U.S. v. Lucas

• Decision Date: 12 February 2004
• Docket Number: No. 02-5399.,02-5399.
• Citation: 357 F.3d 599
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robin Rochelle LUCAS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 599

357 F.3d 599

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robin Rochelle LUCAS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 02-5399.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: August 6, 2003.

Decided and Filed: February 12, 2004.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Camille R. McMullen, Assistant United States Attorney (briefed), Memphis, TN, Tammi R. Simpson, U.S. Atty's Office, Jackson, TN, for Appellee.

Jerald W. Newton (argued and briefed), Sedona, AZ, for Appellant.

Before BOGGS, Chief Judge; RYAN, Circuit Judge; and ROSEN, District Judge.^*

BOGGS, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which RYAN, J., joined. ROSEN, D.J. (pp. 610-15), delivered a separate concurring opinion.

OPINION

BOGGS, Chief Judge.

On May 18, 2001, Robin Rochelle Lucas was indicted by a grand jury for knowingly and intentionally possessing with the intent to distribute 500 grams or more of a mixture containing cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). In September 2001, Lucas was convicted by a jury as charged in the indictment and was subsequently sentenced to 121 months in prison, four years of supervised release, a $100 special assessment, and a $15,000 fine. Lucas appeals the judgment against her on three grounds, each of which she claims merits reversal. First, she argues that the district court abused its discretion in granting the government's motion in limine to exclude from the trial any mention of the fact that Morrell Presley, a person involved in the events leading to Lucas's arrest but not a witness at her trial, had previously been convicted for cocaine trafficking, when the defense's theory was that the drugs were Presley's and not Lucas's. Second, Lucas argues that the district court abused its discretion when it ruled that she could not introduce evidence, as an explanation of her nervous behavior during her arrest, that she had been raped by prison guards in the past. Third, Lucas contends that the court erred in denying her Batson motion, in which she argued that the prosecutor exercised a peremptory challenge against a potential juror in a racially discriminatory manner, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (prohibiting the exercise of race-based peremptory challenges). Lucas also appeals her sentence and claims that the district court abused its discretion in not finding that her prior rape by prison guards and her charitable work for human rights organizations such as Amnesty International were grounds for a downward departure. We affirm Lucas's conviction and sentence.

I

Robin Rochelle Lucas was arrested on May 9, 2001 in Tennessee. At the time, she was living in California with her grandmother, her nephew, and two nieces. Lucas testified at her trial that she was on vacation with two friends, Angelina Watts and Kimberly Quinney, on her way to visit another friend, Jackie Parker, who lived in Memphis, and to attend the "Memphis in May" festival. On May 8, 2001, Lucas, Watts, and Quinney flew from California to Nashville. At the Nashville airport, Watts obtained a rental car. As they left the airport, Lucas says she saw a sign for Knoxville and Chattanooga (which are over 200 miles away), which she followed, thinking that Knoxville was only a few minutes away from Nashville. The three women stopped off at a liquor store a few minutes down the road and purchased two bottles of Hennessey. Lucas then paid for a room at a Residence Inn, which she claims she thought was in Knoxville, but was actually still in Nashville. The group decided to go to Walgreens, where Quinney purchased several items, including food and utensils for cooking dinner in the room's small kitchenette. The three went back to the hotel, prepared food, and drank.

The three women said that they had planned to drive to Memphis the next morning, May 9, but they got up late and Lucas wasn't able to get in touch with her friend, Parker, the woman she was to meet in Memphis. Lucas then claims to have called Morrell Presley, a man she claims to have met twice before (very briefly) through a friend, and asked him for directions to Memphis. Lucas testified that she told Presley that she was in Knoxville, and then gave him the address and name of the hotel. Presley apparently recognized the hotel and said he would come over to see her, but did not tell her that she was not in Knoxville. Lucas awakened the other women, telling them to get dressed because Presley was going to be visiting them shortly.

Presley came over, they watched a movie, and eventually the group decided they were hungry. Presley volunteered to go for food and Quinney prepared a shopping list for him, including chicken and cooking oil. Presley said he was low on gas and so Watts allegedly gave him the keys to the rental car, which he took instead of his own car, leaving the room at about 2:30 p.m.

Presley returned to the hotel room approximately five hours later, at about seven-thirty at night, and although he brought some groceries, he did not return with the chicken or cooking oil, allegedly the main reason for his trip. Lucas had been teased by Watts and Quinney, who suggested that Presley had "made off" with the rental car, leaving his old car behind. When Presley finally returned, without the chicken, Lucas testified that she grabbed the keys out of frustration and started driving towards Memphis. At around eight, Lucas called Parker and told her that she was on her way to pick her up in Memphis.

At the hotel, Presley became upset, asking where Lucas had gone with the rental car. According to Quinney's testimony at trial, Presley was ranting and raving, calling everyone names. Presley urged Quinney and Watts to call Lucas and convince her to drive back, specifically stating to Quinney that she should "[c]all that B and tell her to come back" and that his cell phone was in the car. Quinney called Lucas and told her "[t]hat she needed to come back because she had ... Morell's cell phone. She needed to bring him his cell phone." At some point Presley even got on the phone and started yelling at Lucas to come back, telling her that "she didn't know who he was" and calling her names. Phone records verified that phone calls were made consistent with this testimony, although the only evidence presented as to what was said during the calls and, indeed, of any interaction with "Presley," was the testimony of Lucas and her two friends: Quinney and Watts.

At 9:25 pm, Lucas was pulled over by Trooper Ollie Parker for speeding at 92 miles per hour near mile marker 104 on I-40 going west towards Memphis. As Parker was copying information down for Lucas's ticket, he realized that her driver's license was expired, called it in, and found out that it was suspended. When Parker went back to Lucas and told her of his findings, she explained to him that she had "taken care" of the suspended license, but Parker was unable to verify this fact.

Trooper Earl Hammett drove up at around 10 pm, and parked behind Parker's cruiser, which was behind Lucas's rental car. He activated the cruiser's video camera at 10:03 pm, and this video was played for the jury at trial. About five minutes later, Lt. Linuel Allen arrived. Both troopers were filled in on what was going on by Parker.

At some point Lt. Allen retrieved Lucas's coat from the car, and found in it $2,855, mostly in twenty-dollar bills. Lucas volunteered that this was her traveling money and that she had started off the trip with $3,000. Lucas further explained that she had been driving for about two hours and was on her way from Knoxville to Memphis in order to pick up a relative and take them back to a Knoxville family reunion. It was obvious to the officers that this was not true, since they were not two hours from Knoxville.

Prior to being handcuffed, Lucas was told to remove her belongings from the car, because she was unlikely to get the car back. Hammett escorted Lucas to the front passenger door, and she leaned in to gather her things. Lucas walked back to the trooper's car with her hands full. Shortly thereafter, the troopers realized that the car was locked and that Lucas did not have the keys. Hammett began shining his flashlight into the vehicle, looking for the keys, when he spotted two bags wrapped in cellophane and stuck under the front driver's seat. The bags were eventually retrieved from the vehicle and later determined to contain 2.2 kilograms of cocaine. A number of items were found in the car during a subsequent search. Three cell phones were seized, registered to Angelita Watts (Vallejo, California), Robyn McPherson (Vallejo, California), and Cathy Jefferson (Nashville, Tennessee) respectively. Thirteen credit cards were recovered, eleven in Lucas's name and two in the name of Robyn McPherson, along with a Visa Gold Card application in Robyn McPherson's name and a receipt from Walgreens. Lucas explained that Robyn McPherson is her niece and that she had taken her niece's credit cards and telephone calling cards because her niece had written over $7000 in insufficient fund checks, which Lucas had covered, and her niece had run up a phone bill of $800.

Lucas denied having any knowledge of the cocaine found in the rental car that night. The defense's theory at trial was that Presley was the one who had put the drugs into the car. Through the testimony of Quinney and Watts, the defense brought out that Presley was alleged to have been in the car immediately before Lucas took it on the night that she was stopped. In addition, according to the testimony of the women, Presley took the car for several hours, despite the fact that his errand of grocery shopping should have been a short trip. When he did arrive back, he did not have the groceries he was supposed to have gotten, and presumably he had plenty of time to purchase the drugs, using someone else's car for the transaction. Finally, there was testimony verifying the fact that...