jury allowed to reject that prudent drug smuggler would permit pilots to remain ignorant of $1 million in drugs stored in cockpit
How later courts described this case
- jury allowed to reject that prudent drug smuggler would permit pilots to remain ignorant of $1 million in drugs stored in cockpit
- “Possession may be either actual or constructive; if the accused exercised some measure of dominion or control over the contraband, either exclusively or in association with others, he constructively possessed it.”
- drug smuggler unlikely to put cocaine valued at $1,000,000 on a plane over which he could exercise no control
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CLARK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I have read the trial transcript. Judge Paine was correct in ruling that the government failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt:
If the evidence is so scant that the jury could only speculate or conjecture as to a defendant’s guilt, verdicts of guilty will not support judgments of guilty. If the trial court concludes, on the evidence submitted, a reasonably minded jury must have had a reasonable doubt as to a defendant’s guilt, the motions for judgment of acquittal must be granted. See United States v. Vidal-Hungria, 794 F.2d 1503, 1513 (11th Cir.1986).
Record, Vol. 2 at 85. (See also further quotations from Judge Paine’s Order, Majority op., 999-1000.) The fingerprints on the cocaine packages were not those of the defendants nor of the agents who handled the packages. The government failed to connect the defendants to the cocaine except by inference.
Battle testified that he did not “feel” the presence of any obstructions that interfered with the piloting of the plane. The experts testified that the soft packages of cocaine in the compartment might or might not impact upon the cables passing through the compartment. 1 Nevertheless, the majority concludes that because the cocaine found on the plane when it reached Ft. Lauderdale “supports] a reasonable inference that the pilot felt the foreign material and, because of the pilot’s responsibility to investigate any irregularity in the plane’s performance, the additional inference that he knew of the nature of the clandestine cargo” may be drawn. Majority op., at 1002. The majority’s unsupported conclusion [that the cocaine affected the controls] then pyramids into inferences of guilt.
With the assumption that the cocaine was put on the plane on January 3, and that the plane was on the ground in Bimini only 90 minutes, the majority concludes “the jury was permitted to find that only the defendants, or someone acting in concert with them, could have committed the crime.” I agree that the jury “could” have reached such a conclusion, but I do not agree that they could have done so “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Judge Paine acknowledged that the defendants might have been guilty, but he was correct in concluding there were doubts to which reasons could be attributed.
I would affirm the district court’s judgment of acquittal.
. See page 995 of the Majority opinion.