Court Opinion

ID: 9414048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-01 23:36:11.825796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:47:02.565282
License: Public Domain

REYNALDO G. GARZA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent in the majority opinion because I believe that we are letting a felon go unpunished.
I first thought that if an alien was in court, his presence there would be sufficient to convict on the point that he was found in the United States. That is what I think the district judge thought when he said this, “Do you think that they went to get him in Mexico and brought him here?” However, I realize that this would raise a constitutional question of the defendant having to testify, so I do not believe that my dissent should be on this point.
*503The district judge heard all the evidence on the motion to suppress certain evidence and also heard all the evidence presented at trial. The majority is right that some of the evidence presented at the suppression hearing was not presented at the trial.
However, the same district judge heard both the evidence at the suppression hearing and the guilt hearing and he had a perfect right to depend on all the evidence that he had heard in both hearings when he entered is judgment. Therefore, I think that the evidence the majority says was not presented at the trial was not necessary, for it had already been heard by the district judge at the suppression hearing. For this reason, I think the majority makes a mistake in saying that the government failed to prove what they had to prove at the trial', and for this reason I dissent.