United States v. Gonzalez-Arias, 18-1085

• Decision Date: 20 December 2019
• Docket Number: No. 18-1085,18-1085
• Citation: 946 F.3d 17
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Juan Elias GONZALEZ-ARIAS, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

946 F.3d 17

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Juan Elias GONZALEZ-ARIAS, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 18-1085

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

December 20, 2019

Robert C. Andrews for appellant.

Cynthia A. Young, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

Before Torruella, Thompson, and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

Until the Drug Enforcement Administration (the DEA) blew the lid off it, Juan Elias Gonzalez-Arias ran a thriving drug business out of his apartment — 264 East Haverhill Street, Unit 18, Lawrence, Massachusetts. From those modest digs, he ordered kilograms of heroin from foreign sources, processed it, and dealt it to buyers around Massachusetts. But in July 2015, federal agents swarmed the apartment, search warrant in hand, and arrested him. Inside, they found a stolen gun, $30,088 in cash, and over a kilo of heroin, along with other narcotics and tools of the trade (including drug ledgers, scales, and a hydraulic kilo press). Gonzalez-Arias was indicted and pled guilty to drug trafficking charges, including conspiracy to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin, which carried a ten-year mandatory minimum.¹ The district judge sentenced him to 136 months in prison.

On appeal, Gonzalez-Arias offers several arguments — that the judge should have suppressed the evidence from his apartment, let him withdraw his guilty plea, appointed him a new lawyer for sentencing, and set a lower guideline sentencing range. We'll tackle each claim in turn — and all told, spotting no reversible error, we affirm.

MOTION TO SUPPRESS

Background

In June 2016, when he (finally) settled on a lawyer (private attorney Scott Gleason),² Gonzalez-Arias's first order of business was to move to suppress the cache of evidence seized from his apartment. In greenlighting the search, the U.S. magistrate judge relied on an affidavit signed by DEA Special Agent Garth Hamelin. In it, Hamelin recounted a year-long investigation (involving wiretaps, video surveillance, and undercover drug buys) and he explained why his team had reason to believe they'd find evidence of a crime in Gonzalez-Arias's flat. In pressing a suppression motion, Gonzalez-Arias claimed that the facts in the affidavit didn't show probable cause for the search, so (as he told it), the magistrate judge shouldn't have issued the warrant, which triggered an unconstitutional search of his apartment. The judge disagreed and denied the motion to suppress. Gonzalez-Arias appeals that ruling to us, making the same Fourth Amendment claim.

Law

Under the Fourth Amendment, a search warrant may not issue without probable cause: a "nontechnical conception" that relies on "common-sense conclusions about human behavior" and "the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent" people act. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 231, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) (citations omitted). Given all the facts alleged in the DEA's warrant application, there must have been a "fair probability" — in other words, a "reasonable likelihood" — that the agency would find "evidence of a crime" in Gonzalez-Arias's apartment. United States v. Clark, 685 F.3d 72, 76 (1st Cir. 2012) (quoting Gates, 462 U.S. at 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317 ); see also United States v. Roman, 942 F.3d 43, 51 (1st Cir. 2019) ("The inquiry is not whether ‘the owner of the property is suspected of crime’ but rather whether ‘there is reasonable cause to believe that the specific things to be searched for and seized are located on the property to which entry is sought.’ " (quoting Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 556, 98 S.Ct. 1970, 56 L.Ed.2d 525 (1978) )).

In reviewing a district court's decision to deny a motion to suppress, we review its legal conclusions afresh ("de novo"), and its fact findings for clear error. United States v. Ribeiro, 397 F.3d 43, 48 (1st Cir. 2005). That said, we (like the district court) must give "considerable deference to reasonable inferences the issuing magistrate may have drawn" from the facts set out in the affidavit supporting the DEA's application for the search warrant, reversing only if the affidavit contained no "substantial basis for concluding that probable cause existed." United States v. Zayas-Diaz, 95 F.3d 105, 111 (1st Cir. 1996) (cleaned up); accord Gates, 462 U.S. at 238–39, 103 S.Ct. 2317. And we're not stuck with the district court's reasons for denying the motion to suppress; we'll affirm if "any reasonable view of the evidence supports the decision." Clark, 685 F.3d at 75.

Application

Gonzalez-Arias doesn't dispute there was probable cause to believe he was part of a drug distribution conspiracy. Nor could he. DEA agents watched (through pole-mounted cameras and a GPS tracker on Gonzalez-Arias's car) and listened (via wiretaps) for over a year as he sold heroin to undercover agents and criminal associates and talked shop over the phone. Agents heard him quarterback drug deals and hand-offs, negotiate prices with buyers and debts to suppliers, and solicit multi-kilo hauls of drugs from foreign sources. And based on that surveillance, Agent Hamelin's affidavit colored Gonzalez-Arias a seasoned, high-volume drug trafficker. For example, in the fall of 2014, he twice sold $2,100 worth of heroin (30 grams per sale) to the undercover agent — and that was just a preview. During the second sale, he urged the agent to buy even more — "at least 100 [grams] per week " (emphasis added) — and suggested he'd sell up to "two kilos" of heroin for $70 per gram. And in March 2015, a cohort ordered just that amount (two kilos) from Gonzalez-Arias and came to his apartment to pick it up. Just two months later — in his biggest move — Gonzalez-Arias told his associate to order at least ten kilos from a Mexican supplier, picked up the first one-kilo shipment himself, borrowed $20,000 to pay for the drugs,³ then told the associate not to worry about where they would be stored because he (Gonzalez-Arias) would "welcome the women" (code for "kilograms of drugs," wrote Agent Hamelin).

And so, admitting there was "evidence that [he] was engaged in the drug trade" (and getting an A for understatement), Gonzalez-Arias takes aim at what we've called the "nexus" element of the probable cause standard, see United States v. Feliz, 182 F.3d 82, 86 (1st Cir. 1999) (splitting the analysis into two parts: "probable cause to believe that (1) a crime has been committed — the ‘commission’ element, and (2) [that] enumerated evidence of the offense will be found at the place to be searched — the so-called ‘nexus’ element"), urging that "there was no direct evidence" that he used the apartment at 264 East Haverhill Street to peddle drugs "in the time period leading up to the search."

This sally stumbles out the gate. A magistrate "interpreting a search warrant affidavit in the proper ‘commonsense and realistic fashion’ " may find "probable cause to believe that criminal objects" are in "a suspect's residence" even if there's no "direct evidence": that is, even if agents or their informants never spotted the illicit objects at the scene. Id. at 88 (quoting United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108, 85 S.Ct. 741, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965) ). Rather, she may glean the link from circumstantial evidence, including the "type of crime" suspected and "normal inferences" about "where a criminal would hide [the] evidence" sought, combined with more "specific observations" (like bustle in and out before and after drug deals) identifying the residence as a probable hub or haven for criminal transactions. Roman, 942 F.3d at 51–52 (quoting Feliz, 182 F.3d at 88 and Ribeiro, 397 F.3d at 50–51 ). And such evidence abounded here.

For starters, common sense and experience teach that a big-time drug-mover like Gonzalez-Arias needs somewhere to keep his drug money, books, and spoils. See Feliz, 182 F.3d at 87–88 (finding it "reasonable" to think — based on "common sense, buttressed by [an] affiant's opinion as a law enforcement officer" — that a "long-time," multi-kilo-level "drug trafficker" would need to keep detailed accounts, customer lists, and money in a "safe yet accessible place" like his home). And here, Agent Hamelin (who had thirteen years of DEA experience) wrote in his affidavit that traffickers like Gonzalez-Arias need to keep records (e.g. , balance sheets listing the considerable money he owed foreign drug sources), proceeds from sales (like cash and jewelry), paraphernalia (think scales, sifters, packaging, and heat-sealing devices), and weapons in "secure locations ... for ready access" and to hide them from police. Though such "generalized observations" are rarely enough to justify searching someone's home, Roman, 942 F.3d at 52 (quoting Ribeiro, 397 F.3d at 50 ), they're still factors a judge can weigh in the balance, United States v. Rivera, 825 F.3d 59, 64–65 (1st Cir. 2016).

Against that backdrop, Gonzalez-Arias's calls and movements strongly suggested that 264 East Haverhill Street was the hub of his drug operation and, therefore, a natural place to store his drugs, records, and tools. For example,

• For the first controlled buy, he left the apartment complex nine minutes before he handed the undercover agent 30 grams of heroin at the Loop Mall in nearby Methuen, making it unlikely he stopped along the way.

• On March 27, 2015, the morning after discussing the two-kilo deal with Gonzalez-Arias, a co-conspirator pulled up to Gonzalez-Arias's building, told him to "[o]pen up," and left with a green bag.

• A few weeks later, Gonzalez-Arias told another cohort (who'd asked, "Is that ready?") that he was "making" two batches of heroin to fill an order, and that he was "coming," minutes before he emerged from the apartment building and drove to a rendezvous in a nearby parking lot.

• Lastly, about a month before the warrant issued, Gonzalez-Arias called his associate from that same East

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