United States v. Baines

573 F.3d 979 (2009)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D recruited two young women to travel with him and two male friends from Pennsylvania to Arizona, offering the women $1,000 each for the trip. Both young women testified at trial that they realized that the purpose of the trip was to transport drugs. D did not tell them any details. They used two rented vehicles for the trip, a 'tannish' Ford sedan and a minivan. In Phoenix, the group spent the night in a motel and went shopping for a while the next day. D contacted someone he referred to as 'Felix,' and had one of the young women take down directions to a place where they would meet with Felix in Tucson. The group spent part of the day at a place the women assumed to be the residence of Felix, the three men left in the Ford. The young women were told to get ready for the return to Pennsylvania. They were both seated in the Ford when they saw D approach carrying a blue bag. The woman in the driver's seat unlatched the trunk, and things were put in the trunk and moved around. D chose to ride in the minivan, leaving the two women as the only occupants in the Ford. They took a return route through Las Cruces, New Mexico, and entered a border checkpoint. The trunk of the Ford was opened at the border agent immediately noticed the scent of fresh marijuana. A dog trained to detect illegal drugs alerted to the trunk. One of the agents had asked one of the women about the van that was behind them at the checkpoint and learned that the two vehicles were traveling together. One of the occupants of the van confirmed that fact. Accordingly, the van and its three occupants were also directed to the secondary inspection center. Officers found packages of marijuana in each of three bags, two laundry bags, and a black duffle bag, and the black duffle bag also contained two pistols and ammunition. The two women were arrested. When it appeared that the men were going to be released, one of the young women decided to tell the officers about D's role in arranging the trip and his role in acquiring and loading the marijuana. Both women also told the agents that during the trip defendant had said that he was 'in the business.' Two fingerprints were discovered on one of the magazines found with the two pistols in the black duffle bag. D filed a motion before trial to bar the government from presenting evidence that a fingerprint specialist had determined that one of the recovered 'latent' prints matched the 'known' fingerprint of D. D requested a pretrial hearing on the admissibility of P's expert testimony, and the district court granted the request. Two witnesses testified at the pretrial hearing on D's motion to exclude the fingerprint evidence. Fullerton, a state-employed fingerprint examiner, and FBI Agent Meagher, who is a fingerprint specialist. The print at issue was a partial print where the left side of the full print was not available. Meagher gave the run down on the identification of fingerprints with an error rate of 1 in 11 million. It was determined that the prints of several fingers on D’s fingerprint card were very poor images, the left thumb print was of good quality and could be matched to the latent print. Based on 11 points of comparison it was determined that the latent print was from D’s left thumb. D presented no witnesses at the hearing. The evidence was admitted and D was convicted and appealed.