Court Opinion

ID: 9456889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:05:05.546564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:08.016540
License: Public Domain

FEINBERG, Circuit Judge, with whom J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge,
joins (dissenting):
Since I believe that the proper course to follow here is to remand this case to the district court for an adversary hearing on the validity of the presumptions in 21 U.S.C. § 174, I respectfully dissent.
In Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 90 S.Ct. 642, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970), the Supreme Court held that possession of less than one gram of cocaine was insufficient to warrant the presumptions of section 174 “either that the cocaine that Turner possessed came from abroad or that Turner must have known that it did.” Id. at 419, 90 S.Ct. at 654. Accordingly, it reversed Turner’s conviction on a cocaine count. However, it postponed consideration of whether the same section 174 presumptions might be valid as applied to a large amount of cocaine, “hopefully until after the facts [had] been presented in an adversary context in the district courts.” Id. at 419 n. 39, 90 S.Ct. at 654. Some six months later, the issue came before this court in a case tried before the Turner decision and involving 831 grams of cocaine, United States v. Vasquez, 429 F.2d 615 (2d Cir. 1970). At that time, we followed the Court’s suggestion and sent the case back to the district court for an adversary hearing on a full record on the rationality of the presumptions.
Despite the suggestion of the Supreme Court and the prior action of this court, the majority in this case now proceeds to decide these extremely important issues upon a record made before the decision in Turner and therefore devoid of the facts necessary to an informed determination. Instead the majority relies upon “evidence” which has not truly been subjected to the adversarial process. I emphatically dissent from this course. I continue to believe that the Court’s “hope”' should be our command, unless there is some good reason for disregarding it. I see none, and the majority opinion advances none. To the contrary, there are good reasons for following the Court’s suggestion. As to the cocaine transaction in 1968, the year involved here, the majority refers to no more relevant information about importation or theft from domestic sources than the court had in Turner, when it refused to decide the issue presented here. Nor is the doubt expressed in Turner relieved by reference by the majority in this case to statistics of 1969 and 1970. Moreover, on this record, the presumption of defendants’ knowledge of illegal importation of the cocaine is particularly vulnerable, as Judge Kaufman’s dissent to the original panel opinion pointed out.1 Finally, the defendants should, in any event, be given the opportunity to contest at the trial level the “judicially noticed” facts relied upon here and to elicit what the majority concedes “might well [be] valuable statistical information.” P. 707 supra.
It may be that upon a proper record the majority would be correct in concluding that the presumptions are valid, at least as applied to one kilogram or other “large quantities” of cocaine. But these issues should be decided after an adversary hearing in the district court on the validity of the presumptions. I would remand for such a hearing.

. Supra 703-705 (1969 Term, Sept. 16, 1970).