United States v. Vincent Vo Tran

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedApril 25, 2024
Docket22-13660
StatusUnpublished

This text of United States v. Vincent Vo Tran (United States v. Vincent Vo Tran) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh 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. Vincent Vo Tran, (11th Cir. 2024).

Opinion

USCA11 Case: 22-13660 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 04/25/2024 Page: 1 of 19

[DO NOT PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-13660 Non-Argument Calendar ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus VINCENT VO TRAN,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama D.C. Docket No. 1:22-cr-00006-KD-MU-1 ____________________ USCA11 Case: 22-13660 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 04/25/2024 Page: 2 of 19

2 Opinion of the Court 22-13660

Before JORDAN, JILL PRYOR, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: A jury convicted Vincent Tran of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and possession with intent to distribute meth- amphetamine. For those crimes, the district court sentenced him to 150 months’ imprisonment with five years of supervised release. Tran now appeals his convictions and sentence. He argues that the district court erred when it denied his suppression motion, the evidence was insufficient to support his conspiracy conviction, and the district court erred when it imposed a sentence enhance- ment for methamphetamine importation. We affirm Tran’s convictions. The district court did not err when it denied his suppression motion. And sufficient evidence supported the jury’s verdict on the conspiracy charge. We vacate Tran’s sentence and remand to the district court. The court erred when it imposed the importation enhancement because the government failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Tran possessed imported methamphetamine. I. BACKGROUND Tran raises three issues on appeal, related to the search of his residence and his suppression motion, the evidence at his trial and his acquittal motion, and the sentence he received and his sen- tence enhancement. We describe an earlier search of where Tran was living and then detail the facts relevant to each issue. USCA11 Case: 22-13660 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 04/25/2024 Page: 3 of 19

22-13660 Opinion of the Court 3

A. The First Search In the spring of 2021, deputies of the Mobile County Sher- iff’s Office attempted to arrest Bailey Bostwick. But when deputies arrived in her neighborhood, she handed methamphetamine to her partner, Robert Draughon, and fled. The deputies captured Draughon and arrested him for trafficking methamphetamine. Later that day, a deputy located Bostwick at Tran’s Irvington residence in Mobile. When deputies arrived there looking for Bostwick, Tran sent her outside. The deputies arrested Bostwick and searched her vehicle. That same day, deputy Raylene Busby of the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant to search Tran’s Irvington resi- dence. When deputies executed the warrant, they found marijuana and digital scales with methamphetamine residue. They arrested Tran for possession of a controlled substance and marijuana. Tran was incarcerated and then released in early fall. Upon his release, he lived with his girlfriend at a residence on Azalea Road. B. The Second Search and Tran’s Suppression Motion In the fall of 2021, two months after Tran’s release, Busby obtained a second warrant to search the Azalea Road residence in Mobile, where Tran was living. Busby obtained this warrant be- cause a drug dealer she arrested told her that he bought more than a pound of methamphetamine from Tran. To obtain the Azalea Road warrant, she drafted and submit- ted an affidavit, which alleged that cooperating defendants had USCA11 Case: 22-13660 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 04/25/2024 Page: 4 of 19

4 Opinion of the Court 22-13660

recently purchased marijuana and methamphetamine from Tran and seen firearms at his residence. The affidavit stated that cooper- ating defendants believed Tran had large amounts of methamphet- amine delivered to his residence. And it noted that Tran was a tar- get of federal and state drug investigations. A state court judge issued the search warrant. When depu- ties, including Busby, executed the warrant, they discovered drugs and drug paraphernalia, including methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, a vacuum sealer, digital scales, and a glass pipe. The deputies then received and executed an arrest warrant. When they arrested Tran, they recovered approximately 26 grams of metham- phetamine from his person. A grand jury indicted Tran on one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, two counts of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and one count of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Tran pleaded not guilty. Before trial, Tran moved to suppress evidence seized from the Azalea Road residence. He argued the district court should sup- press the evidence because a deficient affidavit supported the search warrant. Specifically, Tran asserted that the affiant, Busby, relied on others’ statements rather than her personal knowledge, failed to mention where she executed a previous search warrant, and failed to disclose the number of cooperating defendants. Tran argued that, under the totality of the circumstances, the affidavit failed to establish the reliability, veracity, or basis of the cooperating USCA11 Case: 22-13660 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 04/25/2024 Page: 5 of 19

22-13660 Opinion of the Court 5

defendants’ knowledge. He also maintained that the good-faith ex- ception was inapplicable because the affidavit so lacked probable cause that no reasonable official would believe probable cause ex- isted to support the search. The district court held a suppression hearing, at which Busby testified. She described the events leading up to swearing the warrant affidavit, including her search of Tran’s Irvington resi- dence and her separate interviews with the cooperating defend- ants. She explained that she had known the cooperating defendants for years and “had a history with both of them,” although she had used neither as an informant before. Doc. 92 at 56. 1 She included that information in her affidavit, detailing Tran’s continuous in- volvement with drugs and noting other individuals who had iden- tified Tran as their supplier. Busby also testified that, after she submitted the affidavit, she learned that Tran made additional drug transactions. To secure the search warrant, she visited the state court judge’s residence, presenting the affidavit and the additional information about Tran’s recent drug activity. Busby believed the warrant “to be reasonable” and to contain “sufficient probable cause.” Id. at 75. The district court found the search warrant affidavit insuffi- cient. It drew this conclusion based on the lack of corroboration of the cooperating defendants and the lack of evidence of their relia- bility. But the court found that the state court judge maintained his

1 “Doc.” numbers are the district court’s docket entries. USCA11 Case: 22-13660 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 04/25/2024 Page: 6 of 19

6 Opinion of the Court 22-13660

neutral and detached role and that the affidavit contained some in- dicia of probable cause, rendering Busby’s belief in the existence of probable cause reasonable. The district court therefore concluded that the officials relied in good faith on the search warrant. And because the officials relied in good faith on the warrant, the evi- dence was admissible. The district court denied the motion to sup- press. C. The Conspiracy Evidence and Tran’s Acquittal Mo- tion At trial, the government attempted to demonstrate that Tran conspired with Bostwick, Draughon, and others to distribute methamphetamine. To prove this conspiracy, the government in- troduced drug distribution evidence it uncovered, Tran’s state- ments and cell phone evidence, and evidence from alleged cocon- spirators.2 The government pointed to evidence uncovered during the searches and arrests to establish a conspiracy to distribute metham- phetamine.

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United States v. Vincent Vo Tran, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-vincent-vo-tran-ca11-2024.