US v. Shugart

• Decision Date: 11 May 1995
• Docket Number: No. 3:94 cr 17.,3:94 cr 17.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Ricky Joe SHUGART, and Lori Ann Leach, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Texas

889 F. Supp. 963

UNITED STATES of America v. Ricky Joe SHUGART, and Lori Ann Leach, Defendants.

No. 3:94 cr 17.

United States District Court, E.D. Texas, Paris Division.

May 11, 1995.

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Randall L. Fluke, Sherman, TX, for plaintiff.

Deborah L. McGregory, Sherman, TX, John Thomas Haughton, McKinney, TX, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

JUSTICE, District Judge.

I. Introduction

Defendants Ricky Joe Shugart and Lori Ann Leach, who are brother and sister, were indicted and arraigned on various charges relating to their alleged possession and manufacture of methcathinone, a controlled substance. Trial in the above-entitled criminal action is currently set to commence on May 15, 1995. Defendants have filed motions to suppress evidence, on the grounds that various searches conducted by law enforcement agents violated their constitutional and statutory rights. A hearing on such motions was conducted on April 10, 1995, before the undersigned judge. After careful consideration of the testimony presented at the hearing, as well as the parties' briefs, it has been determined that evidence obtained from defendant Leach's mobile home, the contents of a package, addressed to defendant Shugart, seized from the Randolph, Texas post office, and defendant Leach's incriminating statements must be suppressed from evidence, but that all other evidence obtained during the searches and seizures discussed herein is admissible. Accordingly, defendants' motions to suppress evidence shall be granted in part, and denied in part.

II. Factual Findings

Based on the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing, the facts surrounding the searches and seizures at issue are found to be as follows:

Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began investigating defendants' alleged narcotics activity, when DEA Task Force Officer (TFO) Michael Keene received a "tip" that defendants were involved with the illicit production of methcathinone. The tip was provided by a DEA agent in Wichita, Kansas, who told TFO Keene that a confidential informant (CI) in Kansas indicated to him that defendant Shugart was in possession of a "N-Methcathinone laboratory." The CI also advised that Shugart was ordering ephedrine, a substance needed to produce methcathinone, from Olympus Distributing Company (Olympus) and T & M Distributing Company (T & M), and that Shugart would occasionally have his sister, defendant Leach, order the ephedrine.¹ The CI also related that he, the CI, had been on defendant Shugart's and defendant Leach's properties near Bonham, Texas, within the month preceding the tip, and had observed a methcathinone laboratory on defendant Shugart's property, and methcathinone and chemicals used to produce methcathinone on defendant Leach's property.

Before taking other actions, TFO Keene decided to verify the information provided by the CI. He contacted T & M in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and inquired as to whether defendant Shugart or his sister had ordered ephedrine. A representative of T & M advised TFO Keene that defendants recently had placed several large orders for ephedrine, and that the orders had been sent to Bonham, Texas.

On November 8, 1994, the T & M representative telephoned TFO Keene and informed him that defendant Shugart had recently ordered 3,000 tablets of ephedrine to be sent to a post office box located in the Randolph, Texas, post office. TFO Keene confirmed this information by contacting a postal inspector who affirmed that a package from T & M addressed to defendant Shugart had indeed arrived at the Randolph post office. The postal inspector also told TFO Keene that defendant Shugart had received a second package from Olympus. Both packages were sent "collect on delivery," requiring that defendant Shugart pay for the packages before retrieving them. DEA agents and United States Postal Inspectors then established surveillance of the Randolph post office. At approximately 10:00 a.m. on November 14, 1994, defendant Shugart and a woman, later identified as his wife, arrived at the post office. Defendant Shugart entered the post office and paid for the package from Olympus. Apparently, he told a postal inspector inside the post office that he had enough money to pay for only one of the packages, and that he would return later for the package from T & M. Shugart then returned to the car, and the agents followed him and his wife to defendant Leach's mobile home, located in a rural area near Bonham, Texas. Once there, defendant Shugart exited the car and carried the package inside the mobile home. His wife, still followed by DEA agents, then drove to a grocery store in Bonham, Texas, where a DEA agent observed her purchase Red Devil lye and epsom salt, which are also ingredients used to produce methcathinone. The surveilling agents then pursued her on the return trip to defendant Leach's mobile home.

While conducting this surveillance, TFO Keene contacted the CI in Kansas by calling him on a cellular telephone. The CI related that he had aided defendant Shugart in manufacturing methcathinone on defendant Shugart's property on two separate occasions in August 1994, and that he had observed methcathinone, ephedrine, and other chemicals used to produce methcathinone on defendant Leach's property in August 1994.

Based on the surveillance and his conversation with the CI, TFO Keene decided to apply for warrants to search both defendant Shugart's property and defendant Leach's property. Thereafter, TFO Keene hastily drafted an affidavit incorporating the above facts, and presented it to Magistrate Judge Robert Faulkner in Sherman, Texas, at approximately 2:00 p.m. that same day.

Before presenting the applications and affidavits to Magistrate Judge Faulkner, however, TFO Keene discovered that the application and forms of warrant contained several minor errors. Apparently, TFO Keene, or the Assistant United States Attorney who prepared some of the documents, utilized a form when drafting them which had previously been used to acquire a warrant authorizing a search for cocaine. Both the application for the search warrant and the warrant itself referred to "cocaine" instead of "methcathinone."

TFO Keene brought the mistakes to the magistrate judge's attention, and the magistrate judge instructed him to mark through the references to "cocaine," insert "methcathinone," and initial the hand-written changes. TFO Keene complied with these instructions, and the magistrate judge then signed the warrants containing TFO Keene's interlineations. See Def. Shugart's Mot. to Suppress, March 20, 1995, at Ex.'s A & B.

However, TFO Keene and the Assistant United States Attorney failed to detect the mistake on a form entitled "Application and Affidavit for Search Warrant," which basically serves as a cover sheet for TFO Keene's affidavit in support of the warrants. On that document the items to be searched for are described as "evidence, instrumentalities or fruits of the crime of conspiracy to possess or distribute cocaine." See id., at Ex. A1 (emphasis added).

After the warrants were issued, TFO Keene returned to Bonham, Texas, and briefed the DEA "raid team" that was to execute the warrants. The agents discussed the facts leading to the acquisition of the search warrants, and the fact that defendant Shugart had a previous weapons offense. They determined that agents would raid Leach's mobile home and an unattached, open-faced garage adjacent to the mobile home simultaneously, because agents had observed a person in the garage and were concerned that he or she might pose a safety risk to the agents. No agent, however, testified that the "raid team" discussed who was to announce the agents' presence and authority before entering the mobile home or garage, or whether there was any need for such an announcement.

The agents commenced the raid on defendant Leach's property at approximately 5:30 p.m. that afternoon. At the time of the raid, defendant Leach was in the kitchen preparing hamburgers and talking with defendant Shugart's wife. Several young children, and defendant Leach's boyfriend, were watching television in the nearby living room. According to the uncontroverted testimony of defendant Leach, the agents did not "knock and announce" before entering the mobile home, but rather burst through the mobile home's unlocked, but closed, front door with their firearms drawn and leveled at defendant Leach and the others. As the agents came rushing in, they ordered everyone to lie on the floor. According to Leach, the agents did not identify themselves as law enforcement officers, and she and the other occupants were left to deduce their law enforcement status from the "DEA"-marked windbreaker jackets the agents were wearing. Leach and the other adults were handcuffed. Not surprisingly, the sudden intrusion greatly frightened and confused them, and it took several minutes for them to realize what was transpiring.

Subsequently, TFO Keene "interviewed" Leach twice in a back bedroom of the mobile home. During their first meeting, TFO Keene informed Leach of her rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and then told her that she should take some time to decide whether she wished to cooperate with the government. He advised her to go back into the den and consider her situation, and that he would speak with her again later. During the second interview, Leach made incriminating statements.

The agents raiding the garage found defendant Shugart standing near the center of the structure in close proximity to a "work bench," which contained glass laboratory equipment, bottles of various substances, and several electric "hand mixers," one of which was gyrating intermittently as if there were a short in its power source. DEA agent Marlin Suell, the first into the garage, "identified" himself, and then commanded defendant Shugart...