Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-89-03065/USCOURTS-ca10-89-03065-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Laurena Ann Lux
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appel lee, 

FILED 

United Stat.es Court of Appeals 

Tenth circuit 

JUNO 8 1990 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. 

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) 

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No. 89-3065 

LAURENA ANN LUX, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF KANSAS 

(D.C. No. 88-20097-02) 

Charles E. Atwell (Susan M. Hunt, Kansas City, Missouri, and John 

P. O'Connor·of Duncan & O'Connor, Kansas City, Missouri, with him 

on the brief) of Koenigsdorf & Wyrsch, P.C., Kansas City, Missouri, 

for the Defendant-Appellant Laurena Ann Lux. 

Leon J. Patton (Benjamin L. Burgess, Jr., United States Attorney, 

with him on the brief), Assistant United states Attorney for the 

District of Kansas, for Plaintiff-Appellee. 

Before TACHA and EBEL, Circuit Judges, and SEAY, District Judge.* 

SEAY, District Judge 

* Honorable Frank H. Seay, Chief Judge 1 United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, sitting by designation. 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 1 
Defendant Laurena Ann Lux, appeals her convictions for: 

conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, 21 u.s.c. 

§846, (Count I); and attempting to possess with intent to 

distribute cocaine, 21 u.s.c. §§846 and 2 (Count II). Lux argues 

on appeal that the District Court erred by denying her motions to 

suppress her statements given to law enforcement officers while in 

custody and the cocaine seized from a package addressed to her, and 

admitting them in evidence. A third issue challenging defendant 

Lux's sentencing was confessed and withdrawn by the defendant prior 

to oral argument. We affirm the District Court. 

On October 14, 1988, the Los Angeles, California, Postal 

Inspection Service (hereafter the Service), while conducting a drug 

interdiction operation, identified an Express Mail package as 

fitting the characteristics of the Service's drug package profile. 1 

The package was addressed to defendant Lux at her place of 

employment in Kansas City, Missouri. The Service removed the 

package from the mail stream under controlled conditions and had 

it externally examined by a Los Angeles police officer and his 

trained drug detection dog. The dog alerted to the package. 

The Service's "drug package profile" includes the 

following characteristics: (1) size and shape of the package; (2) 

package taped to close or seal all openings; (3) handwritten or 

printed labels; (4) unusual return name and address; (5) unusual 

odors coming from the package; ( 6) fictitious return address; and 

(7) destination of the package. 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 2 
The postal authorities forwarded the package in a secure 

container to the Kansas City, Missouri, Airport Mail Facility, 

where it arrived on Saturday, October 15, 1988. On Monday, October 

17, postal authorities took the package to the Lenexa, Kansas, 

police department, where another drug detection dog alerted to an 

external examination of the package. Postal authorities then 

obtained a search warrant for the package, and upon opening it, 

they found approximately two kilograms of cocaine in two separate 

bricks packed inside a laundry detergent box. 

on October 18, pursuant to a federal court order, the postal 

authorities placed a tracking and signalling device inside the 

package with approximately 6.35 grams of the cocaine and a 

substitute substance to equal the size and weight of the original 

package. Postal Inspector Laura Stewart, dressed as a letter 

carrier, made a controlled delivery of the package to defendant Lux 

at her workplace. Authorities secretly videotaped Lux sign for the 

package and walk around the corner of the building to observe the 

mail truck drive away. 

Approximately thirty minutes later, Lux left her workplace 

with the drug package inside a larger box and drove to the Kansas 

city, Kansas, residence of her codefendant, Joseph William Hill, 

Jr. Lux took the drug package into Hill's residence and left 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 3 
shortly thereafter without it. After returning to Kansas City, 

Missouri, Lux was stopped and arrested. 

Shortly after Lux left Hill's house, the signalling device 

indicated that the drug package had been opened. Soon thereafter, 

Hill drove away from his home, and the police arrested him. 

The police and federal authorities maintained surveillance of 

the Hill residence, and later that same day, they executed a search 

warrant on it. They found the drug package opened and in a trash 

can and two sets of weighing scales of the type commonly used for 

weighing drugs. A search of Hill I s car, pursuant to another 

warrant, located 14.2 grams of cocaine in the trunk. 

Following her arrest, Postal Inspector Laura Stewart and 

Kansas City, Missouri, police detective Sam Burroughs interviewed 

Lux. Prior to questioning her, detective Burroughs read to her the 

Miranda Warnings and Waiver of Rights form, which she stated she 

understood, and she signed the Warnings portion and the Waiver 

portion. The Waiver portion stated, "I am willing to discuss 

subjects presented and answer questions. I do not want a lawyer 

at this time. I understand and know what I am doing. No promises 

or threats have been made to me and no pressure or coercion of any 

kind has been used against me. 11 Thereafter, Lux told them that 

Hill had asked her to accept delivery of the package because Hill 

was not always at home or at his businesses to sign for its 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 4 
delivery. She stated that she had known Hill for three or four 

weeks, and that they had dated. She said that when the package was 

delivered, she called Hill and told him it had come, and that she 

took the package to his residence and left it on his dining room 

table. Lux denied knowing that the package contained drugs, saying 

that Hill had told her it would contain shoes and a sweater. At 

that point, detective Burroughs leaned toward Lux, hit his fist on 

the table, and accused Lux of lying. Burroughs told Lux that Hill 

had been arrested, and that Hill had told them a different story, 

even though Burroughs knew that Hill had not been questioned. Lux 

then asked how long it would take if she wanted a lawyer and if she 

would have to stay in jail while she waited for a lawyer. 

Detective Burroughs told her he did not know how long it would take 

and that she would remain in jail. Thereafter, Lux changed her 

story and admitted knowing that the package contained drugs ordered 

by Hill. She stated that she knew Hill was a drug dealer, and that 

about three weeks previously, she had taken another package to 

Hill, which she subsequently was told by Hill contained drugs. She 

stated that she had received about $400.00 or $500.00 from Hill 

after she delivered the first package. 

On November 21, 1988, Lux was interviewed again by Burroughs, 

Stewart, Lux's attorney, and the government's attorney, at which 

time Lux denied any prior knowledge that the intercepted package 

contained drugs, and she denied knowing that Hill was a drug 

dealer. 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 5 
Lux's pretrial motions to suppress the cocaine seized from 

the package and her admissions were denied, and the evidence of 

both was admitted, over her objections, at the trial. 

I 

Defendant Lux contends that the initial detention of the 

package by postal authorities was an illegal search and seizure 

under the Fourth Amendment, which tainted and made illegal the 

subsequent search warrant for the package. 

The package was initially detained in Los Angeles on October 

14, during a drug interdiction operation being conducted by postal 

authorities because it met some of the criteria of the Service's 

"drug package profile". A drug detection dog alerted to the 

package. It arrived by secured delivery in Kansas City, Missouri, 

the following day, Saturday, October 15. It was detained until 

Monday, October 17, when another drug detection dog alerted to the 

package, at which time a search warrant was obtained. At that 

time, the package had been detained from its usual delivery time 

approximately a day or a day and one-half, principally due to 

October 16, being a Sunday. 

The issue presented is whether the detention of the package, 

prior to the issuance of the search warrant, was reasonable and 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 6 
outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment, or were the 

seizures unreasonable within the meaning of that Amendment. A 

temporary detention of mail for investigative purposes is not an 

unreasonable seizure when authorities have a reasonable suspicion 

of criminal activity. United States v. Van Leeuwen, 387 U.S. 249 

(1970); United states v. MacDonald, 670 F.2d 910, 914 (1982). 

Here, the package met three factors of the Service's "drug package 

profile", giving authorities sufficient reasonable suspicion to 

subject it to a drug detection dog. The detention in Los Angeles 

was brief and temporary. The package arrived in Kansas city on a 

Saturday. The Kansas City authorities had reasonabl·e suspicion of 

criminal activity from the drug package profile factors and the 

alert from the Los Angeles drug dog to detain the package in order 

to subject it to an additional drug detection dog. Although this 

was not done until the following Monday, we find that the delay or 

detention over a Sunday is not unreasonable. When the Kansas drug 

dog also alerted to the package a warrant was obtained for the 

package that day. We find that the detention of this package, 

prior to the issuance of a warrant, was reasonable under the 

circumstances, and that it did not amount to a seizure of personal 

property in which a person has a possessory or privacy interest 

within the meaning and protection of the Fourth Amendment. 

II 

Defendant Lux contends that her custodial admissions were not 

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freely and voluntarily made because she "requested" an attorney, 

and her free will was overborne by the interrogation tactics of 

detective Burroughs. 

The voluntariness of defendant's statements depends upon an 

assessment of the totality of all the surrounding circumstances 

including both the characteristics of the defendant and the details 

of the interrogation. United States v. Falcon, 766 F.2d 1469, 1476 

(10th Cir. 1985). The trial court's findings of facts upon which 

such determination is made are reviewable by this court under the 

clearly erroneous standard. United States v. Chalan, 812 F.2d 

1302, 1307-1308 (10th Cir. 1987). 

Here, there is no question that defendant Lux was advised of 

her Miranda rights, that she acknowledged she understood those 

rights, and that she freely and voluntarily executed a waiver of 

those rights. The trial court considered whether or not, during 

the interrogation, defendant Lux had "requested" an attorney by 

asking how long it would take if she wanted a lawyer and if she 

would have to stay in jail while she waited for a lawyer. The 

court determined that Lux' s questions were "neither a clear nor 

equivocal invocation of her right to counsel". The trial court 

also considered whether or not detective Burroughs' actions of 

lying to Lux about her codefendant's statement and leaning forward 

and hitting his fist on the table and accusing her of lying negated 

the voluntariness of Lux•s subsequent admissions. The trial court 

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Appellate Case: 89-3065 Document: 01019857912 Date Filed: 06/08/1990 Page: 8 
determined that detective Burroughs' actions were "not so 

extraordinary or egregious as to warrant a finding that they 

overbore the defendant's will". Appellant has failed to 

demonstrate that the trial court's findings are clearly erroneous. 2 

Based upon an independent evaluation of the record, with 

deference to the trial court's findings of fact, we conclude that 

Lux did not make a request for an attorney, and her statements were 

free and voluntary. 

WE AFFIRM. 

2 Appellant also argues that her confession was involuntary 

because it was coerced by an implied promise of leniency allegedly 

made by Burroughs. Burroughs allegedly told appellant "that she 

could either sit beside Joe Hill, as a defendant, or testify 

against him, the choice was hers". Appellant's Br. at 25. 

However, appellant acknowledges being told that "only the United 

States Attorney could help her". Id. Because appellant was 

properly informed that the United states Attorney was the only 

official with control over a plea arrangement, Burroughs' remarks 

did not constitute an implied promise. 

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