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Criminal Law Keyed to Capers
Rivas v. United States
Citation:
783 A.2de 125 (D.C. Ct.App. 2001)Facts
Two police officers in uniform, in a marked police cruiser, were patrolling on Hyatt Place, N.W., at around 1:00 a.m. when they saw an automobile stopped in the middle of the street. The officers pulled up behind the car, a two-door Honda occupied by the driver (Melgar, who was also the registered owner of the vehicle), a front seat passenger (Rivas), and two rear seat passengers. As the officers approached the car on foot, Officer Mitchell looked in on the passenger side and saw an open container of alcohol on the rear floorboard. The occupants were ordered out of the car, and as Mitchell reached in to retrieve the container, he saw two plastic bags containing a visible white rock substance in the console between the two front seats. Mitchell, who could see the bags because a streetlight illuminated the interior of the car, told his partner to secure the other occupants while he went looking for Rivas. The plastic bags taken from the console of the car were later determined to contain twelve and six rocks of crack cocaine, respectively, weighing in the aggregate 1,951 milligrams. In the expert’s opinion, the amount and configuration of the drugs (in small rocks) were inconsistent with possession for personal consumption. There was no evidence to show how long Rivas had been in Melgar’s car when the police arrived on the scene, or what he or anyone else in the car had been doing.
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