Court Opinion

ID: 9895758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-08 17:06:39.035163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:12.229877
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

                                  No. 22-0948
                            Filed November 8, 2023

STATE OF IOWA,
     Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

ADRIANA BERNICE HERRERA PAEZ,
     Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________

      Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Marshall County, Kim M. Riley,

District Associate Judge.

      A defendant appeals her convictions for child endangerment, possession of

controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia. AFFIRMED.

      Daniel M. Northfield, Urbandale, for appellant.

      Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Israel Kodiaga, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee.

      Considered by Ahlers, P.J., Badding, J., and Scott, S.J.*

      *Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206

(2023).
                                          2

BADDING, Judge.

       Adrianna Herrera Paez, a mother of two young children, appeals her

convictions   for   possession    of   methamphetamine,       possession    of     drug

paraphernalia, and two counts of child endangerment. In a skeleton brief,1 Paez

challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the jury’s verdicts, raising the

same argument for each—she did not know there was methamphetamine or drug

paraphernalia in the hotel room she lived in with the children and their father.

       Our review of this claim is for correction of errors at law.          State v.

Crawford, 974 N.W.2d 510, 516 (Iowa 2022). In evaluating the sufficiency of the

evidence, we look at the evidence in the light most favorable to the State and make

all inferences that can be fairly drawn in favor of the verdicts. Id. Paez’s challenge

fails under this standard.

       On December 29, 2020, at around 10:25 a.m., police officers went to a hotel

on a warrant check for Manuel Rodriguez—Paez’s boyfriend and the father of her

children. They were directed to room 168 and knocked on the door. A very young

child answered, throwing the door open pretty wide. Inside the room, the officers

saw a woman on the bed farthest from door. The officer who knocked on the door

1 While Paez’s brief has the basic framework required by our rules of appellate

procedure, it’s missing the meat. The routing statement does not reference the
applicable criteria in Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure 6.1101, the statement of
the case does not mention the crimes for which Paez was convicted or the
sentence imposed, and the statement of facts is a five-sentence recitation of the
case’s procedural history. See Iowa R. App. P. 6.903(2)(d), (e), (f). “We do not
mention the transgressions out of a fit of crankiness,” because “[r]ule infractions
are not a trivial matter.” State v. Lange, 831 N.W.2d 844, 847 (Iowa Ct. App. 2013).
They can, as the State requests here, “lead to summary disposition of the appeal.”
Id. at 847. Despite the shortcomings of Paez’s brief, we decline that request and
address her claims because doing so does not require us to assume a partisan
role. Id. But we caution against this bare-bones approach.
                                         3

started saying, “Police department. Police department,” trying to rouse that adult.

Getting no response, the officer stepped into the room because she was

concerned the “person on the bed may be deceased or desperately in need of

medical attention.”

       The room was a mess, with toys, clothes, slices of bread, and open yogurt

containers scattered throughout, and it smelled like spoiled food. As the officer

went into the room, she could see the bathroom door was open. On the counter—

strewn among makeup, hairspray, and other toiletries—the officer saw two “bong-

type pipes” that she knew from her training and experience “are utilized for illicit

drugs.” Once the officer got further into the room, she saw another young child

sitting on the second bed in the room.

       Turning her attention to the woman on the first bed, who was partially

covered by a comforter, the officer kept repeating, “Police department. Are you

okay?” When the officer was a couple of feet away, the woman started to wake

up, startling the officer who thought she was dead. The woman had a black eye,

a tissue in one nostril—“similar to what a person would do to stop a nose bleed,”

and open sores on her face. The officer asked for her name, and the woman told

her it was Victoria Ruiz. But when another officer called that name into dispatch,

they learned it was an alias Paez used. Upon further questioning, Paez told the

officer her children’s names and ages. The little boy who answered the door was

three years old, and the toddler on the bed was one year old. Once Paez got out

of bed, the officer could see that she had been laying on top of a “small plastic bag

tied off containing a small amount of like a white powdery, white crystal powder.”

The substance inside the baggie was later identified as methamphetamine.
                                          4

         After obtaining a search warrant for the room, law enforcement found eight

or nine glass pipes,2 including the two on the bathroom counter; a second baggie

of methamphetamine inside a manicure case that was in a green gym bag; and a

small scale.       The pipes and scale had what officers believed to be

methamphetamine residue on them. Several of the pipes and the scale were found

inside purses hanging in the hotel room’s open closet.

         At Paez’s jury trial in March 2022, Rodriguez testified that the

methamphetamine, pipes, and scale were his, even though he was not in the hotel

room when the police came in. He explained that he, Paez, and their two children

had been living at the hotel where he did maintenance work. Rodriguez testified

that in December 2020, he was using methamphetamine multiple times a week.

Although he stored the drugs and paraphernalia in the hotel room, Rodriguez said

that he didn’t use them there. He was worried that Paez would leave him if she

knew about the drugs, so Rodriguez testified that he kept everything hidden from

her. But on cross-examination, Rodriguez admitted that after the first day of trial,

Paez called him from jail, told him some of the details about where the drugs and

paraphernalia had been found, and instructed him “to say that she didn’t know

anything about what was found because nothing was where she was or with the

kids.”

         Keeping with that story, Paez testified that she did not know there were

drugs or paraphernalia in the room. If she had known, Paez asserted, she would

have “gotten [the children] out of there” because their safety was at risk. To explain

2 The crime scene technician testified that she was not sure whether two glass

pieces recovered at the scene were separate pipes or if they went together.
                                         5

the baggie of methamphetamine in the bed, Paez testified that she was actually

standing up and eating yogurt when the officer came into the room. As for the

pipes on the bathroom counter, Paez claimed the door was always closed. And

she denied using purses, insisting the ones in the room were not hers. On cross-

examination, Paez was asked about a phone call she made to another man from

jail during the three-day jury trial. The prosecutor questioned Paez, “You told [that

man] if you’re out there and you run into [Rodriguez], you don’t know me. He will

definitely change his mind. That would really suck at this point. Did you tell [him]

that?” Paez responded, “I did not say that.” On rebuttal, the State played that

recorded phone call for the jury, during which Paez could be heard making those

statements.

       Paez’s insufficiency claims focus on the testimony that she and Rodriguez

gave to the exclusion of other evidence presented by the State. But the jury is

“free to believe or disbelieve any testimony as it chooses and to give weight to the

evidence as in its judgment such evidence should receive.” State v. Thornton, 498

N.W.2d 670, 673 (Iowa 1993). “In fact, the very function of the jury is to sort out

the evidence and ‘place credibility where it belongs.’” Id. (citation omitted). We

conclude the jury could rationally choose to disbelieve the self-serving testimony

of Paez and Rodriguez that she did not know there was methamphetamine or drug

paraphernalia in the room.      See State v. Millbrook, 788 N.W.2d 647, 653

(Iowa 2010); see also State v. Jones, 967 N.W.2d 336, 343 (Iowa 2021) (“While

the defendant has an alternative explanation for the evidence, the jury was not

required to accept the defendant’s version of the events.” (cleaned up) (citation

omitted)).
                                          6

       Long story short, Paez was found unresponsive on a bed in a hotel room

with two young children. While Paez denied using drugs, an officer who had

investigated hundreds of drug cases over the course of her twenty-four-year

career, testified that Paez’s appearance and condition when they entered the room

was “consistent with the fact that she had used.” Indeed, Paez was lying on top of

a baggie of methamphetamine in the bed, and two glass “bong-type pipes” were

on the bathroom counter with her makeup and toiletries. See State v. Thomas, 847

N.W.2d 438, 442 (Iowa 2014) (“[A]n individual has actual possession when the

contraband is found on his or her person or when substantial evidence supports a

finding it was on his or her person ‘at one time.’” (citation omitted)); see also State

v. Reed, 875 N.W.2d 693, 706 (Iowa 2016) (“Constructive possession exists when

the evidence shows the defendant ‘has knowledge of the presence of the

controlled substance and has the authority or right to maintain control of it.’”

(citation omitted)). Other pipes were found in purses throughout the room and

more methamphetamine was found in a manicure case. See Thomas, 847 N.W.2d

at 443 (allowing “possession of contraband to be inferred based on the location of

the contraband and other circumstances”). Paez gave the officers a false name,

and she instructed the children’s father to take the blame for the drugs and

paraphernalia. See id. at 445 (considering that defendant gave police a false name

when caught in determining the sufficiency of the evidence); see also State v.

Wilson, 878 N.W.2d 203, 211–12, 212 n.3 (Iowa 2016) (discussing acts that may

“constitute circumstantial evidence of consciousness of guilt”).

       Viewing this evidence in the light most favorable to the State, including all

reasonable inferences that may fairly be drawn from it, we find substantial
                                       7

evidence that Paez knew there were drugs and paraphernalia in the hotel room.

See State v. Davis, No. 18-1487, 2020 WL 1310271, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App.

Mar. 18, 2020) (“Knowledge may be inferred from circumstances surrounding the

action.”). Because that is the extent of Paez’s argument on appeal, we affirm her

convictions.

      AFFIRMED.