UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Vernon WATTS, Defendant-Appellant

Vernon Watts appeals his conviction and sentence for possessing with the intent to distribute crack cocaine. We affirm the conviction but vacate Watts’s sentence and remand for resentencing.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The events leading to Watts’s arrest and conviction began with the suspicions of Watts’s probation officer, John Demmel. Although California’s probationers are subject to a condition authorizing warrantless searches of their property, Demmel was well aware that some probationers would lie to their probation officers about where they were living so they could continue to engage in criminal activity without being hindered by probation searches. Demmel had begun to suspect that Watts was one such probationer, telling Demmel that he lived with his mother on Florinda Way while he continued his criminal activity undetected at another residence.

When Demmel mentioned his concern to Detective James Cooper of the Sacramento County Sheriffs Department, Cooper told Demmel that he had learned from a confidential informant that Watts was living on the south side of the county with a woman named Sonja Lee and her children, that he drove a Ford Taurus and a minivan, and that…