United States Tenth Circuit

Where the warnings given and other circumstances establish a prisoner's awareness of the possibility of monitoring or recording, his decision to take advantage of the privilege of using a prison telephone implies consent to the conditions placed upon it. Defendants' convictions and sentences for crimes relating to their leadership of a large marijuana and methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy are affirmed over claims that: 1) wiretaps carried out during the investigation were invalid and wiretap-recorded evidence should have been excluded from their trial; 2) translations of wiretapped conversations were improper and should have been excluded; 3) one defendant's telephone calls made from prison after his arrest were improperly recorded for use as voice exemplars and that derivative evidence should have been excluded; and 4) the sentences were incorrectly calculated and the life terms imposed were unreasonably long.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/19/2008
• Published 02/20/2008

Judges

• McCONNELL, Circuit Judge., Before HARTZ, McCONNELL, and HOLMES, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Tenth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Theodore J. Lickteig, Overland Park, Kansas, for Defendant Appellant Fidencio Verdin-Garcia;  Linda Mary Neal, Overland Park, Kansas, for Defendant-Appellant Miguel Romero., Sheri McCracken, Assistant United States Attorney (Eric F. Melgren, United States Attorney, with her on the brief), Kansas City, Kansas, for Plaintiff-Appellee.