United States v. Derek Aragon Mendes

TACHA, Circuit Judge.

Defendant Derek Mendes appeals his conviction for possession with intent to distribute cocaine and heroin, 21 U.S.C. section 841(a), and raises various constitutional challenges to his ten-year minimum mandatory sentence imposed pursuant to 21 U.S.C. section 841(b)(1)(B). We affirm.

I

This case arises out of an FBI investigation of a three-person drug trafficking operation headed by Mendes and located in West Jordan, Utah. After an FBI informant made controlled purchases of heroin from Mendes’s assistants, Michael Gallegos and Jesus Lopez, the FBI obtained arrest warrants…