocaine from Miami, Florida, to the Zambranas in Indiana on April 25,1985. In addition to the cocaine, DEA agents also confiscated a map containing a telephone number located in Miami, Florida, and subscribed to by an individual named Roberto Rodriguez. The evidence seized on April 25, 1985, as well as prior intercepted telephone communications between an individual in Miami, and Zambrana family members, caused DEA agents to believe that the cocaine, seized on April 25th, had come from a source in Florida and that the source was connected to a Roberto Rodriguez.

Consequently, DEA continued to monitor telephone calls between Jesus Zambrana, Sr., and individuals in Florida. These telephone calls eventually disclosed the fact that someone from Florida was scheduled to arrive in northern Indiana on May 14, 1985, in furtherance of the ongoing cocaine distribution scheme.

DEA Special Agent Trifon Magrames conducted a surveillance of the Holiday Inn on Cline Avenue in Hammond, Indiana, on both May 14 and May 15, 1985. On both occasions, Magrames testified that he observed codefendant Jay Zambrana (son of Jesus Zambrana, Sr.) in the company of an unknown male. On May 15, 1985, Magrames watched the unknown male leave the Holiday Inn and join Jay Zambrana in a white Monte Carlo. Magrames followed the white Monte Carlo to the home of codefendant Andre Sanchez who stored narcotics for the Zambranas. Five minutes later, Magrames observed the unknown male in a green Monte Carlo automobile, bearing Florida license plates. This car ultimately headed south on Interstate 65. Magrames determined that a stop of the green Monte Carlo was necessary in order to identify the unknown driver.

Because of the covert nature of the ongoing investigation, Agent Magrames decided to ask the Indiana State Police for assistance in making the stop. As he followed the unknown male south on Interstate 65, Magrames contacted the Indiana State . Police dispatcher by radio, identified himself, and requested a “routine traffic stop” of the green Monte Carlo. The radio contact with the state police dispatcher was limited to the request for stop because of the undercover nature of the investigation and because the police radio, over which Magrames made his request, could be monitored. The radio dispatcher then contacted Trooper Kathy Schwartz, the closest trooper in the area on Interstate 65 being approached by both the green Monte Carlo and Agent Magrames, and directed her to make the stop.

Pursuant to Magrames’ request relayed to Trooper Schwartz, the green Monte Carlo was stopped and Trooper Schwartz asked the driver to join her in the squad car. She asked the driver for his license. The driver presented his operator’s license [1524]*1524to Trooper Schwartz and was thus identified as Roberto Rodriguez. At that time, Schwartz also informed the driver that tinted windows on the automobile were illegal in Indiana and issued him a warning citation, although she later testified that she was mistaken about the illegality of tinted windows on cars licensed in states other than Indiana. After that short exchange, Rodriguez returned to his automobile and left.

Agent Magrames, as well as several other DEA agents in other automobiles, were in the area of 1-65 where Trooper Schwartz made her investigatory stop and had the stop under observation. Approximately two minutes later, Trooper Schwartz met with Agent Magrames at a nearby rest area and gave him a copy of the warning ticket issued to the driver now identified as Roberto Rodriguez.

Two months later, on July 23, 1985, Roberto Rodriguez was arrested in Miami, in the company of codefendant, Antonio Dominguez, at an apartment which had the telephone with the number found on the map seized along with the cocaine.

At trial, Rodriguez was identified as a person accompanying a Zambrana family member during drug related activities, not only by Andrea Sanchez who stored the cocaine, but also by DEA Agent Trifon Magrames. Defendant sought to suppress the identification by Agent Magrames and an additional identification by Trooper Kathy Schwartz, since both of the identifications of Rodriguez were based on the May 15, 1985 stop by Trooper Schwartz — and Trooper Schwartz did not personally have a reasonable suspicion to stop the green Monte Carlo.

Defendant maintained that; not only did Trooper Schwartz not have a reasonable suspicion of defendant’s involvement in the Zambrana drug distribution organization; she had no knowledge of any ongoing DEA investigation. At the time she stopped defendant, she did so solely on orders of the state police radio dispatcher who stated only that the green Monte Carlo, bearing Florida license plates, was to be stopped and the driver identified. Because Trooper Schwartz had no knowledge of the underlying reason for the stop, defendant argued that Trooper Schwartz stopped him without an articulable reasonable suspicion in contravention of the Fourth Amendment.

This court previously denied defendant’s motion to suppress finding that a police officer may make an investigative stop to obtain identification on the basis of collective knowledge of all investigative agencies involved in the case, thereby satisfying the requirement that the stop be made upon a reasonable suspicion. With regard to this particular case, the court found that in making the investigatory stop on May 15, 1985, Trooper Kathy Schwartz relied on Agent Trifon Magrames’ reasonable suspicions concerning the defendant and that Agent Magrames’ suspicions were, in turn based on his own observations, as well as the collective knowledge of the agencies investigating the Zambrana organization. Thus, the court found that the May 15, 1985 stop was based upon an articulable suspicion, and denied defendant’s motion to suppress evidence resulting from that stop.

In so ruling, the court relied on a line of cases which held that “Probable cause ... can rest upon the collective knowledge of the police, rather than solely on that of the officer who actually makes the [stop] ... .” United States v. Pitt, 382 F.2d 322, 324 (4th Cir.1967). See also, Moreno-Vallejo v. United States,

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Related

United States v. Roberto Rodriguez
831 F.2d 162 (Seventh Circuit, 1987)

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Bluebook (online)
636 F. Supp. 1522, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24198, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-rodriguez-innd-1986.