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Criminal Law Keyed to Gershowitz
United States v. Villarreal
Citation:
2012 WL 401051.Facts
On June 25, 2011 the defendant arrived at a border patrol checkpoint in Texas. Before he arrived, Border Patrol officials had received an anonymous tip that he was carrying illegal drugs. They searched him and found ten bundles of white powder in his car.
Subsequent laboratory analysis concluded that the packages instead contained cocaine and had a net weight of 8.4 kilograms. The laboratory separated the ten bundles into two groups. The first group, consisting of two bundles containing wet white powder and 1 bundle containing wet pink powder, had a net weight of 2.5 kilograms and a purity of .41%. The second group, consisting of 7 bundles of compressed white powder, had a net weight 5.9 kilograms and a purity of 3.2%. The laboratory analysis confirmed that each individual bundle contained the controlled substance cocaine.
He was convicted of having more than 5 kilograms of cocaine 21 U.S.C. § 841. He appealed, claiming that he should not be responsible for 8.4 kilograms of cocaine because the substance was so diluted that it was unmarketable “garbage.”
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