United States of America v. De’Adre L. Owens

East St. Louis, Illinois, criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with selling meth and witness tampering.

Ryan Castleman drove Charlie Anderson, a confidential informant, to Centralia, Illinois, to execute a controlled buy from De’Andre Owens. When they arrived, Detective Dukes searched Anderson, provided him with $275 and a handheld recording device, and instructed that he purchase about nine-teen grams of methamphetamine. The detectives then watched Anderson walk to a coffee shop, where Owens was waiting in his car. Owens emerged with a box in his hand, and the two men then walked to the front of Owens’s car, which had its hood raised. Detective Dukes observed that they briefly talked, the box moved around a bit, and then the two separated, but he could not see drugs and money change hands. The interaction lasted under a minute. Anderson later explained to Detective Dukes that the box contained the meth-amphetamine, and Owens instructed Anderson to place the money in the box while retrieving the drugs. Anderson’s re-cording did not capture a clear shot of the exchange.
After the sale, a complication arose: Owens warned An-derson that undercover law enforcement may be in the area and Owens began following him. At this point Detective Dukes called Lieutenant Jamie James, who was stationed out-side of Owens’s home, to request assistance. The two re-mained on the phone and alternated in surveilling Ander-son—one or the other had sight of him at all times—until he could safely reunite with law enforcement. That ultimately took about ten to fifteen minutes, during which neither Detec-tive Dukes nor Lieutenant James saw Anderson interact with anyone. When Detective Dukes could safely pick Anderson prosecutor would need to connect his training and experience to the events in question. Because the government was in the process of doing so, the court overruled the relevance objec-tion. The defense then added, “I don’t know if [the prosecutor has] established him as an expert yet.” The court replied, “I don’t know if she has either,” and explained “she’s going through the process now,” to which defense counsel an-swered, “[o]kay.”

The jury found Owens guilty on both counts. The district court sentenced Owens to a term of 360 months’ imprisonment for each, to be served concurrently. In reaching that conclusion, the court classified Owens as a career offender due in part to a prior state drug offense. See U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1.