The Supreme Court has accepted the appeal of an accused drug trafficker stopped at the border who claims she didn’t know that 28 kilograms of methamphetamine were hidden in the door panels of the car she was driving.
The case is Diaz v. United States (court file 23-14). The Supreme Court granted the petition for certiorari, or review, without comment in an unsigned order on Nov. 13. No justices dissented.
At least four of the nine justices must vote for the petition for it to move forward to the oral argument stage.
The case goes back to Aug. 17, 2020, when Delilah Guadalupe Diaz was returning to her home in California after a trip to Mexico.
Officials found 27.98 kilos (about 62 pounds) of methamphetamine concealed in the door panels of the car. The illegal drugs have an estimated street value of $400,000.
Ms. Diaz said she didn’t know the drugs were in the car, which belonged to her boyfriend. She said she had gone to Mexico for the weekend with her daughter but that her daughter drove back earlier and Ms. Diaz remained with her boyfriend.
Authorities said she had two cellphones in her possession, one of which was locked and couldn’t be opened. The car also had a hidden GPS tracking device.
Was She a ‘Blind Mule’?
During her trial, a law-enforcement agent testified as an expert witness and said that generally, couriers know they are shipping large quantities of drugs across the border and that traffickers, for the most part, don’t risk the loss of a big shipment on so-called blind mules, or couriers who don’t know that they are carrying.U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia of the Southern District of California allowed the expert testimony. He was appointed in 2011 by President Barack Obama.
Ms. Diaz was convicted of importing meth in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act. She was sentenced to seven years in prison.
On appeal, her lawyer argued that the expert testimony ran afoul of Federal Rule of Evidence 704(b), which provides that “in a criminal case, an expert witness must not state an opinion about whether the defendant did or did not have a mental state or condition that constitutes an element of the crime charged” and that such a question is reserved “for the trier of fact alone.”
An essential element in proving the importation of illegal drugs is that the defendant actually knew she was carrying the drugs.
This element is “necessary to separate wrongful conduct from ‘otherwise innocent conduct,’” her lawyer said, citing precedent.
She argued that drug traffickers must have used her as a blind mule and that the expert testimony suggesting the opposite introduced prejudice.
Allowing that testimony “impermissibly lightens the Government’s burden to prove knowledge beyond a reasonable doubt, permitting it to substitute a generalization about a particular class of defendants for evidence specific to the actual defendant,” according to the petition.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the conviction, finding that the rule prevents expert witnesses only from opining about whether a specific individual knew he or she was committing a crime, not from expressing a general opinion about similarly placed defendants and the likelihood of their guilt.
“We have allowed such testimony so long as the expert does not provide an ‘explicit opinion’ on the defendant’s state of mind, and the expert did not do so here,” the circuit court stated.
The 5th Circuit, as opposed to the 9th Circuit, would have ruled the expert testimony inadmissible, she stated. Because the 5th Circuit covers almost all of the remaining portion of the U.S. border with Mexico, this conflict between the two circuit courts must be resolved by the Supreme Court, Ms. Diaz argued.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) acknowledged the circuit split but urged the Supreme Court not to take the appeal.
The 5th Circuit’s test is largely “fact dependent,” the government said, according to the summary.
Besides, the government argued, Ms. Diaz’s story was “flimsy” and the case against her was strong. The government noted that she claimed not to know where her boyfriend was living or to have his telephone number.
She also said she didn’t like driving at night, yet she presented herself at the border at 2 a.m.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Ms. Diaz’s counsel and to the DOJ but received none by press time.
A hearing date hasn’t yet been scheduled. The case is expected to be decided by June 2024.
