United States v. Christopher Baker

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Decided: June 14, 2024
• Docket: 23-4081
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

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UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 23-4081

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

CHRISTOPHER LAMAR BAKER,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. Richard E. Myers, II, Chief District Judge. (5:21-cr-00434-M-1)

Submitted: April 29, 2024 Decided: June 14, 2024

Before GREGORY and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and David A. FABER, Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ON BRIEF: Mark A. Jones, BELL, DAVIS & PITT, P.A., Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for Appellant. Michael F. Easley, Jr., United States Attorney, David A. Bragdon, Assistant United States Attorney, John L. Gibbons, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

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PER CURIAM:

Christopher Lamar Baker was a high-ranking member of a violent motorcycle gang

when he was arrested and charged in the Eastern District of North Carolina with eighteen

drug and firearm counts. Baker went to trial and was convicted on all counts. On appeal,

Baker challenges just one of his firearm convictions. Finding no reversible error, we

affirm.

At his trial, Baker admitted to dealing methamphetamine, effectively conceding

guilt on the multiple counts charging him with methamphetamine distribution. Baker

contested only three counts – Counts 4, 14 and 17 – charging him with possession of a

firearm “in furtherance” of a drug trafficking crime in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1).

There was an insufficient nexus, Baker argued to the jury, between his firearm possession

and his drug trafficking activities to make the former “in furtherance” of the latter. The

jury disagreed and convicted Baker of those offenses as well as the others charged.

The district court sentenced Baker to 360 months’ imprisonment for his drug

offenses, varying downward from the Sentencing Guidelines range of life imprisonment.

The court also imposed a mandatory consecutive 540-month sentence for Baker’s three

§ 924(c)(1) offenses. Most of that § 924(c)(1) sentence – 360 months, or 30 years – was

for Count 17, which charged Baker with arranging a trade of drugs for two machine guns

plus cash. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(B)(ii) (minimum 30-year sentence where firearm is

machine gun). In total, Baker was sentenced to serve 900 months (75 years) in prison.

On appeal, Baker challenges only his conviction on Count 17. He does not contest

the factual predicate for the charge – that he aided and abetted the exchange of a large

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quantity of methamphetamine for two machine guns. Instead, echoing his argument to the

jury, he contends that in trading drugs for guns, he did not possess the guns “in furtherance”

of a drug trafficking offense within the meaning of § 924(c)(1). According to Baker, that

exchange was all about his desire to obtain the two machine guns, independent of the drugs

he used as payment: He “did not possess firearms in furtherance of drugs,” but rather

“possessed drugs in furtherance of firearms.” Appellant’s Br. at 40.

That argument is foreclosed by circuit precedent. In United States v. Robinson, 627

F.3d 941, 955 (4th Cir. 2010), we held that trading drugs for guns does constitute

possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. We recognized that the

Supreme Court had (then) recently held in Watson v. United States, 552 U.S. 74, 76 (2007),

that a defendant who trades drugs for guns does not “use” the guns “during and in relation”

to a drug trafficking offense under a separate prong of § 924(c)(1). But Watson expressly

left open whether such a trade would constitute “possession in furtherance” under

§ 924(c)(1), we explained. Robinson, 627 F.3d at 955; see Watson, 552 U.S. at 83. And

in our view – aligned with “a growing and consistent body of post-Watson precedent” – a

drugs-for-guns trade does qualify as possession in furtherance: “Those who trade drugs

for firearms necessarily ‘possess’ those weapons,” at least temporarily; and “[c]oming into

possession during such trades completes (and thus necessarily furthers) each particular

drug-for-firearm trafficking offense.” Robinson, 627 F.3d at 955.

Baker conjures inconsistency in our application of Watson, arguing that we

sometimes follow Robinson and sometimes do not. But our case law suffers from no such

inconsistency: The cases Baker cites as taking a different approach than Robinson all

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involve § 924(c)(1)’s “use” prong, not the “possession in furtherance” prong – which, as

we explained in Robinson, 627 F.3d at 955, presents an altogether different question. So

Robinson squarely forecloses Baker’s argument on this front, premised as it is solely on

the idea that this drugs-for-guns trade cannot, as a matter of law, support a § 924(c)(1)

conviction for firearm possession in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.

Baker raises two other challenges to his Count 17 conviction, but neither succeeds.

First, Baker points to errors in the jury instructions for Counts 4 and 14 – but not in the

instructions for Count 17, which he concedes were correct. On Counts 4 and 14, the jury

was properly instructed on the nature and elements of a “possession in furtherance” offense

and on the definition of “in furtherance,” but the court mistakenly referred to § 924(c)(1)’s

use prong, not its possession prong, in instructing on “affirmative act” and “intent.” Baker,

who did not object to the Count 4 and 14 instructions in the district court, now calls them

plainly erroneous. See United States v. Cowden, 882 F.3d 464, 475 (4th Cir. 2018)

(applying plain error standard to challenge to jury instruction raised for first time on

appeal). But we need not resolve that issue. As noted above, there is no dispute that the

jury was properly instructed on Count 17 – the only conviction Baker challenges – and

Baker has given us no reason to think that the jury somehow incorporated the minor errors

in the instructions on Counts 4 and 14 into its deliberations on Count 17.

Finally, Baker argues that the district court erred in admitting, over his objection,

expert testimony by two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and

Explosives about the hierarchy and structure of his gang and about gang drug-distribution

practices. We generally permit just this sort of “expert testimony on gang communications,

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structures, and practices,” United States v. Zelaya, 908 F.3d 920, 930 (4th Cir. 2018), and

Baker offers no persuasive reason for treating this as the exceptional case in which the

admission of such testimony amounts to an abuse of discretion, see id. (reviewing for abuse

of discretion). And even if it were, any error would be harmless given the wealth of

evidence against Baker and his own concession as to most of the charges he faced. See

United States v. Smith, 919 F.3d 825, 839-40 (4th Cir. 2019) (finding harmless any error

in admission of expert testimony on gang terminology).

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court. We dispense

with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the

materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

AFFIRMED