Opinion ID: 2979235
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Goff’s Pre-Arrest Drug-Dealing Activity

Text: Goff grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and began selling drugs with his friend Todd “Swifty” Brown while they were in high school in the mid-1980s. They started out selling retail amounts of cocaine, but in 1988, Goff, Brown, and Goff’s father, Charles Goff, Sr., began selling heroin. Goff and his father provided the connection to their drug supplier. Brown accompanied Goff to Chicago on two occasions to pick up heroin from their supplier. Sometimes, the three men would process the heroin at Goff’s father’s automobile repair shop in Dayton, Charlie’s Car Care. Around 1993, Goff, his father, and Brown moved from selling heroin to selling powder cocaine. Goff’s father “took a back seat” in the operation at this point, and Brown worked for Goff transporting shipments of cocaine from Chicago to Charlie’s Car Care in automobiles with secret compartments. (District Court Record Entry (“R.”) 601, at 102.) They continued this operation for the next several years, and over time, they employed several more drivers, including Goff’s former brother-in-law, Fred Smith. During this time, one of Goff’s customers—who bought cocaine for resale—was an acquaintance of Goff’s named Earl Marshall. Tico Hill worked as Marshall’s “right hand man” during this period and had no direct dealings with Goff. Similarly, Marshall did not deal directly with Brown or Smith. On September 25, 1996, federal agents stopped a vehicle transporting cocaine from Chicago to Dayton. The officers arrested the two couriers, Juan Carlos Myron Abela and Mario Jesus -2- No. 08-4296 United States v. Goff Calbren Valenzuela, and then made a controlled delivery of cocaine to Charlie’s Car Care, where Goff and his father were arrested. Goff was released on bond roughly a week later and was committed to home confinement at his mother’s residence. Goff remained on house arrest until early 1999. 2. Goff’s Drug-Dealing Activity While on House Arrest Shortly after Goff was released on bond, Marshall approached Goff and told Goff that he needed money. A week or two later, Smith and Marshall met and discussed going into business selling cocaine together. A week later, Smith directed Marshall to obtain a warehouse with enough space to accommodate a semi-truck where they could receive shipments of cocaine. Marshall found a warehouse to lease on South Broadway Street in Dayton, and after discussing with Goff how he should pay for the warehouse, Marshall took out a second mortgage on his home to pay a year-long lease. Before receiving the first shipment of cocaine at the warehouse, Goff, Marshall, and Smith came to an agreement about how they would share the profits and divide responsibilities. They planned to buy cocaine at $18,000 to $19,000 per kilogram, mark it up by $3000 per kilogram, and resell it. Marshall testified that under this arrangement, for each kilogram of cocaine sold, “I was to keep $1,000. I was to give Fred Smith $2,000, which he would split up with Charles Goff, Jr. We split $1,000 each.”1 (R. 607, at 22.) Marshall described Goff’s role in this operation as a 1 Brown’s testimony differed on the specifics of this agreement. Brown stated that shortly after Goff was released on bond, he, Goff, and Marshall “had a conversation [about Marshall’s] involvement with the cocaine. Charles Goff told me that [Marshall] would now be in charge of distributing the cocaine. And that the price was $21,000 and it would be increased by $2,000 per -3- No. 08-4296 United States v. Goff “[s]ilent partner.” (Id. at 41.) As Hill described it, after Goff’s arrest, Goff’s “role was basically now like an overseer, you know. He is in charge of [Marshall] and [Marshall] is in charge of me.” (R. 610, at 102.) Aside from taking his share of the profits, Goff’s role mostly was limited to maintaining contact with the supplier in Chicago. They received their first shipment of cocaine at the Broadway Street warehouse in March 1997 via a semi-truck driven by Clayton Kendall, who was hired by the suppliers in Chicago. Marshall estimated that Kendall made twenty-five trips to their warehouse between March 1997 and January 1999. Roughly fifteen of these trips were to deliver cocaine and the rest were to pick up money. Each delivery contained an average of forty kilograms of cocaine. Over this two-year period, they received and resold roughly 600 kilograms of cocaine, which corresponded to $1,800,000 in profits split evenly between Goff, Marshall, and Smith. The shipments stopped in January 1999 for several months because Kendall and a number of other individuals on the Chicago side of the operation were arrested. Around the same time, Goff’s bond was revoked and he was incarcerated in county jail. Because of the Chicago arrests, Marshall wanted to obtain a new property to receive their shipments. Shortly after the arrests, Marshall purchased a property in a rural area on Diamond Mill Road. The title to the property originally was placed in Tico Hill’s name, because he could secure a loan, but later was transferred to another conspirator’s name “to conceal the identity of the owner of the property.” (R.E. 607, at 40.) In order to make a down payment on this new property, Marshall sold Goff’s Plymouth Prowler kilo. And that would be [Goff’s] cut off the cocaine. . . . [I]f [Goff] was incarcerated . . . the money was to go to Fred Smith, his brother-in-law[,] or David Scott . . . .” (R. 601, at 112.) -4- No. 08-4296 United States v. Goff automobile, which he had been storing for Goff. A car dealer named Jerry Manka had purchased the Prowler for Goff in December 1998. Goff had paid Manka in cash, and the car’s title remained in Manka’s company’s name although Goff actually owned the vehicle. After purchasing the property on Diamond Mill Road, it became more common for Marshall and Hill—or couriers they hired—to pick up the shipments of cocaine from Chicago. However, they did receive at least two shipments of drugs at the Diamond Mill Road property. One of these shipments contained marijuana instead of, or in addition to, cocaine. These shipments arrived in a semi-truck with the drugs packed into cement roadblocks, which Marshall and his associates broke open with jackhammers to remove the drugs. 3. Goff’s Drug-Dealing Activity While Incarcerated At trial, there was conflicting testimony about Goff’s role in the drug operation after his bond was revoked in January 1999. Marshall testified that he and Smith had decided that when they restarted the shipments in 1999 (following the January arrests), they were going “to just keep all of the profit ourselves,” (id. at 57), that Goff was no longer involved in the operation, and that he and Smith cut Goff out of the profits when Goff went to federal prison. Marshall also testified that he did not tell Goff about the sale of the Prowler, and that Goff only found about the sale when Manka visited Goff in jail. However, Marshall testified that Goff was upset when he learned about the sale of the Prowler, and he paid Goff $25,000 in cash from the sale after the fact. In contrast, Brown testified that Goff instructed Marshall to sell the Prowler, and that Marshall was upset only because he had not yet received the money from the sale. Brown also testified that Goff was not receiving his full share of the cocaine profits while he was incarcerated, which upset Goff and led Goff to -5- No. 08-4296 United States v. Goff consider trying to cut off Marshall and Smith from the Chicago supplier. Hill testified that Goff continued to receive payments after he went to prison. Finally, there was testimony presented that after Goff was transferred to a Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia (“FCI Beckley”) in June 1999, he helped smuggle marijuana into the prison for resale. One of his fellow inmates, Marvin Scott, who knew some of Goff’s associates in Dayton, approached Goff about selling marijuana. Thereafter, Goff arranged for one of his co-conspirators in Dayton, Dave Scott, to deliver marijuana to the mother of Marvin Scott’s child, Valerie Fenton, who then smuggled the marijuana into the prison when she was visiting Marvin Scott. They carried out this operation three times between December 1999 and January 2000 with roughly one ounce of marijuana each time. Dave Scott paid Fenton $1500 for her role, and Marvin Scott and Goff split their profit from the sales of $6000 evenly.