United States v. Eliseo Contreras

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• recognizing parties’ lengthy relationship, non-cash payment for drugs, and high level of mutual trust as factors taking case outside buyer-seller rule
• holding that evidence that the defendant bought “ten one-kilogram quantities of cocaine . . . over a period of six to ten months” from the same supplier was only evidence of a buyer-seller relationship and not a conspiracy
• describing a buyer-seller relationship as one “between dealers who have no interest in the success of each other’s enterprise”
• no evidence that the middleman had a stake in the supplier’s sales or that the middleman’s assistance was anything more than casual or happenstance
• insufficient evidence of conspiracy between a drug seller and a middleman where there was no evidence that the middleman “had a stake” in the seller’s sales
• specifically noting that there was \no independent evidence corroborating [the defendant’s] post-arrest statement” and concluding that the court was still \not preclude[d] ... from relying on it”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).