Opinion ID: 768314
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Offense, Search, Arrest and Indictment.

Text: 5 On September 24, 1996, federal agents and officers from the New Haven Police Department appeared at Rogers's apartment in New Haven to execute arrest warrants for Gordon Lauria, Marcos Pappas and Alfred Chicky Bellucci. Rogers advised that he was alone and allowed Special Agent Michael Wardrop of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration to walk through the apartment (at his request) in order to confirm that no one else was there. Agent Wardrop found no one else, but as he walked around the apartment he spotted a closed-circuit television system, a pipe and a bottle of inositol, one use of which is to dilute cocaine. 6 Meanwhile, the same arrest warrants were being executed in a bar beneath Rogers's apartment, called Nancy's Caf. After the two law enforcement groups consulted about their results, Agent Wardrop presented Rogers with a search consent form, which Rogers eventually signed after speaking with several of the agents and police officers. The search yielded a television monitor and four closed-circuit cameras, plastic sandwich bags, inositol, a police scanner, night-vision goggles, cheesecloth, high-power firecrackers, a pipe, silicate packaging and white powder that later tested positive for cocaine. Rogers was arrested. 7 Rogers, Lauria and Pappas were indicted for conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine from December 1994 through September 24, 1996. The indictment also charged that Lauria and Pappas conspired to and (with Bellucci) did retaliate against a government witness. 8