U.S. v. Shahane

• Decision Date: 18 June 1975
• Docket Number: No. 74-1902,74-1902
• Citation: 517 F.2d 1173
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. William Michael SHAHANE, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 1173

517 F.2d 1173

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. William Michael SHAHANE, Appellant.

No. 74-1902.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted April 15, 1975.

Decided June 18, 1975.

Jack S. Nordby, St. Paul, Minn., for appellant.

Lynn E. Crooks, Asst. U. S. Atty., Fargo, N. D., for appellee.

Before VAN OOSTERHOUT, Senior Circuit Judge, JONES, Senior Circuit Judge, ^* and HENLEY, Circuit Judge.

HENLEY, Circuit Judge.

In November, 1973 William Michael Shahane was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of North Dakota on a charge of having imported into the United States from Mexico by mail a substantial quantity of marijuana in liquid form in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 952(a) and 960(a)(1). The offense was alleged to have been committed on or about April 20, 1973.

Shahane was tried to a jury which found him guilty; he was sentenced to imprisonment for two years in a jail or treatment type institution with one month of the sentence to be served; execution of the remainder of the sentence was suspended, and the defendant was placed on probation for a period of three years. The defendant has duly prosecuted this appeal from the judgment of the district court; the parties will be referred to as they appeared in that court.

The case against the defendant was entirely circumstantial and his primary contention here is that the district court ¹ should have sustained his motion and renewed motion for the entry of a judgment of acquittal. Alternatively, defendant contends that the district court erred in overruling his motion for a new trial based upon alleged prejudicial nondisclosure by a juror in the course of voir dire examination.

In passing upon the propriety of the action of the district court in submitting the case to the jury and upon the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, we are required to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government and to give the government the benefit of all inferences reasonably deducible from the evidence. United States v. Powell, 513 F.2d 1249 (8th Cir. 1975); United States v. Cummings, 507 F.2d 324 (8th Cir. 1974); United States v. Gaskill, 491 F.2d 981 (8th Cir. 1974).

The evidence introduced by the government established the following facts which are essentially undisputed.

On April 3, 1973 a paper-wrapped package mailed in the Republic of Mexico was received at the United States Customs Clearing House in El Paso, Texas. The package was addressed to Raymond Romo in care of "The Malones," Glenburn, North Dakota, and it bore the return address of Senora Maria Guzman, Independencia 214 # B, Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico.

Attached to the container was a Mexican customs declaration which stated that the contents were a cotton shirt, a cotton blouse, and two jars of "Mole" which is a Mexican condiment resembling barbeque sauce. The value of the contents was stated to be 280 pesos which is about $16.00 in American money.

The package first came to the attention of Abel Flores who is employed by the Customs Service. One of the duties of Flores is to open incoming packages and inspect the contents, primarily for the purpose of determining whether or not they are subject to United States customs duties. Occasionally a package is suspected of containing contraband and may be searched to discover whether it contains prohibited material. One of the things that will prompt a "contraband search" is a valuation of contents which appears to be either too high or too low in relation to the nature or asserted nature of the contents listed on the customs declaration.

Mr. Flores thought that a valuation of $16.00 was excessive for a parcel containing nothing more valuable than a cotton shirt and blouse and two jars of Mole. Accordingly, he opened the parcel, which consisted of a cardboard box and contents wrapped with an inner and outer layer of paper. When Flores removed the wrappers and opened the box, he observed the two articles of clothing and the two jars.

The top of one of the jars had worked loose in transit and some of the liquid contents of the jar had leaked out. Flores is quite familiar with Mole and he knew at once that the substance that had leaked from the jar was not Mole. Suspecting that the substance was actually a contraband drug, he made a preliminary test and obtained a positive result.

A small sample of the substance was taken and sent to the Customs Service laboratory at San Antonio, and the package was properly secured until a report from the laboratory should be received. On April 17 the report was received and was to the effect that the substance contained in the jars was in fact what the government claimed at the trial was liquid marijuana or liquid hashish. ²

Arrangements were then made with the postal authorities for the package to resume its journey in the mails to Glenburn which is a small town in the vicinity of Minot, North Dakota. The parcel arrived at Glenburn on April 20 in a special sealed mail pouch which was opened by a Postal Inspector in the presence of a Special Agent of the Customs Service. The package was removed from the pouch and was placed on a shelf in the post office as it would have been placed for delivery in the normal course of business and was kept under observation by one or more of the officers involved in the investigation.

Not too long after the package was placed on the shelf, it was picked up by Mrs. Alice Malone who carried it to her home. She was observed by a Customs Special Agent to carry the package into the house. When he saw her enter the house, he notified another Special Agent by radio that the package was in the house, and he kept the house under observation for some three hours until other officers arrived armed with a search warrant, the validity of which is not questioned here.

The officers entered the house and found the parcel in the bedroom of Barbara Malone, presumably the daughter of Mrs. Alice Malone. The daughter was later placed under arrest. ³

Additional samples of the contents of the jars were obtained, and those samples were sent to the Customs laboratory in Chicago for further analysis. That analysis, like the one in San Antonio, indicated that the substance was marijuana.

It will have been observed that up to this point no mention has been made of the defendant. However, the record reflects that at some time after the search of the Malone house and the seizure of the package, federal officers obtained from military records and from records of the University of North Dakota known specimens of the defendant's handwriting and known finger and palm prints of the defendant.

Those known prints and specimens were sent to the F.B.I. laboratory in Washington, D. C. for comparison with certain latent prints that had been found on the cardboard box and on the inner wrapping of the parcel and with the handwriting appearing on the outer wrapping. The F.B.I. found that a latent palm print discovered on the box and a single finger print discovered on the inner wrapping were those of the defendant. The F.B.I. also found that all of the handwriting on the outer wrapping was that of the defendant.

At the trial of the case the government introduced competent and substantial evidence to prove the facts that have been related and rested. The defendant moved for the entry of a judgment of acquittal, which motion was denied. The defendant then rested and renewed his motion. The district court reserved ruling on the renewed motion and sent the case to the jury. After the verdict was returned, the defendant filed a formal written motion for a judgment of acquittal notwithstanding the verdict, or, alternatively, for a new trial.

Section 952 of Title 21, U.S.C., prohibits the importation into the United States of certain drugs and substances, including marijuana, and § 960 provides that any person who "knowingly or intentionally" violates § 952 shall be deemed guilty of a felony.

In view of the language of the statute the defendant contends that it was incumbent on the government to prove by competent evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt not only that the defendant handled the package containing the marijuana but also that he knowingly or intentionally mailed the package to an address in the United States, or that he knowingly caused someone else to do so, or that he knowingly aided or abetted someone else in the mailing. In short, the defendant contends that the government was required to prove not only that he handled the parcel but also that he knew at the time what it contained. And the defendant contends that the evidence fell short of establishing guilty knowledge or intent on his part.

The position of the government is that the defendant's unexplained handling of the package in Mexico warranted the jury in finding that he was aware of the contents at the time, and that he intended to cause the drug to be imported into this country illegally.

It is obvious that the jury found that the defendant had handled the package in Mexico, and there is no question that the circumstantial evidence relied on by the government justified that finding; indeed, the defendant does not appear to contend to the contrary. The position of the defendant is that his handling of the parcel prior to its mailing is as consistent with innocent ignorance of the contents of the package as it is with guilty knowledge of what the parcel contained and that the district court should not have submitted the case to the jury. The defendant further contends that to permit the jury to infer guilty knowledge and intent from the fact of handling, proved by circumstantial evidence, violated the rule that one inference cannot be based on another inference.

It may be conceded to the defendant that the government's proof was not as strong as it might have been. There is no evidence, either direct or circumstantial, as to what the defendant was doing in Mexico in ...