Opinion ID: 1388566
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence Against Marquez-Ramos on Drug Counts

Text: Marquez-Ramos argues that the evidence was insufficient to convict him on three of the four drug countsthe two conspiracy counts and the substantive possession with intent to distribute count. We also address a slightly different challenge Marquez-Ramos raises with respect to his Section 959 conviction. With respect to the conspiracy counts, there was testimony that Marquez-Ramos was a high-ranking officer who was in charge of the money for the Organization. One witness had seen the Organization import a little under a ton of marijuana on at least ten separate occasions. There were multiple seizures of marijuana at the border of 150-180 pounds. Almost four tons of marijuana was being moved through a Mexican house and drug depot known as The Castle at any given time. In El Paso, between 1000 and 1500 pounds of marijuana were shipped out on a daily basis for distribution within the United States. Marquez-Ramos told Sepulveda that, while Mario Marquez was in jail, he imported and exported drugs for the Organization. On another occasion, he said he controlled a lot of import and exports of the drugs coming in from Mexico to the United States. Mario Marquez told cash smugglers that they could deliver to Marquez-Ramos rather than to him when he was not home. Marquez-Ramos once gave Sepulveda $300,000 in cash to take back to Mexico, and once helped carry at least $1.3 million to a Mexican bank for deposit. The testimony about Marquez-Ramos's violent enforcer role on behalf of the Organization would have been evidence the jury could have taken into account concerning his involvement in the conspiracies. Finally, the government introduced evidence that a drug ledger at The Castle contained multiple entries in Marquez-Ramos's handwriting. A reasonable jury could have found Marquez-Ramos guilty of the two conspiracy counts. The possession with intent to distribute count arose when a police officer observed Marquez-Ramos and others buying what he thought were likely to be drug packaging materials at a store in El Paso. The officer followed the group on a circuitous route back to a house. Later, when Marquez-Ramos left in a white van, the police stopped him. Apparently unaware of the surveillance, Marquez-Ramos lied about where he had been. At the house, officers detected the odor of unburnt marijuana and discovered just under 1,000 pounds of marijuana. A subsequent investigation revealed Marquez-Ramos's fingerprint on an electric scale at the house. Marquez-Ramos claims that the only real evidence against him was the fingerprint, and invokes what he calls the fingerprint only doctrine as requiring a finding that the evidence was insufficient. See United States v. Lonsdale, 577 F.2d 923, 926 (5th Cir.1978); United States v. Stephenson, 474 F.2d 1353, 1354-55 (5th Cir. 1973). If any such doctrine ever existed, it no longer does, since both cases cited by Marquez-Ramos were decided under a former rule applying a now-abandoned standard of review for convictions based solely on circumstantial evidence. The two cases are no longer good law for that reason. Gibson v. Collins, 947 F.2d 780, 782 (5th Cir.1991). Regardless, here there was considerably more evidence than Marquez-Ramos's fingerprint alone, as our recounting of the circumstances leading the police to the house indicates. A reasonable jury could have found him guilty on this count. We now examine the evidence on Marquez-Ramos's distributing marijuana in Mexico knowing it would be unlawfully imported into the United States. See 21 U.S.C. § 959. Marquez-Ramos argues that venue in the Western District of Texas was improper, because the government failed to prove that Marquez reentered the United States at the same place as the marijuana entered the country. The statute, however, states only that a defendant is to be tried where he or she enters the United States; it says nothing about the entry point of the controlled substance. Id. § 959(c). Marquez-Ramos does not dispute that he entered the United States at El Paso, which is in the Western District of Texas. Accordingly, this argument lacks merit.