Gorsuch slams Supreme Court majority in drug trafficking case

Justice Neil Gorsuch blasted the Supreme Court majority for ruling against a drug trafficking defendant Thursday, saying the decision gives the government too much prosecutorial power.

Delilah Guadalupe Diaz appealed to judges after a jury found her guilty of importing methamphetamine across the southern U.S. border, a charge that requires the government to prove that Diaz knowingly transported drug.

Diaz, who claims she was a blind mule and unaware of the drugs in her car, argued that federal rules of evidence do not allow prosecutors to ask their expert witness to testify to jurors that most of the couriers knew they were transporting illegal drugs.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected Diaz's appeal by six votes to three. Justice Clarence Thomas' majority opinion was joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and four other conservatives: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Gorsuch, former President Trump's first appointee to the Court, who has at times broken with his conservative colleagues to side with the defendants, did so again Thursday, saying the expert's testimony was inadmissible.

” The result ? The government leaves with a powerful new tool in its pocket,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

“Prosecutors can now call an expert witness—someone who apparently has the practical ability to read minds—and let him explain what “most” people like the defendant think when they commit a legally prohibited act,” he continued. “Then the government can simply ask the jury to conclude that the defendant is like “most” people and convict him.”

The case revolved around a federal rule of evidence stating that expert witnesses “shall not express an opinion as to whether or not the defendant had a mental state or condition that constitutes an element of the crime charged.” .

Thomas found that the rule did not prohibit the expert's testimony in the case of Diaz, a Department of Homeland Security special agent, because they did not express an opinion about Diaz herself, only about drug traffickers in general.

“An expert's conclusion that 'most people' in a group have a particular mental state does not constitute an opinion about 'the accused,'” Thomas wrote.

Gorsuch lamented in his dissenting opinion: “No one can determine what authority authorizes this kind of charade in federal criminal trials, but it is certainly not found in Rule 704.”

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