United States v. Lopez, et al., No. 09-12802 (11th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseThis appeal stemmed from a violent drug conspiracy in South Florida that involved a number of criminals. The four whose joint trial led to this appeal were Daniel "D.V." Varela, Liana "The Negra" Lopez, Ricardo "Rick" Sanchez, and Daniel "Homer" Troya. During their crime wave, Troya and Sanchez carjacked a fellow drug dealer and shot him to death, as well as his wife and their two young children. Lopez and Varela, on appeal, raised several issues, the primary one being that they should not have been jointly tried with Troya and Sanchez. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying the motions for severance and proceeding with a joint trial of all four conspirators who resided in the "Thug Mansion." The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Varela's motion to sever the felon-in-possession charges against him from the other charges; by requiring that all four of the defendants agree on the exercise of any peremptory challenges; in denying Varela's motion to suppress the results of the October 25 search of the "Thug Mansion;" and by allowing Varela's former cocaine customers to testify about their dealings with him. The court further held that the mandatory life sentence of life imprisonment that 21 U.S.C. 841(b)(1)(A) provided did not violate the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause in light of United States v. Willis. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.
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