Rancho del Rio Evidence Is Upheld : Drugs: A U.S. District Court judge’s ruling keeps intact a prosecution based on a raid at the alleged smuggling center.

SANTA ANA —  Although she said she would not have approved the search warrant used, a federal judge Thursday refused to throw out evidence seized during a police raid of Rancho del Rio, allegedly the enclave of one of the nation’s largest marijuana smuggling rings.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler keeps intact the government’s case against Daniel James Fowlie, 57, who is charged with 26 drug-related charges, many of them purportedly supported with evidence seized at Fowlie’s eastern Orange County ranch in February, 1985.

Stotler ruled that sheriff’s deputies and federal agents did not have enough evidence at the time to justify a search of the ranch. But under federal law, she said, the evidence cannot be thrown out, because the officers acted in good faith and honestly believed that they had enough information for a legal search.

“I would not have issued this warrant had it come to me at that time,” Stotler said. “It is very debatable, and it is a close case. But there is no reason to find bad faith. A well-trained officer consulted with the district attorney, who submitted it to a magistrate, who approved it.”

Except for the good-faith provision, Stotler came close to repeating a 1986 Superior Court decision that threw out the search warrant and gutted the district attorney’s case against some of Fowlie’s alleged associates. Fowlie was out of the country at the time. The case has since been taken up by federal authorities.

The warrant in question was based on information developed in the arrest of Wade T. Westmoreland on Feb. 25, 1985, at his South Laguna home. Westmoreland was the foreman of Rancho del Rio.

Sheriff’s deputies were investigating a report of gunshots at about 2 a.m. when they found Westmoreland in a South Laguna home on Sunset Avenue with the lights on. He had liquor on his breath and a handgun in his waistband as he opened his door for deputies.

More importantly, police reports show that Westmoreland had a 50-pound bale of marijuana in his house along with $73,000 in cash, drug ledgers and paperwork linking him to Rancho del Rio, a 213-acre property on the Orange County-Riverside County line.

Based on those clues, information from an anonymous informant, intelligence on Fowlie and a general knowledge that smugglers hide drugs in many places, investigators sought a search warrant for the ranch, which was granted by a state court.

In the subsequent search, authorities said they found a money-counting machine, a subterranean storage area, cocaine processing chemicals, packaging equipment, an assortment of firearms and marijuana residue in what was described as a processing area for marijuana shipments.

Court records show that raiders also found TV shipping cartons and sheets of fabric softener, allegedly a way to transport drugs and mask the odor of marijuana.

Fowlie’s defense attorney, James D. Riddet, who requested that the evidence be thrown out, argued before Stotler that Westmoreland’s role as the ranch foreman was not a strong enough link to suggest that drugs or other incriminating items were at Rancho del Rio. He also said the information from the anonymous informant was inherently unreliable and never substantiated.

Asst. U.S. Atty. Elana S. Artson said Thursday that the warrant was adequate because Westmoreland had solid ties to the ranch that were confirmed by his own paperwork and the anonymous informant.

She argued that sheriff’s deputies and federal authorities made reasonable inferences based on their experience that drugs and other evidence might be at the ranch.

She also pointed out a U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld search warrants as long as officers acted in good faith.

Fowlie, who fought his extradition from Mexico for three years before his return to Orange County in July, is suspected of operating one of the largest marijuana operations in the United States in 1982-85, using rented warehouses in Orange County and Rancho del Rio.