United States of America v. Angel Colon

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 09-1803
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
ANGEL COLON,
Appellant.
On Appeal from the United States District court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D. C. No. 2-07-cr-00707-001)
District Judge: Hon. James Knoll Gardner
Submitted under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
on May 10, 2010
Before: BARRY and ROTH, Circuit Judges
and HILLMAN*, District Judge
(Opinion filed: July 7, 2010)
O P I N I O N
*Honorable Noel L. Hillman, United States District Judge for the District of New
Jersey, sitting by designation.

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ROTH, Circuit Judge:
I. Introduction
Angel Colon appeals a May 14, 2009, judgment of the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania sentencing him to 120 months imprisonment, to
be followed by 96 months of supervised release, after he pled guilty to attempted
possession with intent to deliver cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 846.
Colon alleges that the District Court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence of
the cocaine found inside a United States Express Mail package seized by postal
inspectors. We will affirm the judgment of the District Court.
We have appellate jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review a district
court’s findings on a motion to suppress for clear error, and exercise plenary review over
its application of the law to the facts. United States v. Mathurin, 561 F.3d 170, 173 (3d
Cir. 2009). We assume the parties’ familiarity with the factual and procedural history,
which we describe only as necessary to explain our decision.
II. Background
On the morning of October 30, 2007, United States Postal Inspector Jose R.
Cottes, Jr. was reviewing incoming mail at the Philadelphia International Airport when
his suspicion was aroused by an Express Mail package. The package, which was
wrapped in brown paper and heavily taped, had been mailed by Juan Olivencia Ortiz in
Puerto Rico to David Olivencia Ortiz in Reading, Pennsylvania. The package was mailed

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Accurint is an online database that contains up-to-date information about postal1
addresses.
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from a post office in Puerto Rico different from the one servicing the return address.
After consulting the Accurint database, Inspector Cottes learned that the return address1
was a legitimate residence in Puerto Rico but that no one by the name of Juan Olivencia
Ortiz lived there. Inspector Cottes then contacted the post office that services the return
address, which confirmed that no “Juan Olivencia Ortiz” lived at that address.
Based on these facts, Inspector Cottes detained the package for further inspection.
After a drug-detection dog alerted to the presence of narcotics, the inspectors secured a
search warrant and discovered 1.6 kilograms of cocaine inside the package. A controlled
delivery was arranged, during which Colon identified himself as David Ortiz and signed
for the package. He was then arrested.
Colon moved to suppress evidence of the cocaine, claiming that the postal
inspector lacked reasonable suspicion to seize the Express Mail package. After a hearing,
the District Court denied the motion. On February 27, 2008, Colon entered a guilty plea
but reserved his right to appeal the District Court’s denial of his suppression motion. This
appeal followed.

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Although the parties dispute Colon’s standing to challenge the Fourth Amendment2
seizure, we have confined our discussion to reasonable suspicion. Even assuming that
Colon has standing, the District Court properly denied Colon’s motion to suppress
because the postal inspector had reasonable suspicion to detain the package.
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III. Discussion2
Consistent with the Fourth Amendment, a postal inspector may detain a mail
parcel for inspection only if he has a reasonable suspicion that it contains contraband.
United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. 249, 251-52 (1970). In determining whether
reasonable suspicion existed, the district court must examine the totality of the
circumstances confronting the officer at the time and eschew analyzing any one factor in
isolation. United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273-74 (2002). Although law
enforcement officers may not act on a “mere hunch” to establish reasonable suspicion,
they may “draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from
and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that ‘might well elude
an untrained person.’” Id. (citations omitted).
Inspector Cottes stated the following reasons for detaining the package: (1) the
use of Express Mail, a preferred method of drug traffickers which enables them to track
the package; (2) the package was sent from Puerto Rico, a known drug source location;
(3) the package was mailed from a post office outside of the zipcode on the return
address; (4) an Accurint check revealed that no one by the sender’s name lived at the
return address; and (5) the package was heavily taped at all seams, which drug traffickers

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tend to believe prevents detection of the drugs. Although most of these circumstances,
viewed independently, comport with innocent behavior, Inspector Cottes explained how
the combination of these factors provided a reasonable basis for suspecting that the
package contained contraband. See id. at 274 (rejecting a “divide-and-conquer analysis”
whereby the lower court evaluated the factors of reasonable suspicion “in isolation from
each other”); United States v. Whitted, 541 F.3d 480, 489 (3d Cir. 2008) (whether
reasonable suspicion existed at the time of the search is based on the “totality of the
circumstances” even if “each individual factor alone may be consistent with innocent
behavior”).
Moreover, Inspector Cottes was entitled to rely on his seventeen years of
experience in intercepting suspicious mail parcels – five of which were spent in Puerto
Rico – in determining whether reasonable suspicion justified detaining the package. See
United States v. Robertson, 305 F.3d 164, 168 (3d Cir. 2002) (an officer’s “experience
and training [are] indispensable to his evaluation of reasonable suspicion”); United States
v. Dennis, 115 F.3d 524, 533 (7th Cir. 1997). When taken together, these factors gave
Inspector Cottes a reasonable suspicion, grounded in specific observations and
information, to believe that the package contained drugs. See, e.g., United States v.
Alexander, 540 F.3d 494, 501 (6th Cir. 2008) (holding that reasonable suspicion existed
where “the signature was waived with an ‘X’ mark, the package seemed ‘dense,’ the label
was handwritten, the package was coming from [a drug source location], and the return

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address was fictitious”); United States v. Terriques, 319 F.3d 1051, 1056-57 (8th Cir.
2003); United States v. Hernandez, 313 F.3d 1206, 1211 (9th Cir. 2002). Accordingly,
the District Court properly denied Colon’s motion to suppress the evidence.
IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the judgment of conviction.

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