Stassi v. United States

• Decision Date: 06 May 1969
• Docket Number: No. 25041.,25041.
• Citation: 410 F.2d 946
• Parties: Joseph STASSI, Sr. Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

410 F.2d 946 (1969)

Joseph STASSI, Sr. Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 25041.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

May 6, 1969.

Percy Foreman, Clyde W. Woody, Marian S. Rosen, C. Anthony Friloux, Jr., Houston, Tex., for petitioner.

William B. Butler, Asst. U. S. Atty., Morton L. Susman, U. S. Atty., Ronald J. Blask, James R. Gough, Asst. U. S. Attys., Houston, Tex., for appellee.

Before TUTTLE and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges, and BREWSTER, District Judge.

BREWSTER, District Judge:

The indictment under which appellant, Joseph Stassi, Sr., was convicted charged that he conspired with Jorge Moreno, Paul Mondolini, Milton Abramson, Anthony Granza, Vincent Ferrara, Jose Marin, Emma Hinojosa, Adela Castillo, and others whose identity was unknown to the grand jury, to smuggle heroin into the United States, and to facilitate the transportation and concealment of such narcotic drug after it had been brought into this country contrary to law, with knowledge of the illegal importation, in violation of 21 U.S.C.A. § 174. Stassi is the seventh of these named persons to be convicted on account of conduct relating to this conspiracy. Abramson, Hinojosa and Castillo pleaded guilty and accepted their sentences. The convictions of Marin, Granza and Ferrara in trials where they pleaded not guilty have already been affirmed. Marin v. United States, 5 Cir., 352 F.2d 174 (1965); Granza, et al. v. United States, 5 Cir., 377 F.2d 746, 748 (1967). Reference is made to the opinions in those cases for a detailed statement of the facts.¹ The delay in trying Stassi was due to the fact that it took the government over three years to catch him after warrant for his arrest was issued. Moreno and Mondolini are residents of Mexico, and the court below has never acquired jurisdiction over them.

A number of questions are presented by appellant, but the only ones which have enough semblance of merit to warrant discussion are: (1) whether the trial court erred in overruling a motion to suppress evidence as to the fruits of a search claimed to have been illegal; (2) whether a remand is required by Kolod v. United States, 390 U.S. 136, 88 S.Ct. 752, 19 L.Ed.2d 962 (1962), on account of information furnished this Court by the government during the pendency of this appeal as to certain electronic surveillance.

This case presents the rare situation often talked about, but seldom realized, where the government was able to catch the big shots in a dope ring — a top importer and two big wholesale distributors — as well as those operating on the lower echelon. It reached the very top, far behind the scenes, when it got Stassi.

The conspiracy contemplated that two residents of Mexico City would have large quantities of almost pure heroin smuggled into the United States in the area of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas to be taken to the front man of the purchaser who resided in New York City. A suitcase filled with plastic packets of heroin would be turned over to the exporters' courier at McAllen, Texas to be transported to the place in the United States agreed upon for delivery. The couriers were Mexican women who lived in Mexico. They did not know the names of any of the conspirators except that of the man who employed them. When the courier received a suitcase of heroin, she was given a set of written instructions, telling her when, where and how to go, the hotel where she was to stay, the name to use on the trip, and the manner in which the intended recipient would contact her at the hotel. For security reasons, the same courier was not used every time, and a different hotel was selected for each one of the six deliveries known to the government at the time of the trial. Two hotels were designated for deliveries in New York, and one each in Newark, Chicago, San Antonio and Houston. The courier checked out of the hotel and left immediately after meeting with the importer's front man. On several of the trips, the exporters had a man "ride shotgun", as one of the conspirators termed it, on the shipment while it was in transit in this country. Without the knowledge of the courier, he would shadow the suitcase of dope en route from the time she took possession of it until she had it in her room at the destination hotel. The purpose was to be able to report to the recipient front man any search or suspected surveillance on the trip, so that if there had been any, the front man would not attempt to contact the courier. In the instances when that practice was followed, the intended recipient did not call the courier until he had had a telephone call from the gumshoer that everything was all right. For some reason not explained in the record, no such observer followed the last shipment, and that carelessness led to the downfall of this ring of dope smugglers.

The narcotic wholesalers in this country who were purchasing the heroin from the importer were always in or near the hotel to take the suitcase of contraband off the hands of the front man without delay. They would later deliver the purchase money to him in currency at the hotel in New York where he was residing. The front man would take his cut and deliver the balance to the importer in New York, who, in turn, would fly to Mexico City via commercial airline to pay what was owing the exporters on the shipment.

Moreno and Mondolini of Mexico City were the exporters and Marin was their field man in Mexico. Hinojosa and Castillo of Monterrey, Mexico were the couriers who were hired by Marin. Stassi of New York City was the importer, and Abramson, also of New York City, was his front man working on a partnership basis. Granza and Ferrara were the wholesalers who were buying from Stassi each entire shipment smuggled in to him. Although Marin was residing in Mexico during the period of the conspiracy, he was a Cuban national; and Mexico deported him when it learned of his connection with the smuggling operation. He came to the United States, apparently thinking he could not be tried here because he was corporeally outside the United States during the period of the conspiracy. This Court rejected that contention on his appeal. Marin v. United States, supra.

There is no question that this conspiracy was a big time operation involving some real underworld characters. The six shipments known to the government when Stassi was tried involved a total of more than one hundred pounds of the contraband, not the Mexican type of the drug that is radically "cut" with powdered sugar or other substances before crossing the border, but amost pure heroin. The sixth shipment, consisting of 22 pounds, 12 ounces, was the only one seized by the officials, as the other five had taken place before the government learned of the smuggling. That shipment was also involved in the trials of Marin, Granza and Ferrara. This Court said of it in the Marin case, 352 F.2d at 177: "The suitcase contained about 22 pounds of 99.3% pure heroin of an ultimate value of eleven million dollars." The payments by Granza and Ferrara for each of these shipments they bought from Stassi were so bulky that the currency had to be carried in large grocery sacks and big shoe boxes. Abramson had two prior narcotics convictions, one of which was for smuggling opium into the United States. The opinion in the Marin case mentions that Marin had been engaged in the narcotic traffic in and through the United States for more than ten years. Stassi had been a professional gambler and was the owner of one of the large gambling casinos in Havana at the time Castro closed them down.² The stature of Stassi, Granza and Ferrara in the underworld is revealed by the fact that all of these large shipments of heroin were delivered to them entirely on credit, something that is practically unheard of in the narcotics racket.

One of appellant's contentions is that the trial court erred in overruling his motion to suppress a search and seizure at the bus depot in McAllen, Texas of the suitcase containing the sixth and last shipment of heroin above mentioned. That motion was heard out of the presence of the jury at the first trial of appellant in Corpus Christi, Texas, which resulted in a verdict of guilty that was set aside on account of misconduct of the jury. It was renewed before a different judge in the subsequent trial in Houston out of which this appeal grew. Each judge overruled the motion and admitted into evidence testimony pertaining to, and the fruits of, the search. A summary of the facts relating to that shipment and the actions of the officials in regard thereto follows.

Mr. Scott was the Agent in Charge at the U.S. Customs office in McAllen, a city in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Agents Kline and Bobo worked under him there. On November 2, 1962, Agent Scott received a call from a person not identified at the trial telling him that a shipment of heroin would be smuggled into the United States from Mexico within a few days, and that he would call Scott when it happened. On November 6th, Kline was in the customs office when Scott received another call from the informant stating that a woman of Latin American extraction, wearing a red checked dress and carrying a black coat and a black handbag, had just purchased a ticket to Houston at the McAllen bus station and had there checked a blue suitcase containing about twenty-five pounds of heroin.³ Scott told Kline of the information he had received and requested that Kline accompany him to the bus station. Agent Bobo, also acquainted with the developments, picked up a local state narcotics officer and met them there. Ramirez, the ticket agent at the station, knew the customs agents from their prior surveillances. Scott and Kline related to Ramirez the description of the woman given by the informant, and found out from him that a short time before a woman fitting that description had bought a bus ticket to Houston and checked a blue suitcase for the trip. Ramirez told...