NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

MARIA ANDREA GONZALEZ, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-30273 

D.C. No. 

1:18-cr-02005-SAB-1 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Washington

Stanley A. Bastian, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted September 1, 2021

Seattle, Washington

Before: HAWKINS, TASHIMA, and McKEOWN, Circuit Judges.

Defendant Maria Andrea Gonzalez (“Gonzalez”), convicted following a jury 

trial of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and heroin, possession 

of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and felon in possession of a 

firearm, appeals the district court’s ruling on two pretrial motions, in which she 

sought to have the case dismissed with prejudice under the Speedy Trial Act and 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

FILED

SEP 22 2021

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

Sixth Amendment and to suppress evidence found in her purse when she was 

arrested. We affirm.

I.

There was no violation of the Speedy Trial Act. All time when pretrial 

motions were pending was automatically excluded under 18 U.S.C. § 3161 

(h)(1)(D). Delays for the “ends of justice” are also excluded if the court sets forth 

“its reasons for finding that the ends of justice served by the granting of [a]

continuance outweigh the best interests of the public and the defendant in a speedy 

trial.” Id. § 3161(h)(7)(A). 

There were four total motions to continue, all made by defense 

counsel. Gonzalez does not challenge the propriety of the first continuance, made 

by her original counsel. With respect to the second and third continuances, her 

newly appointed counsel articulated legitimate reasons for needing additional time 

to prepare the defense, including the need to review recently provided discovery, 

prepare pretrial motions, and, when Gonzalez was charged with another federal 

crime while in custody, the need to coordinate with her other defense counsel and to 

deal with additional sentencing considerations. There was no clear error in 

determining that the ends of justice served by these continuances outweighed society 

and defendant’s interest in a speedy trial, United States v. Medina, 524 F.3d 974, 

982 (9th Cir. 2008), and the court sufficiently articulated its reasons for granting the 
3 

exclusions. United States v. McCarns, 900 F.3d 1141, 1145 (9th Cir. 2018). These 

two ends of justice exclusions, coupled with the automatic exclusions for pending 

motions, bring the trial well within the Speedy Trial Act’s 70-day window.1

Likewise, there was no error in determining that the case should not be 

dismissed with prejudice for violating Gonzalez’s Sixth Amendment right to a 

speedy trial. See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S 514, 530‒34 (1972) (discussing factors 

to be weighed). The district court acknowledged that the delay was over a year total, 

but balanced this against the cause of the delay, which included continuances 

requested by defense counsel in order better to represent the defendant at trial. In 

addition, some of the delay was caused by Gonzalez being charged with an 

additional crime while in pretrial custody for this offense. Nor did Gonzalez suffer 

actual prejudice from the delay, such as loss of evidence or unavailability of 

witnesses.

II.

Gonzalez also sought to suppress the evidence found in her purse, contending 

it was not a valid search incident to arrest because at the time of the search she had 

been handcuffed, transferred to the custody of another officer, and placed in the back 

1 This is the case even accepting Gonzalez’s argument that the Motion in 

Limine/Motion to Sever was only pending until May 24, 2018. See United States v. 

Clymer, 25 F.3d 824, 830‒31 (9th Cir. 1994). For this reason, we need not address 

the fourth ends of justice exclusion.
4 

of a patrol car about twenty feet away from the purse. See Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 

332, 343‒44 (2009). However, “we need not decide whether the initial search was 

lawful,” because we agree with the district court that the evidence would have been 

admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine during “a routine inventory

search.” United States v. Andrade, 784 F.2d 1431, 1433 (9th Cir. 1986). 

Gonzalez is correct that under Washington law, if she had been arrested only 

on the outstanding warrant, she could have theoretically posted bail and avoided the 

booking and inventory search process altogether. United States v. Peterson, 902 

F.3d 1016, 1020 (9th Cir. 2018). However, this is not the end of the inquiry because 

here, as in Peterson, there was a significant struggle with the officer as he attempted 

to arrest Gonzalez, including pulling her hand out of the officer’s grasp and reaching 

for her purse. At the evidentiary hearing, the officer testified that had he not 

searched the purse and discovered the drugs and weapons, he would have cited 

Gonzalez for resisting arrest. As we explained in a similar situation in Peterson:

Peterson’s ability to post bail on the [outstanding] warrants, however, 

has no bearing on whether his backpack would have been subject to 

an inventory search had he been booked on charges of obstructing 

law enforcement officers or resisting arrest because bail had not yet 

been set on those charges at the time Peterson was booked. . . . 

Because the officers would have booked Peterson on obstruction or 

resisting arrest charges absent discovery of the gun, and because bail 

had not yet been set on those charges, Peterson would have been 

taken into custody upon booking.

Id.
5 

Although in his testimony the officer here used the word “cited” rather than 

“arrested” when discussing the hypothetical resisting arrest charge, in the larger 

context of the questioning as a whole it was not unreasonable for the district court 

to infer that the officer meant that if he had not discovered the additional evidence 

of felony charges, he would have instead booked Gonzalez on a resisting arrest 

charge, no bail would have yet been set for this charge, and therefore there would 

have been an inventory search of the purse pursuant to that arrest. Thus, the 

evidence in Gonzalez’s purse would inevitably have been discovered. Id.

AFFIRMED.