Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-92-02189/USCOURTS-ca10-92-02189-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jose Raul Osorio-Gonzalez
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

FILL 1) Unit.ed Stat.es Court ofAppeals 

Tenth Circuit 

MAY 2 0 1993 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk . 

No. 92-2189 

v. (D.C. No. CR 92-125-JB) 

(D. New Mexico) 

JOSE RAUL OSORIO-GONZALEZ, 

also known as Loui Ramos, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before MOORE, BALDOCK, and BRORBY, Circuit Judges. 

This is an appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress 

evidence and oral statements obtained by federal agents on board 

an Amtrak train stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The issues 

are whether the agents had an articulable suspicion to detain 

defendant for questioning on the train and whether they seized his 

luggage without reasonable suspicion. We substantially agree with 

the district court's analysis of the issues and affirm. 

*This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall not 

be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, except 

for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of the case, 

res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

Appellate Case: 92-2189 Document: 010110115099 Date Filed: 05/20/1993 Page: 1 
Defendant, using the name Louie Ramos, obtained a one-way 

Amtrak ticket from Los Angeles to Chicago with cash, using a 

telephone number of the University of Southern California as his 

call back phone. Prior to the arrival of the train in 

Albuquerque, Agent Candelaria, who had the entire manifest from 

that train, called the number and determined no one by the name of 

Louie Ramos was connected with the University. 

When the train arrived, defendant was identified by an 

attendant and located on the train platform. Agent Ochoa, who was 

in a Border Patrol uniform standing on the platform, told Agent 

Candelaria when defendant spotted Ochoa he reacted nervously. 1 

Defendant returned to the train but not through his own car. 

Agents Small and Candelaria followed him to the lounge car. Small 

identified himself with his DEA badge and asked if he could speak 

to defendant. He agreed. Small inquired where he was going and 

whether he could see the defendant's ticket. Defendant replied he 

was going to Chicago from Los Angeles and indicated the ticket was 

in his room. Small asked to see it, and defendant led the agents 

to his room without comment. 

With the agents in the corridor, defendant entered the room 

and obtained his ticket from a jacket. Small looked at the ticket 

and immediately returned it. He asked defendant for a picture ID, 

but defendant could only produce a social security card. When 

asked, defendant said he was not carrying any illegal drugs, but 

1 It was later developed defendant was a once deported 

alien, but this was not determined until after his arrest. 

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illegal 

Appellate Case: 92-2189 Document: 010110115099 Date Filed: 05/20/1993 Page: 2 
he would not consent to a search of his luggage by either Small or 

a sniffer dog. 

Agent Candelaria then left his position down the corridor and 

joined the conversation. While looking at the manifest in his 

hands, Candelaria asked defendant about his call back number. 

Defendant could not recite the number and lunged at Candelaria in 

an attempt to snatch the manifest from his hand. 

Small then told defendant the agents would like to detain the 

bag for the sniffer dog and, if the dog alerted, they would keep 

the bag until a search warrant could be obtained. He said, if the 

dog did not alert, the bag would be returned. Several times, 

however, Small told defendant he was not being detained and could 

continue on to Chicago. Although asked more than once by Small 

for a Chicago address where the bag could be forwarded, defendant 

never responded. 

With the defendant and Agent Small still standing in the 

hallway, Agent Candelaria obtained the bag from defendant's room 

and placed it with others in a luggage area approximately five 

feet away. In defendant's presence, the dog was called in and 

alerted to the contents of the bag. Although the officers decided 

not to arrest defendant unless a warrant search produced 

contraband, the train conductor asked them to remove defendant 

from the train because he had been drinking alcohol contrary to 

Amtrak rules. Defendant responded by swinging at both officers, 

missing Small but hitting Candelaria. They removed him apparently 

with force. 

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Appellate Case: 92-2189 Document: 010110115099 Date Filed: 05/20/1993 Page: 3 
Agent Small then obtained a warrant to search the suitcase. 

Approximately ten kilograms of cocaine was found. 

The district court denied defendant's motion to suppress, and 

he entered a conditional guilty plea. Sentenced to 120 months, he 

now appeals the denial of the motion. 

Despite defendant's argument to the contrary, the trial court 

held the original encounter in the lounge car did not constitute a 

seizure. With that conclusion we agree. Florida v. Bostick, 

U.S. , 111 S. Ct. 2382, 2386 (1991). The conclusion applies to 

the entire transaction. 

There is simply no evidence indicating defendant understood 

at any time that he was not free to continue his trip. To the 

contrary, up to the moment he refused the conductor's request to 

leave the train, all the evidence indicates he was advised on 

several occasions he was not being detained and was free to go. 

Nonetheless, we shall separate the events into the encounter in 

the lounge car and the confrontation in the corridor outside. 

Although tne evidence would seem to justify a finding the 

original meeting in the lounge was a consensual encounter, the 

district court nonetheless held it was a Ter.z:y stop in which the 

officers had knowledge of "specific and articulable facts 

sufficient to give rise to reasonable suspicion that a person has 

committed or is committing a crime." United States v. Black, 675 

F.2d 129, 133 (7th Cir. 1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1068 (1983), 

cited in United States v. Cooper 733 F.2d 1360, 1363 (10th Cir.), 

cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1255 (1984). The facts identified by the 

court were: (1) the one way ticket from Los Angeles to Chicago; 

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Appellate Case: 92-2189 Document: 010110115099 Date Filed: 05/20/1993 Page: 4 
(2) purchased with cash on the day of travel for $424; and (3) 

with 2 the use of a false phone number. The court held that while 

taken alone none of these facts would be sufficient, but, when 

combined, they provided reasonable suspicion. That conclusion is 

supported by the record. 

To the extent the conversation in the hallway outside 

defendant's room might be construed as an investigative detention, 

the facts in evidence already described constitute sufficient 

reasonable suspicion to permit h . . 3 t e inquiry. We are persuaded 

furt~er those facts gave the officers sufficient reason to believe 

defendant's bag contained narcotics, justifying their setting the 

bag aside for the unobtrusive investigation by the dog. United 

States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 706-08 (1983). Most notable of the 

circumstances is the false number given with the purchase of 

defendant's ticket. 

The government explained at oral argument, the purpose of the 

call back number is to permit Amtrak to contact the passenger to 

give notice of any change in the train schedule. It is, 

therefore, in the passenger's interest to make certain the number 

given is correct. When defendant was unable to recall the number 

2 Agent Small testified that in the four years he had 

participated in the drug interdiction program on this particular 

train route, he had made between 180-200 seizures of narcotics. 

Of the persons from whom the seizures had been made, 60% had 

purchased their tickets with cash; 80-90% had been traveling 

alone; 75% had been in sleeper cars; 99% had purchased round-trip 

tickets; and 97-98% had used false call back numbers. 

3 Because the entire conversation took place in the hallway, 

except for the brief period when defendant entered the room to 

retrieve the ticket, the coercive circumstances found in United 

States v. Ward, 961 F.2d 1526 (10th Cir. 1992), and United States 

v. Bloom, 975 F.2d 1447 (10th Cir. 1992), are not present here. 

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Appellate Case: 92-2189 Document: 010110115099 Date Filed: 05/20/1993 Page: 5 
associated with his reservation and made an effort to snatch the 

incriminating evidence from the hands of Agent Candelaria, he was 

acting contrary to the way a reasonable officer might expect an 

innocent passenger to act. 

If, for example, the recorded number was incorrect because a 

mistake had been made when the number was given or recorded, one 

would expect the defendant still would be able to recall his own 

phone number. His inability to give any number and his subsequent 

response to Agent Candelaria, coupled with defendant's refusal to 

give a forwarding address, what the officers already knew about 

this defendant, and their previous experience with drug couriers, 

would justify their suspicion defendant possessed narcotics. 

AFFIRMED. 

Entered for the Court 

John P. Moore 

Circuit Judge 

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Appellate Case: 92-2189 Document: 010110115099 Date Filed: 05/20/1993 Page: 6