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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

Docket No. 40466

STATE OF IDAHO,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

TASHINA MARIE ALLEY,

Defendant-Appellant.

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2014 Unpublished Opinion No. 809

Filed: November 10, 2014

Stephen W. Kenyon, Clerk

THIS IS AN UNPUBLISHED 

OPINION AND SHALL NOT 

BE CITED AS AUTHORITY

Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Ada

County. Hon. Richard D. Greenwood, District Judge. 

Judgment of conviction and sentence for conspiracy to manufacture, deliver, or 

possess with the intent to deliver a controlled substance and conspiracy to deliver 

or possess with the intent to deliver paraphernalia, affirmed.

Sara B. Thomas, State Appellate Public Defender; Justin M. Curtis, Deputy 

Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for appellant. 

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Kenneth K. Jorgensen, Deputy 

Attorney General, Boise, for respondent. 

________________________________________________

LANSING, Judge

Tashina Marie Alley was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture, deliver, or possess 

with the intent to deliver a controlled substance, namely “spice,” and conspiracy to deliver or 

possess with the intent to deliver paraphernalia. On appeal, she contends that the district court 

erred by denying her pretrial motion to dismiss wherein she argued that Idaho law did not 

prohibit the sale of the substance she had sold. She also contends that the court erred by not 

instructing the jury that mistake of law is a defense to conspiracy. 

I.

BACKGROUND

Alley was involved in the “spice” distribution enterprise discussed by this Court in State 

v. Alley, 155 Idaho 972, 318 P.3d 962 (Ct. App. 2014) (Morgan Alley,

1 Tashina’s husband, was 

 

1 In the remainder of the opinion, we refer to Morgan Alley as “Morgan” and Tashina 

Alley as “Alley.” 
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the defendant in that case) and by the Idaho Supreme Court in State v. Goggin, 157 Idaho 1, 333 

P.3d 112 (2014) and State v. Taylor, ___ Idaho ___, 335 P.3d 31 (2014). Indeed, Alley’s case 

was consolidated with Taylor and Goggin’s cases in the district court. The basic facts were 

summarized in Goggin:

In September 2011, in response to a tip regarding suspicious activity, the 

Boise Police Department began investigating a warehouse in Boise leased by a 

man named Morgan Alley. The police conducted surveillance of the warehouse, 

observing who came and went, and seized trash discarded outside the warehouse 

on multiple occasions. Upon obtaining a warrant, Detective Joseph Andreoli 

searched the warehouse and found synthetic cannabinoids and the materials 

necessary to manufacture products containing synthetic cannabinoids. Andreoli 

testified that the warehouse contained “all of the items necessary” to manufacture 

synthetic marijuana, “including chemical; plant material; acetone, which is used 

as a solvent; and tobacco flavoring.” The warehouse also contained “the 

packaging materials, such as the small plastic containers, lids, and sticker labels” 

necessary to package a finished synthetic marijuana product. In fact, the 

warehouse was set up in an assembly line fashion and contained synthetic 

marijuana in various stages of completion. The warehouse also contained 

finished synthetic marijuana products in small plastic containers labeled with 

stickers reading “Twizted Potpourri.”

During the course of the investigation, the police expanded their 

surveillance to include the Red Eye Hut (the Red Eye), a Boise store owned by 

the limited liability company for which Morgan Alley was the registered agent. 

Detective Andreoli stated that the Red Eye “appeared to be a head shop” due to 

the nature “of the items for sale inside.” The shop contained various types of 

pipes, concealment containers, grinders, digital scales, drug testing kits, and

“body-cleansing solutions to defeat drug tests.” At one point, Detectives Kevin 

Holtry and Jason Harmon entered the Red Eye in an undercover capacity and 

purchased three containers of Twizted Potpourri and a metal pipe from Goggin. 

Testing showed that one of these containers contained plant material treated with 

JWH-019 and the other two containers contained plant material treated with AM2201. Both JWH-019 and AM-2201 are synthetic cannabinoids. Thereafter, the 

police executed search warrants on the warehouse and the Red Eye, seizing 

approximately 30,000 containers of Twizted Potpourri from the warehouse and 

over 9,000 containers of Potpourri and 340 pipes from the Red Eye.

Goggin, 157 Idaho at 3-4, 333 P.3d at 114-15 (footnotes omitted).

Before trial, Morgan filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that Idaho law did not prohibit the 

sale of the “spice” he had produced. Alley joined the motion, but it was denied by the district 

court and the case proceeded to trial. 

At trial, the State adduced evidence showing that Alley participated in her husband’s

“spice” business. Like the others involved in the business, Alley did not deny her involvement to 
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police, but argued that selling spice was legal or, in the alternative, that she did not know it was 

illegal. Over objection, the court instructed the jury that a mistake of law was not a defense.

After the jury trial, Alley was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture, deliver, or possess 

with the intent to deliver a controlled substance and conspiracy to deliver or possess with the 

intent to deliver paraphernalia. She appeals from the judgment of conviction, arguing that the 

court erred by denying the motion to dismiss and by giving an erroneous mistake of law 

instruction.

II.

ANALYSIS

We find no basis upon which we can distinguish Alley’s claims from the claims of her 

co-conspirators that have previously been rejected by this Court or the Idaho Supreme Court.

A. Motion to Dismiss

As to the motion to dismiss, Alley concedes that her claim of error is identical to the 

claim of error asserted by Morgan in a prior appeal. See Alley, 155 Idaho 972, 318 P.3d 962. 

Alley acknowledges that she “simply joined Morgan’s arguments in the district court and the 

issue was decided solely on the evidence and argument submitted by Morgan.” On appeal, when 

addressing Morgan’s motions, this Court concluded that “the district court did not err in denying 

[Morgan’s] motion to dismiss and motion to reconsider.” Alley, 155 Idaho at 983, 318 P.3d at 

973. In our view, Morgan impermissibly attempted to resolve an issue of fact in a pretrial 

motion to dismiss. Id. at 982, 318 P.3d at 972.2

 For the same reason Morgan’s claims of error 

failed, Alley’s claims also fail.

B. Jury Instruction 

On appeal, Alley argues that because conspiracy is a specific intent crime, her mistake of 

law, believing that certain compounds were not illegal in Idaho, was a defense. Alley’s 

argument, that the court erred by instructing the jury that ignorance or mistake of law is not a 

 

2 It is unclear whether this Court’s rationale in Alley was overruled by State v. Goggin, 157 

Idaho 1, 6 n.4, 333 P.3d 112, 117 n.4 (2014). In a footnote the Idaho Supreme Court remarked 

that AM-2201 is a synthetic cannabinoid and the “plain language used by the Legislature banned 

all forms of synthetic marijuana.” Irrespective of whether Goggin overruled a portion of Alley, 

the claims in this appeal fail. If the Supreme Court decided that AM-2201 is illegal as a matter 

of law, the district court did not err by denying the motion to dismiss. Therefore, because we can 

hold that the motion to dismiss was properly denied under either theory, we need not determine 

whether Alley was overruled. 
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defense to a conspiracy charge, is foreclosed by the Idaho Supreme Court’s decision in Goggin, 

157 Idaho at 13, 333 P.3d at 124, where the Court said:

A person commits an illegal act by engaging in the activities prohibited by statute. 

Therefore, a person will have committed conspiracy when she agrees with another 

person to engage in activities prohibited by statute.

For example, a person is guilty of conspiracy to deliver a controlled 

substance under Idaho Code section 37-2732(f) when she and another person 

agree to deliver a controlled substance. The statute does not require the State to 

prove that the defendant knew it was illegal to deliver a controlled substance. 

Under this analysis, then, to be convicted of conspiracy, a defendant must have 

simply intended to engage in the acts necessary to commit the underlying 

substantive offense. Thus, whether the defendant knows the acts are illegal is 

irrelevant.

. . . .

Other courts have interpreted similar conspiracy statutes to mean that the 

defendant must, with the mental state required by the underlying offense, only 

agree to engage in the conduct prohibited by the underlying offense, not that the 

defendant must know the acts are illegal. In U.S. v. Feola, the defendant was 

convicted of conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371, which defines conspiracy as 

occurring when “two or more persons conspire . . . to commit any offense against 

the United States, . . . and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the 

object of the conspiracy.” 420 U.S. 671, 95 S. Ct. 1255, 43 L. Ed. 2d 541 (1975). 

In considering this issue, the Supreme Court found “no textual support for the 

proposition that to be guilty of a conspiracy a defendant in effect must have 

known that his conduct violated federal law.” Id. at 687, 95 S. Ct. at 1265, 43 

L. Ed. 2d at 554. Indeed, the conspiracy statute

makes it unlawful simply to “conspire . . . to commit any offense 

against the United States.” A natural reading of these words would 

be that since one can violate a criminal statute simply by engaging 

in the forbidden conduct, a conspiracy to commit that offense is 

nothing more than an agreement to engage in the prohibited acts.

Id. The Court also noted that in the past, it had “declined to require a greater 

degree of intent for conspiratorial responsibility than for responsibility for the 

underlying substantive offense.” Id. at 688, 95 S. Ct. at 1266, 43 L. Ed. 2d at 555 

(citing United States v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601, 91 S. Ct. 1112, 28 L. Ed. 2d 356 

(1971)). Similarly, in U.S. v. Haldeman, a case the district court relied on when it 

decided to grant a new trial, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of 

Columbia stated: “a defendant does not have to be aware that he was violating a 

particular law, such as 18 U.S.C. § 371, so long as he had the conscious intent to 

do that which the law in fact forbids.” United States v. Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31, 

117 (D.C. Cir. 1976).

In this case, because neither Idaho Code section 18-1701 nor Idaho Code 

section 37-2732(f) contain specific language providing for a mistake of law 

defense, Goggin’s argument fails. 

Id. Accordingly, Alley was not entitled to a different mistake of fact instruction. 
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III.

CONCLUSION

Because both of Alley’s claims are foreclosed by recent authority from this Court or the 

Supreme Court, further analysis is not warranted. The judgment of conviction is affirmed. 

Judge GRATTON and Judge MELANSON CONCUR.