Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-87-01396/USCOURTS-ca10-87-01396-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Steve M. Stephens
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

FILED 

United St.ates Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

JAN 27 1988 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. No. 87-1396 

STEVE M. STEPHENS 

a/k/a MOSE STEPHENS, 

(D.C. No. 86-CR-112-C) 

(N.D. Oklahoma) 

Defendant-Appellant. 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT 

Before LOGAN, SETH and BARRETT, Circuit Judges. 

Defendant Steve M. Stephens, a/k/a Mose Stephens, appeals his 

conviction after a jury trial of conspiracy to possess and 

distribute heroin and cocaine, in violation of 21 u.s.c. §§ 841 

and 846, conspiracy to impede and impair the collection of federal 

income taxes, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, and engaging in a 

continuing criminal enterprise, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 848. 

On appeal defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to 

support the conviction for conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371 (Klein 

conspiracy) and for conducting a continuing criminal enterprise 

(CCE). He also argues that the district court erred in admitting, 

to support the CCE count, evidence of defendant's involvement in 

drug transactions in 1982 in California; in the alternative, he 

argues that if such evidence was proper, the district court should 

Appellate Case: 87-1396 Document: 010110025156 Date Filed: 01/27/1988 Page: 1 
have permitted additional evidence that the California charges 

were dismissed. We reject these arguments and affirm the 

convictions. 

Defendant's most serious challenge is to the continuing 

criminal enterprise conviction. 1 Defendant argues that the proof 

was insufficient t o show that he was in a "position of organizer, 

a supervisory position, or any other position of management" in 

concert with "five or more other persons," as required by 21 

U.S.C. § 848(d)(2)(A). The record contains overwhelming evidence 

that defendant sold substantial quantities of heroin and cocaine 

over a significant time period, both while defendant lived in 

California and after he moved to Oklahoma. The record also shows 

that defendant sold drugs t o Samuel (Sammy) Williams, James 

(Dusty) Lewis and a female friend acting as their agent. A 

reasonable inference from the evidence is that defendant moved to 

Oklahoma at least in part to be able to cooperate better with 

Williams and Lewis, to whom he sold drugs both before and after 

the relocation. 

Defendant's principal contention is that he was shown only to 

be a seller of drugs to these persons, and not as a manager of a 

criminal enterprise of five or more other persons. We have read 

the entire record carefully and conclude that the evidence, 

1 The CCE charge was in a superseding indictment that is not 

included in the record on appeal. Thus, we do not know the 

particulars of the charge--whether overt acts were set forth in 

the count or the prosecution relied upon acts charged in other 

counts of the indictment. We also do not know whether the time 

periods in the CCE charge were coexistent with those of the Klein 

conspiracy. Therefore we do not consider the problems recently 

dealt with by this court in United States v. Rivera, Nos. 85-1768 

and 85-1771 (10th Cir. Jan. 20, 1988). 

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·--- . .... 

together with the reasonable inferences therefrom, supports a 

finding beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant was indeed in a 

supervisory position over five or more other persons, as 

contemplated by§ 848. We therefore uphold the conviction. 

First, evidence showed that defendant used members of his own 

family to conceal the profits from drug sales, by having them take 

title to real and perso nal property which he had purchased, to pay 

bills from bank accounts owned by defendant, and perhaps to 

participate in drug deliveries. 

This evidence, by itself, is not sufficient to uphold the CCE 

conviction. That conviction must stand or fall upon whether the 

jury could reasonably believe that defendant had a supervisory 

role vis-a-vis Williams and Lewis and their organizations. 

Williams, a seller of heroin, and Lewis, a seller of cocaine, 

admittedly had several persons working for them in their own drug 

distribution systems. Although these two distribution systems 

operated somewhat independently, Williams and Lewis sometimes 

shared living quarters and profits, at least from Lewis' cocaine 

transactions. Evidence supporting defendant's supervisory role 

over Williams and Lewis and their organizations includes 

defendant's fronting money for Williams' drug purchase in at least 

one instance, his providing a rental car for them to travel from 

California to Tulsa, and having Williams return it to him in 

California after defendant came to Tulsa and drove the car from 

Tulsa to Kansas City to attend a funeral. Defendant also 

accompanied Williams to a car dealership, where he helped him 

negotiate the purchase of a new Corvette and provided several 

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. 

thousand dollars cash to help pay for the vehicle. When a 

cellular telephone was installed in the automobile, defendant 

assumed the billing responsibility for it. Evidence also 

indicated that properties titled in Lewis' or Williams' name were 

at least partially owned by defendant. Defendant, Lewis and 

Williams were one-third owners of a corporation; defendant set up 

the corporation, and suppliers and contractors looked to him for 

directions and payment. Most incriminating, perhaps, is the 

evidence of an incident in which a woman was forced to sell her 

home, apparently worth at least $30,000, to defendant (who took 

title in his son's name) for $3,250 to pay a debt for drugs her 

son had bought from Lewis. In that transaction Lewis threatened 

that defendant would harm or kill the son, if the sale were not 

made. We are satisfied that a reasonable jury could find that 

defendant's connection to Lewis and Williams and their 

organizations was more than as a seller to them, despite Lewis' 

and Williams• testimony that they never told defendant the 

identities of the persons distributing drugs for them and never 

told their underlings who provided the drugs they sold. 

The evidence also supports the conviction on the Klein 

conspiracy count for impeding the Internal Revenue Service in the 

collection of taxes. Defendant filed no income tax returns for 

several years, including the period of the alleged conspiracy. A 

government expert detailed approximately $140,000 in cash 

transactions by defendant in a little more than a year, with 

almost no source of funds identifiable other than drug sales. 

Most of these expenditures were t o purchase or improve properties 

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Appellate Case: 87-1396 Document: 010110025156 Date Filed: 01/27/1988 Page: 4 
titled in the names of defendant's family, Lewis, Williams, other 

associates, or corporations which defendant controlled. A jury 

could reasonably infer a pattern of concealment from this evidence 

of paying for nearly everything with cash and titling properties 

in the names of others. Evidence also showed defendant attempting 

to fake a loan transaction from a California trust to cover up 

cash used to purchase a property, and exchanging cash for 

cashier's checks. which were taken in other people's names. In 

sum, the record amply supports defendant's pattern, in collusion 

with others, of concealing proceeds of drug sales to avoid 

discovery and taxation. 

Finally, defendant challenges the admission of certain 

evidence to support the CCE charge. That evidence was obtained 

from the execution of a search warrant in 1982 in California. He 

first asserts that the evidence does not show any violation in 

Oklahoma, and that it cannot be connected with a continuing series 

of crimes which include Oklahoma violations. To refute the 

inference that the California evidence shows a part of a 

continuing series, defendant asserts that the California police 

seized only small amounts of heroin and cocaine, that the heroin 

was of a different type--"black tar" rather than "powder"--and 

that defendant was shown only to be a seller or distributor who 

was not acting in concert with others. 

We agree with the government that it was not necessary to 

show that the violation occurred in Oklahoma or was connected to 

defendant's later transactions in Oklahoma. The amounts and the 

differences in the type of heroin do not detract from the purpose 

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for which the evidence was introduced: to show that in 1982, two 

years before he commenced his association with Williams and Lewis, 

defendant was in the business of selling both heroin and cocaine. 

See United States v. Markowski, 772 F.2d 358, 361 (7th Cir. 1985). 

Defendant also challenges the California evidence on the 

ground that the affidavit which supported the search warrant was 

conclusory; and defendant points out that a California court 

quashed the search warrant and suppressed the evidence. Nothing 

in the record relates why the California state court quashed the 

search warrant. The district court nonetheless properly admitted 

the evidence, since a federal court to which evidence is offered 

must make an independent inquiry of the evidence and the affidavit 

and search warrant which produced it "whether or not there has 

been such an inquiry by a state court, and irrespective of how any 

such inquiry may have turned out." Elkins v. United States, 364 

U.S. 206, 224 (1959). The district judge below examined the 

affidavit supporting the search and the conduct of the search and 

concluded that it was admissible in the federal court prosecution 

under currently applicable principles. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 

U.S. 213 (1983); United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). We 

agree and find no error in the court's admission of the evidence. 

AFFIRMED. 

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Entered for the Court 

James K. Logan 

Circuit Judge 

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