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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

Docket No. 40550

STATE OF IDAHO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CADEE JO PETERSON,

Defendant-Respondent.

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2014 Unpublished Opinion No. 810

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THIS IS AN UNPUBLISHED 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. 

Order granting new trial, reversed.

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Lori A. Fleming, Deputy Attorney 

General, Boise, for appellant. 

Sara B. Thomas, State Appellate Public Defender; Eric D. Fredericksen, Deputy 

Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for respondent. 

________________________________________________

LANSING, Judge

Cadee Jo Peterson was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture, deliver, or possess with 

intent to deliver a controlled substance. After a jury trial, the district court granted Peterson’s 

motion for a new trial, holding that it had erred by giving an improper jury instruction regarding 

mistakes of law. The State appeals and argues that the jury instruction given by the district court

was proper. 

I.

BACKGROUND

Peterson 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) 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 
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31 (2014). Indeed, Peterson’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).

At trial, the State’s evidence showed that Peterson worked in the warehouse packaging

“spice.” It also showed that Peterson was carrying a bag containing “spice” and a pipe when 

found by police. When questioned by police, Peterson did not deny her involvement with the 

sale of the substance, but stated that she was unaware that the substance was illegal in Idaho. 

Nevertheless, the State charged Peterson with conspiracy to manufacture, deliver, or possess 

with intent to deliver a controlled substance. At trial, Peterson requested a mistake of fact 

instruction, arguing that because conspiracy was a specific intent crime, the State was obligated 
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to show that Peterson intended to commit an illegal act. In essence, Peterson argued that her 

mistaken belief that the substance was legal in Idaho was a defense to the charge of conspiracy to 

sell a controlled substance. At trial, the court gave both a general mistake of fact instruction and 

a mistake of law instruction. The mistake of fact instruction acknowledged that “[e]vidence was 

offered that at the time of the alleged offense the defendant mistakenly believed certain facts,” 

and directed that the jury “should consider such evidence in determining whether the defendant 

had the required intent.” The mistake of law instruction informed the jury as follows: “When 

the evidence shows that a person voluntarily did that which the law declares to be a crime, it is 

no defense that the person did not know that the act was unlawful or that the person believed it to 

be lawful.” Thereafter, the jury found Peterson guilty of the conspiracy charge. 

Following the trial, Peterson filed a motion for acquittal or a new trial, continuing to 

argue that the State was required to prove that she knew that it was illegal to sell the product in 

question. The district court held that it had erred by instructing the jury that a mistake of law 

was not a defense to the conspiracy charge because “a good faith belief that the object crime was 

not illegal is a defense to conspiracy.” On that basis it granted the motion for a new trial. 

The State appeals the district court’s order for a new trial pursuant to Idaho Appellate 

Rule 11(c)(8).1

 The State argues that a conspiracy conviction requires that the State prove that a 

person agreed to “perform some act that is illegal” and that it need not prove that the defendant 

knew that the act was illegal. 

II.

ANALYSIS

This appeal was stayed, pending the disposition of Taylor, ___ Idaho ___, 335 P.3d 31,

because the parties acknowledged that the issues on appeal in this case were substantively the 

same as the issues raised in Taylor. In the trial court, Peterson and Taylor were represented by 

the same attorney, who filed substantially similar motions for acquittal or a new trial in both 

cases. Likewise, in both cases the district court granted the motion and the State appealed. 

After reviewing the briefing in this case, we find no basis to distinguish this case from 

Taylor and Goggin. On appeal, Peterson argues that because conspiracy is a specific intent 

 

1 Idaho Appellate Rule 11(c)(8) states: “An appeal as a matter of right may be taken . . . 

[f]rom the following judgments and orders of the district court in a criminal action . . . . An 

order granting or denying a motion for new trial.”
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crime, her mistake of law, believing that Idaho’s law did not prohibit the possession or sale of 

the compounds in question, was a defense. Peterson’s argument, that the court erred by 

instructing the jury that ignorance or mistake of law is not a 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 

(2014), 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).
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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. In Taylor, the Idaho Supreme Court applied the rule in Goggin and reversed the district 

court’s order granting Taylor a new trial on the conspiracy charges. Taylor, ___ Idaho at ___, 

335 P.3d at 40. Therefore, we conclude that both the rule announced in Goggin and the 

application of that rule in Taylor establish that the district court erred in granting Peterson’s 

motion for a new trial. 

The order for a new trial is reversed.

Chief Judge GUTIERREZ and Judge MELANSON CONCUR.