Opinion ID: 170473
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Trial Testimony by Witnesses On the Bus

Text: Two witnesses at trial had been on the bus with Mr. Rangel. One was the driver, Antonio Padilla; the other was a passenger, Armando Palacios. According to their testimony, it was Palacios, not the driver, who saw Mr. Rangel remove the small bag from the larger bag, and that observation was made shortly before the bus's arrival in Albuquerque, which was hours after Perry had allegedly received the tip from his source of information. Both Padilla and Palacios had testified at an earlier trial of Mr. Rangel, but the district court had declared a mistrial because the government had not disclosed Mr. Palacios's observations to defense counsel. The testimony of the two witnesses at the first trial was essentially the same as at the second trial. If their testimony was true, then either the source of information (who, it turns out, was the bus-station manager in El Paso) concocted a story about what had been observed in El Paso (although parts of the storyin particular, Mr. Rangel's removal of the small bag from the larger baguncannily conformed to events several hours later), or Perry concocted a story about what the station manager had told him. We begin with the bus driver's testimony.
As we describe in detail below, Mr. Padilla testified that he spoke briefly with Mr. Rangel outside the bus, but their interaction was limited to the usual ticketing and baggage-storing activities that occur before boarding, and he had not seen Mr. Rangel remove the smaller bag from the one he carried onto the bus. Thus, his account contradicts Perry's DEA-6 report in several material respects. On direct examination Mr. Padilla said that as the passengers were boarding the bus he was standing next to the bus door and noticed Mr. Rangel's large bag. After checking the bag with his fingers and leg, he determined that it was quite heavy, R. Vol. V at 99, and told Mr. Rangel that he needed to store the bag with the luggage underneath the bus. Mr. Rangel disregarded Mr. Padilla's instructions and got back in line to board the bus. After telling Mr. Padilla that once his pillow and blanket were removed from the bag it would fit in the rack inside the bus, Mr. Rangel was permitted to board with the bag. Before leaving El Paso, however, Mr. Padilla asked the station manager to call Perry. He explained: When you see a person carrying a large bag, or that I see the person is suspicious or the person is nervous, I call [Perry] to come check the bus. Id. at 105. On cross-examination Mr. Padilla said that the information he had conveyed to the station manager was sparse. He had not told the manager any of the information contained in the DEA-6 regarding Mr. Rangel's actions upon boarding the bus or Mr. Rangel's removal of the small bag from the one he carried onto the bus. Indeed, Mr. Padilla had never observed most of what was reported in the DEA-6 report. He testified: What I told the DEA, and I did not tell it to the DEA, I told it to the company's manager, that there was a suspicious person with a bag and that the person was nervous, but I never said that he was going down the aisle walking with that bag, because I didn't see him. I only saw him getting on. Id. at 141. Defense counsel's cross-examination sought to emphasize the discrepancies between the DEA-6 report and Mr. Padilla's testimony. Asked whether the report correctly stated that he walked up to Mr. Rangel, told him that he needed to remove the bag from the aisle, and kicked Mr. Rangel's bag with his foot, he responded, It's false. Id. at 141. As for the DEA-6's statement that the driver, through his rearview mirror, had observed Mr. Rangel remove the smaller bag from the bag he carried onto the bus, defense counsel elicited that Mr. Padilla did not see, and could not have seen, Mr. Rangel take the small bag out of his larger bag: Q: So when you're in this position [in the driver's seat], you cannot see what the people in the back of the bus are doing, can you? A: I do see all the passengers when they are seated, but I do not see what they do with their hands. I do see when they get up to go to the bathroom, which is very different. Q: And the reason you can't see what they are doing with their hands is because the seats are too high in order for you to see down to what they are doing. Is that correct? A: I see all the passengers' faces, but not their hands. Q: And you never told anyone that my client had removed a black bag from the red/black bag and placed it underneath the seat in front of him? A: No, never. Q: Or beside him? A: Just the bag that he had beside him. That's all. Q: Or underneath his seat? A: No, I never saw anything like that. Id. at 147-48. This point was underscored on recross-examination: Q: You're not saying that you saw my client with this bag marked 1D [the small bag], are you? A: No. Q: And you never saw my client take it out of another bag and put it underneath his seat? A: No. Q: Nor in the seat beside it? A: Only the red one. Q: Nor the black bag underneath the seat in front of it? A: Just the red one beside him. That's all I saw. Id. at 155. And the recross-examination also pinned down what Mr. Padilla had told (and not told) the station manager: Q: [Y]ou were seated in the driver's seat when a passenger, the identity you didn't know of at the time, walked onto the bus carrying a large-sized red and black duffle bag to his respective seat and sat the bag down on the floor area beneath his feet. Did you ever say that to the [station manager]? A: No. Q: Do you remember all of the other statements that I read into the record that are in the report? Do you remember them? A: Repeat them, and I'll listen to them again. Q: Okay. That you, the bus driver, approached my client on the bus and observed that his red-and-black bag was partially laying in the aisleway, and that you attempted to move the bag with your foot. Did you say that to the manager? A: I told him on the door. Q: That's not the question. Did you make this statement to [the station manager]? Yes or no. A: No, not me. Q: Did you tell [the station manager] that you had informed my client that his red-and-black bag was too large to be on the top passenger compartment of the bus and that it needed to be placed underneath the bus in its luggage compartment? Did you say that you had told that to my client? Did you say to the manager that you said this? A: I told the manager about the bag when I was inside, not when I was outside. Q: You told the manager that you had lifted the bag when you were outside the bus? You told the manager that? A: Yes. Q: Okay. Did you tell the manager that my client had told you that the bag had blankets and tools in it? A: No, he told me blankets and pillows, not tools. Q: Okay. Did you tell the manager that you had returned to your seat, had positioned the rearview mirrors in a position to watch my client, that you saw my client remove a small, black-colored bag from the red/black bag and place the bag underneath of his seat? Did you tell that to [the station manager]? A: I never said anything like that. Id. at 155-57.
Mr. Palacios testified that shortly before the bus arrived in Albuquerque he saw Mr. Rangel remove the small bag from the larger bag that Mr. Rangel had carried onto the bus, but he never saw Mr. Rangel place the smaller bag under the seat. Most importantly for present purposes, he testified that he had never told anyone of his observations until months after Perry had prepared the affidavit for the complaint, written the DEA-6 report, and testified at the preliminary hearing. Mr. Palacios's contribution at the time of the arrest was solely to serve as a translator between Perry and Mr. Rangel. When asked whether he had told the officers on May 1 that he had seen Mr. Rangel with the bag on the bus, he responded, No. I found out when he told me what was in the bag, I couldn'tI felt that my life could be threatened, to me, because I felt uncomfortable with the people around the bus. You never know who he could be traveling with, and those people are very dangerous people. Where I live in El Paso, Texas, the news and everything, you can see from Ciudad Juarez, they kill people. Id. at 233-34. Mr. Palacios had, however, given Perry his address and telephone number. Then in August 2005, months after the preliminary hearing, Perry, Officer Rees, and the prosecutor traveled to El Paso to speak with him. At the interview he told the government, apparently for the first time, that he had observed Mr. Rangel remove what seemed to be a laptop out of the red bag, and just [sit] down shortly before the bus pulled into the Albuquerque stop. Id. at 260.