A federal judge last month barred the government from using more than two dozen pounds of narcotics seized from a vehicle as evidence against the defendants because a Colorado state trooper violated the prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

When Trooper Joshua St. Onge pulled over Ezequiel Pita-Chavolla and Manuel Pacheco for a traffic infraction, he grew suspicious the two men were trafficking drugs. He eventually called in a drug detection dog and his belief proved correct — there were around 30 pounds of methamphetamine and 12,000 fentanyl pills hidden in the vehicle.

However, the defendants moved to suppress the evidence and Pita-Chavolla’s subsequent confession from being used at trial. The Fourth Amendment requires police officers, if they want to prolong a traffic stop and investigate some other crime, to have reasonable suspicion to do so. 

After reviewing the body-worn camera footage and St. Onge’s testimony at a hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang agreed with the defendants that at the moment St. Onge expanded his traffic stop into a drug trafficking investigation, he lacked reasonable suspicion.

“To hold otherwise, at least in this case, would tend to erode Fourth Amendment protections,” she wrote in a Feb. 21 order. “Here, Trooper St. Onge and the Government have provided no additional facts that meaningfully contributed to Trooper St. Onge’s suspicions … no criminal record, no evasive behavior, no items consistent with drug trafficking in plain view in the vehicle.”

Earlier this month, Wang set a jury trial for the two men to begin in April. However, last week the prosecution appealed her ruling, putting further proceedings on hold.

St. Onge’s specialty is in drug trafficking investigations, and his incident report in Pita-Chavolla and Pacheco’s case described the warning signs drivers and passengers exhibit — in his experience — when they are smuggling drugs.

Around 9 a.m. one morning in January 2023, St. Onge was stationed along Interstate 25 south of Pueblo when he saw a pickup truck with Arizona license plates pass him. St. Onge decided to follow the truck and learned the vehicle’s insurance was “unconfirmed” and possibly expired. He also found out the pickup truck had passed a license plate reader in Arizona several hours prior and had been in Las Vegas days earlier.

After the truck reached 83 mph, St. Onge pulled it over. St. Onge told the driver, Pita-Chavolla, he would not write a ticket, but wanted to speak to Pita-Chavolla at his patrol vehicle. Over 15 minutes, Pita-Chavolla gave St. Onge information about himself, attempted to call his girlfriend for information about the truck’s insurance and responded to the trooper’s questions.

Among other things, Pita-Chavolla said:

• He and Pacheco, the passenger, were neighbors in Phoenix

• They took turns driving overnight and were headed for Denver, where Pacheco had an apartment

• Pita-Chavolla worked on swimming pools in Phoenix, but was going to Denver to look for additional work for a couple of weeks

• He did not acknowledge any recent travel to Las Vegas

Eventually, St. Onge believed something was amiss and he ran Pita-Chavolla’s phone number in a database to see if he was the subject of any criminal investigations. The results came up negative.

St. Onge walked to the pickup truck and spoke with Pacheco. He then told himself he had reasonable suspicion “for sure” and asked to search the vehicle. Pita-Chavolla declined. St. Onge called another trooper with a drug detection dog, who alerted to the narcotics in the truck.

Once in custody, Pita-Chavolla confessed to transporting the drugs. The two men were indicted on three narcotics offenses.

At a hearing in January this year, Wang considered whether St. Onge acted constitutionally by transforming the traffic stop into a drug investigation. She pinpointed the moment when St. Onge needed reasonable suspicion to go beyond the traffic stop: when he entered Pita-Chavolla’s phone number into the criminal database.

By then, “it seems that the stop was no longer about traffic at all,” she noted. “Rather, the evidence suggests that Trooper St. Onge had been waiting to divert from traffic enforcement until he developed reasonable suspicion of drug trafficking.”

The question then became whether St. Onge had reasonable suspicion of a crime. Ticking through the allegedly suspicious factors — Pita-Chavolla “volunteered information,” changed the subject and lied about not being in Las Vegas — Wang concluded the circumstances were either not as the government claimed they were or not necessarily signs of criminality.

“Critically, Trooper St. Onge had no evidence that Mr. Pita-Chavolla or Mr. Pacheco drove the subject vehicle to Las Vegas,” she wrote. “Trooper St. Onge did know (1) that, according to Mr. Pita-Chavolla, he and Mr. Pacheco had alternated driving during the trip from Phoenix, suggesting that other individuals were permitted to drive the vehicle; (2) that Mr. Pita-Chavolla called his girlfriend to obtain the vehicle’s insurance … suggesting that other individuals had access to the vehicle; and (3) that (license plate reader) data otherwise confirmed the overnight itinerary described by Mr. Pita-Chavolla.”

Wang concluded the constitutional violation required excluding from trial any evidence gathered after St. Onge ran Pita-Chavolla’s phone number in the database.

The case is United States v. Pacheco et al.