Opinion ID: 330729
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Finding the Cache of Marijuana

Text: 2 On March 11, 1974, two Border Patrol agents encountered Mayes walking north on Jewel Valley Road at 7:45 a.m. Jewel Valley Road is partly paved and runs south from Interstate 8 to the Mexican border; the portion nearer the border is dirt. The area is sparsely inhabited, consisting of rocky, brush-covered range. The agents encountered Mayes about one and one-half to two miles from the border. He looked to the agents as if he had spent the night in the brush. In response to questions from the agents, Mayes stated that he was a United States citizen and that he was coming from Mexico. He said that he had been drinking in Tijuana the previous evening when he was robbed and left in the brush and that, when he awakened during the night, he walked north, crossing the border on foot. Because Tijuana is over 75 miles from the point of their encounter with Mayes, the agents had reason to and did doubt his story. Consequently, they arranged to have Mayes taken to the Border Patrol station at Campo, a few miles away, and detained there until they could backtrack his footsteps. (To backtrack is to follow tracks in the opposite direction from that in which the walker was proceeding.) The officers backtracked in a southerly direction toward the border. The persons who made the tracks had walked north. 3 The backtracking took about an hour and a half. The agents backtracked Mayes' boot prints from the point of their encounter south to the end of the pavement on Jewel Valley Road by following boot marks left in the dirt that had blown over the pavement and by checking to be sure that no boot marks indicated an entry on the road from the shoulder. At the end of the pavement, the agents found tracks in addition to those left by Mayes. The agents had examined Mayes' boots and had found a distinctive tread with which the agents were familiar. A pair of boots with similar tread, and a diagram of the tread, were shown to the jury. None of the other tracks found by the agents were similar. 4 The new tracks did not lead anywhere but gave the appearance of people getting out of a car, walking around and getting back in the car. There were many prints from all three tracks in the area. There were also tire markings. The agents backtracked Mayes' tracks along the dirt continuation of Jewel Valley Road and then off the road. About 100 yards from the road, Mayes' tracks intersected and mingled with two further sets of tracks. These tracks were also quite different from Mayes' tracks. One agent traced Mayes' tracks from this point to a cache of 110 pounds of marijuana in a crevice between two boulders on the ground. The other agent followed the new tracks up a hillside, where there was evidence of milling around, and then down to the area around the cache where they rejoined Mayes' tracks. From the cache, the agents backtracked Mayes' tracks and the new tracks south for a short distance. Mayes' tracks separated from the other tracks south of the cache but all tracks came from the direction of the border. 5 The cache was located about one mile north of the border and about one-half mile from the end of the pavement. The agents testified that Mayes left good tracks, although the terrain near the cache was rough and rocky. The marijuana in the cache consisted of 50 one-kilo bricks, wrapped in cellophane and packed into one backpack and three Mexican flour sacks, one separate and two others tied together. Such sacks are often used in smuggling. From these facts the agents could reasonably conclude that three persons had brought the marijuana from the border and hidden it. They could also reasonably conclude that each had carried part of the load one a backpack, one a single flour sack and one the two sacks that were tied together. They could also reasonably conclude that Mayes was one of the three.