United States v. Ramirez
| Decision Date | 22 June 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 30511.,30511. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Ramiro Ruben RAMIREZ and Evangelina Lopez Hernandez, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Joseph A. Calamia, Calamia & Fashing, John L. Fashing, El Paso, Tex., for appellants.
Seagal V. Wheatley, U. S. Atty., Wayne F. Speck, Asst. U. S. Atty., San Antonio, Tex., Haskell Shelton, Asst. U. S. Atty., El Paso, Tex., for appellee.
Before SKELTON*, Judge, and MORGAN and CLARK, Circuit Judges.
Rehearing Denied and Rehearing En Banc Denied June 22, 1971.
Ramiro Ruben Ramirez and Evangelina Lopez Hernandez, brother and sister of the half-blood, appeal their conviction for dealing in heroin contrary to 21 U. S.C. § 174. We affirm the conviction of Ramirez and reverse as to defendant Hernandez.
In June of 1969, Billy Ray Bessent, working as an undercover agent for the narcotics section of the Texas Department of Public Safety, began a relationship with David Rowland, a known narcotics dealer and addict. Rowland introduced agent Bessent to several suppliers of narcotics over the State of Texas and in particular to an El Paso resident, defendant Ramiro Ramirez. Suspecting that Bessent was a police officer, Ramirez at first refused to talk or deal with the undercover agent. Instead, Ramirez sold five grams of heroin to Rowland who in turn resold the drug to agent Bessent.1 However, in August of 1969, Ramirez finally agreed to sell heroin directly to Bessent, and the parties decided to meet and consummate the transaction at a house located at 362 Val Verde Street. This house was owned by Ramirez' mother who lived there along with Ramirez' brother, Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez, and the two Hernandez children.
As agent Bessent, accompanied by Rowland and Ramirez, entered the house on Val Verde, Mrs. Hernandez and her two children were sitting in the living room. The three men proceeded to the middle bedroom where Ramirez removed a small jar from a drawer and began slowly measuring the proper amount of heroin by scooping a spoonful of the powdered drug out of the jar, scraping the excess powder off the top of the spoon with a razor blade, and then emptying the leveled spoonful into a plastic bag. According to Ramirez, fifty level spoonsful would equal the two ounces for which Bessent had agreed to pay $1,100.00. While the measuring operation was in progress, agent Bessent counted the purchase money and placed it on a table. Ramirez thereupon called out something in Spanish and Mrs. Hernandez appeared at the bedroom door and, upon hearing more Spanish words, removed the money from the table and left the room. Not being conversant in the Spanish language, Bessent was unable to understand the content of the conversation between Ramirez and his half-sister.
On September 12, 1969, Ramirez again agreed to sell Bessent a large quantity of heroin. This sale took place behind an El Paso shopping center in Ramirez' 1965 Pontiac. When Ramirez produced the heroin from under the car seat, agent Bessent drew his pistol and arrested the defendant while several other police officers closed to provide assistance.
After the arrest of Ramirez, police officers obtained a search warrant and went to the house at 362 Val Verde Street where they found Mrs. Hernandez, her two children, and two relatives in the living room. A thorough search of the house was conducted, and in the middle bedroom officers discovered forty "papers"2 of heroin inside the pocket of a brown work shirt which was hanging in the closet. Mrs. Hernandez was arrested and taken to the police station.
At the ensuing trial, the government charged Ramirez with three counts of selling, transporting, receiving, and concealing heroin, and with one count of conspiracy to commit these substantive offenses, all in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 174. Mrs. Hernandez was charged with one count of concealing and transporting heroin, and with another count for conspiracy to import, receive, conceal and sell heroin, also in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 174. Ramirez did not attempt to refute any of the factual allegations against him but, instead, raised the defense of coercion by claiming that he was selling heroin only because a group of men from Mexico had threatened him and his family with immediate harm if he refused to cooperate. On the other hand, Mrs. Hernandez denied any knowledge of heroin being concealed or sold in the house in which she lived. The jury believed neither defendant and returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Ramirez received a sentence of 15 years on each count to be served concurrently and Hernandez received two concurrent sentences of 5 years each.
On this appeal Mrs. Hernandez contends her motion for acquittal at the close of the testimony should have been granted because the evidence before the jury was insufficient to support her conviction. The burden was, of course, on the government to prove the element of knowledge by showing that Mrs. Hernandez knew the substance concealed and sold in her home was heroin. See Newsome v. United States, 5 Cir., 1964, 335 F.2d 237. Considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, Causey v. United States, 5 Cir., 1965, 352 F.2d 203, we find the government failed to sustain its burden of proving knowledge as an element of the crime. A review of the record discloses that Mrs. Hernandez lived in the house at 362 Val Verde Street with her husband, her two children, her mother, and her brother, Roberto. On the day of the heroin sale, Mrs. Hernandez entered the middle bedroom while the drug was being measured and, after conversing in Spanish with Ramirez, picked up the $1,000.00 and left the room. When persons seeking to buy heroin called the Val Verde address and asked for Ramirez, Mrs. Hernandez summoned her brother to the telephone. After the arrest of Ramirez, a search of the Val Verde house revealed 40 "papers" of heroin concealed in the same middle bedroom where the initial sale had taken place.
Admittedly, a jury could reasonably infer from the foregoing circumstantial evidence that Mrs. Hernandez was an active participant in the heroin business, but the question is whether the jury could so infer to the exclusion of every other reasonable hypothesis. See Roberts v. United States, 5 Cir., 1969, 416 F.2d 1216; Harper v. United States, 5 Cir., 1969, 405 F.2d 185. We hold they could not. In the first instance, there was absolutely no testimony that Mrs. Hernandez would recognize heroin for what it was when she saw it. Prior to the transaction in the middle bedroom3 there was no evidence that Mrs....
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