United States v. Asher Adkins

274 F.3d 444, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 26512, 2001 WL 1587262
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedDecember 13, 2001
Docket00-1057
StatusPublished
Cited by71 cases

This text of 274 F.3d 444 (United States v. Asher Adkins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Asher Adkins, 274 F.3d 444, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 26512, 2001 WL 1587262 (7th Cir. 2001).

Opinion

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge.

In 1993, Asher Adkins was convicted of five counts of distribution of methamphetamine, two counts of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, and two counts of using or carrying a handgun during a drug trafficking offense. He disappeared before the last day of his trial and was convicted in absentia. He remained a fugitive until 1999, when he was caught, returned to Indiana, and sentenced by the trial court. Adkins now appeals various aspects of his conviction and sentence.

I

In 1989, Adkins and Marvin Miller began making regular trips to California to purchase large quantities of methamphetamine. According to the trial testimony, Adkins, sometimes with Miller and sometimes alone, made at least 10 and perhaps as many as 40 trips between 1989 and 1993; on each trip, they brought back between 1 and 1/6 pounds of methamphetamine. Adkins sold the drugs from these trips, in bulk, to Dan Tyner and Scott Hummel, who then further distributed the drugs. Several witnesses testified that Adkins and Miller regularly carried handguns on their trips to California, and that Adkins and Miller had told them they carried the guns to protect themselves and the drugs because the trips were “risky business.” Hummel also testified that on at least one occasion, just after Adkins had given him a pound of methamphetamine, Adkins pulled a gun out from under his truck seat and showed it to Hummel.

After the first delivery, Adkins and Miller realized that they could increase their profits by taking some of the methamphetamine out of the packages they sold to Hummel and Tyner and replacing it with filler. Adkins and Miller sold the drugs they removed to smaller-scale dealers. Using drugs from this source and possibly from other sources, Adkins began a smaller-scale distribution business, in which he distributed quantities of between 54 ounce and 4 ounces of methamphetamine to at least three street-level dealers on an almost daily basis. Adkins used Lori Tuttle as a go-between for many of these transactions: he supplied her with a pager and told his buyers that they should contact her if he was not available. She actually made many of the sales for him. Tuttle, who was Adkins’s co-defendant at trial, also kept a ledger detailing the sales she made to the street dealers and the amount of money the dealers owed Adkins.

Based on this evidence, the jury convicted Adkins of two counts of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846, five counts of distribution of methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and two counts of using or carrying a handgun during a drug trafficking offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). As noted above, Adkins disappeared before the last day of trial, so the jury convicted him in absentia. Nearly six years later, after he was caught and returned to Indiana, the district court sentenced Adkins to concurrent 27 year sentences on each of the seven drug counts and consecutive sentences of 20 years and five years on the two gun counts. In this appeal, Adkins raises various challenges to the convictions on the conspiracy and gun *449 counts. He also argues that he is entitled to a new trial because his trial counsel was ineffective. Finally, he argues that the sentences the district court imposed on the drug counts were unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s recent holding in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000). Only the last of Adkins’s contentions has merit.

II

Adkins raises two challenges to his conspiracy convictions. First, he argues that he was guilty of at most one conspiracy, not two, and thus the conspiracy charges were multiplicitous. In the alternative, Adkins argues that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to convict him of either conspiracy the government alleged. Because Adkins did not object to the multiple conspiracy counts in the district court, our review of his contention that the counts were multiplicitous is for plain error only. United States v. Briscoe, 896 F.2d 1476, 1522 (7th Cir.1990). In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence on each conspiracy count, we take the evidence presented at trial and all reasonable inferences that can be drawn from it in the light most favorable to the government, and we will reverse the convictions only if no reasonable jury could have found each element of the conspiracies beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Swan, 250 F.3d 495, 500 (7th Cir.2001).

Although Adkins denies that there was sufficient evidence to convict him of a conspiracy at all, he argues that if there was a conspiracy, there was only one large conspiracy, not the two separate conspiracies charged in the indictment. The critical question in determining whether an indictment charging two conspiracies is multiplicitous “is whether a conspiracy has been subdivided arbitrarily, resulting in multiple [counts] for a single illegal agreement.” United States v. Morrison, 946 F.2d 484, 493-94 (7th Cir.1991). In considering whether there are two agreements or only a single, arbitrarily divided agreement, we consider “such factors as whether the conspiracies involve the same time period, alleged co-conspirators and places, overt acts, and whether the two conspiracies depend upon each other for success.” United States v. Powell, 894 F.2d 895, 898 (7th Cir.1990). In undertaking this analysis, we are mindful of “the rock and the hard place between which we place the government if we are overly exacting in [our] analysis: on the one hand, ... the government may not charge multiplicitous conspiracies; on the other, we have not infrequently discouraged the government from indicting too many defendants under the skimpy guise of a single overarching conspiracy.” Morrison, 946 F.2d at 494.

In arguing that there was only one conspiracy in this case, Adkins points out that both he and Miller were involved in all the conduct charged by the government, that only one type of drug was involved in the case, that all the drugs involved came from the same source, and that the time frame the government charged for the first conspiracy, July to August of 1992, was completely within the time frame of the second conspiracy, which was from the summer of 1989 until April 1993. Therefore, Adkins argues, the majority of the factors discussed in Powell weigh in favor of a finding that there was at most a single conspiracy.

However, there was another way to look at the case. As the government saw it, Adkins, Miller, Tyner, and Hummel were involved in one conspiracy to import large quantities of meth from California.

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Bluebook (online)
274 F.3d 444, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 26512, 2001 WL 1587262, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-asher-adkins-ca7-2001.