Opinion ID: 1372493
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lumpkin's Testimony Regarding His Interactions with Truck Drivers

Text: During a suppression hearing on April 24, 2006, the district court questioned Agent Lumpkin about Ozuna's release. The purpose of this inquiry was to determine whether Aguilar, who had orchestrated the drug sale, would have been suspicious that Ozuna was cooperating with law enforcement because he was released after the cocaine was seized. Lumpkin stated that sometimes when trucks travel from Mexico to the United States, their drivers are unaware of what the warehouse had put into their trailers when loading produce. He further commented: A tractor-trailer holds 60 to 70,000 pounds, and in four small boxes of ... what they say could be limes, they have commingled in there 50 or 80 or a couple hundred kilos of coke; you may not know. I mean, through my training and experience of working on the border, sometimes theythese guys don't know. And they followed all the rules, they checked their produce and checked it out and they have got the lock on the back and they're doing their job and sometimes it's not working for them. Thus, Lumpkin noted, it would be reasonable for Aguilar to think that the agents had believed Ozuna when he said he didn't know the cocaine was in the truck. Ozuna sought to admit this testimony at his trial. The district court refused. The judge noted that the fact that a truck driver might not know about the presence of controlled substances is self-evident and that expert testimony was not needed. He also commented that the circumstances regarding the situation Lumpkin described and Ozuna's situation were different. Ozuna had no paperwork for the limes, so they had no legitimate destination; their only purpose was to conceal the cocaine. Ozuna claims that this was an obvious abuse of discretion because [t]he admission of this testimony would make Mr. Ozuna's claim that he did not know about the narcotics in the truck seem more likely to the jury. We disagree. The district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Lumpkin's testimony was not helpful to the jury. Lumpkin was not addressing whether it was possible that Ozuna actually knew about the cocaine. Instead, the purpose of describing this scenario was to determine whether Aguilar would have suspected Ozuna's cooperation with law enforcement because he was released. He concluded that Aguilar may have believed Ozuna's story because sometimes truck drivers are unaware their trucks contain cocaine when they are legitimately transporting produce. Admitting this testimony would have allowed the jury to take Lumpkin's remarks out of context. It was therefore not an abuse of discretion to exclude them. Furthermore, even if this was an error, it was harmless. An error is harmless when it does not affect the outcome of the trial, in other words, where we are convinced that the jury would have convicted even absent the error. United States v. Ortiz, 474 F.3d 976, 982 (7th Cir.2007), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 51, 169 L.Ed.2d 44 (2007). This testimony was one hypothetical postulation about some truck drivers in scenarios factually different from Ozuna's. It had little probative value into Ozuna's specific circumstance. The jury was informed by Ozuna's arguments and common sense that some truck drivers could be unaware that their trucks contain cocaine. We are convinced that the jury would have convicted Ozuna even if it had been allowed to consider Lumpkin's testimony.