United States v. Mayfield

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
• Decided: March 3, 2026
• Docket: 25-5013
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS March 3, 2026 FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v. No. 25-5013 (D.C. No. 4:24-CR-00051-SEH-2) SIDNEY BROOK MAYFIELD, (N.D. Okla.)

Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________

ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________

Before MATHESON, MURPHY, and FEDERICO, Circuit Judges. _________________________________

This case began when Sidney Mayfield drove her son and others to a

gas station in Tulsa. But what may have been intended as a routine trip

ended with Mayfield’s son shooting a man and Mayfield herself later being

convicted of multiple felonies for attempting to obstruct the ensuing

criminal proceedings.

Mayfield now appeals her convictions, arguing that prosecutors

presented insufficient evidence of perjury and unconstitutionally used her

* This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the

doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 and Tenth Circuit Rule 32.1. Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 2

invocation of the right to remain silent against her. Applying our deferential

standard for reviewing jury verdicts, we conclude that the jury heard

enough evidence to sustain Mayfield’s perjury conviction. And applying

plain error review, we find that Mayfield failed to establish the prejudice

necessary for her to prevail on her constitutional argument. We therefore

exercise our jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 to affirm.

I

A

On a late November night in 2023, Mayfield drove to a Tulsa gas

station with her son, Marco Atkins, and several others. 1 They were not there

for long – less than five minutes – but those scant minutes proved to be

troublesome and eventful. When Mayfield arrived, all was peaceful; when

she left, a man named Terry Brown laid on the ground, bleeding from

multiple gunshot wounds. Security camera footage captured the entire

affair.

The footage shows that Mayfield pulled into the gas station in a large

black SUV. After parking in front of the convenience store, Mayfield entered

the store with the rest of her group. They stayed inside for about a minute

1Because a jury convicted Mayfield, “we draw the facts from the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the government.” United States v. Schulte, 741 F.3d 1141, 1144 (10th Cir. 2014). 2 Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 3

before returning to the SUV. A few seconds later, Brown exited and stood

on the sidewalk in front of the SUV.

It’s not completely clear how Brown became entangled with Mayfield’s

group from that point forward, but the way things ended was unmistakable.

Shortly after Brown stepped outside, two members of Mayfield’s group got

out of the SUV to re-enter the store, brushing by Brown along the way.

Brown followed them inside where the three of them appeared to exchange

words. When those two members of Mayfield’s group returned to the SUV,

Brown again followed them outside and began walking past the SUV,

apparently on his way to the gas pumps. But when he reached the SUV’s

back wheel, he paused and turned to face the SUV. At that moment, an arm

extended out of the passenger door holding a gun. Shots were fired. Brown

collapsed. And Mayfield sped away.

B

Several days later, a Tulsa police officer visited the gas station to view

the security footage. After viewing the footage, he noticed Mayfield working

there. So, he asked to speak with Mayfield and gave her a Miranda warning.

At first, Mayfield told the officer that she wanted to exercise her right to

remain silent. However, Mayfield quickly changed her mind. Mayfield

started talking and told the officer that a woman named Le’Kysha Davis,

3 Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 4

who was part of Mayfield’s group on the night of the shooting, had fired the

shots that hit Brown.

About two months after Mayfield spoke with that officer, on January

25, 2024, prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Mayfield’s son,

Atkins. The complaint charged Atkins with assault for shooting Brown, who

had survived the shooting. Prosecutors then subpoenaed Mayfield and other

witnesses to testify before a grand jury two weeks later.

Mayfield accepted the subpoena and appeared to testify. As relevant

to this appeal, Mayfield told the grand jury that she was sitting in the

driver’s seat of her SUV when shots were fired. Mayfield explained that she

heard the shots come from the SUV’s passenger seat on her right. But

Mayfield claimed on multiple occasions that she did not know who fired

those shots. According to her, both Atkins and Davis were in the passenger

area, and she wasn’t looking in that direction. For that reason, when a

prosecutor asked her point blank, “Did you see Marco Atkins shoot Terry

Brown,” Mayfield responded, “No, I did not.” Supp. R. at 26.

According to prosecutors, Mayfield’s answer was a brazen lie meant

to shield Atkins from justice. But that was just the start. In addition to

allegedly deceiving the grand jury, Mayfield made plans to scare witnesses

away from testifying, such as by exposing potential witnesses’ cooperation

to local gangs. Mayfield revealed these plans on recorded jail calls with

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Atkins. She also followed through publicly, posting a video on Facebook Live

that threatened one witness as a “snitch” and a “rat.”

In response, prosecutors obtained an indictment against Mayfield on

five charges related to witness tampering and obstruction: one count for

conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(k), 1512(b)(1),

1512(b)(2); one count of substantive witness tampering, 18 U.S.C.

§ 1512(b)(2); one count of retaliating against a witness for cooperating with

an investigation, 18 U.S.C. § 1513(b)(2); one count of obstruction of justice,

18 U.S.C. §§ 1503(a), 1503(b)(3); and one count of grand jury perjury, 18

U.S.C. § 1623(a).

C

Mayfield proceeded to a joint trial with Atkins. During the trial,

Atkins chose to testify and admitted to shooting Brown. Mayfield did not

testify at trial; instead, prosecutors introduced her prior statements against

her. For example, prosecutors introduced the full written transcript of

Mayfield’s grand jury testimony. They also elicited testimony from the

Tulsa police officer to whom Mayfield had spoken, and the officer briefly

referred to Mayfield invoking her right to remain silent.

After receiving this evidence and more, the jury heard closing

arguments. In those arguments, prosecutors did not address Mayfield

invoking her rights. Rather, they hammered home their theory of case:

5 Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 6

Mayfield wanted to keep her son out of jail. So, according to prosecutors,

she lied to the grand jury that she did not see Atkins fire any shots, and she

obstructed justice by threatening witnesses who may testify against him.

At the end of it all, the jury convicted Mayfield on all counts, and the

district court sentenced Mayfield to a total term of 70 months’

imprisonment. Mayfield timely appealed.

II

Mayfield raises two arguments on appeal. She claims that prosecutors

did not present sufficient evidence to support her perjury conviction. She

also claims that prosecutors violated her Constitutional rights when they

used against her that she initially invoked her right to remain silent when

questioned by a Tulsa police officer. We take each argument in turn.

The Government bears the burden of proving every element of a

charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1,

5 (1994). Once the jury returns a guilty verdict – signaling that the jury

believes the Government has met its burden – appellate courts reviewing

the verdict grant significant deference to the jury. United States v.

Dewberry, 790 F.3d 1022, 1028 (10th Cir. 2015). Under that deferential

standard, we cannot reverse a conviction for insufficient evidence unless the

defendant convinces us that “no rational trier of fact could have found the

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essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. (quoting

United States v. Hale, 762 F.3d 1214, 1222–23 (10th Cir. 2014)). The

defendant must convince us of this without reweighing the evidence or

challenging credibility. United States v. Christy, 916 F.3d 814, 843 (10th

Cir. 2019). And she must do so even as we are required to view all evidence,

and draw all inferences, in the manner most favorable to the guilty verdict.

Id.

The charge at issue here is perjury, which requires the Government

to prove four elements: (1) the defendant made a statement under oath; (2)

the statement was false; (3) the defendant knew the statement was false;

and (4) the statement was material. United States v. Hasan, 609 F.3d 1121,

1134 (10th Cir. 2010). Mayfield challenges the sufficiency of the

Government’s evidence on just two of these elements, falsity and

materiality.

Before addressing those two elements, however, we start with a

threshold question: What are the false statements for which Mayfield was

convicted? The indictment does not identify specific statements. Nor does

the Government’s brief, which instead opts for strategic ambiguity by

asserting that a “rational jury could have found that at least one of

Mayfield’s statements to the grand jury was false.” Resp. Br. at 38. The

Government’s position was much the same when we probed this issue at

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oral argument. In fact, the Government seemed to go even further. It

suggested that we could affirm based on any statement whatsoever, even if

prosecutors never argued that statement to the jury, so long as sufficient

evidence was presented at trial to support a conviction on that statement.

We doubt that proposition. True enough, we must affirm if there is

sufficient evidence to convict on one statement but not others. United States

v. Strohm, 671 F.3d 1173, 1185 n.14 (10th Cir. 2011). But it does not follow

that we have free rein to pick through the entire record in search of a ground

for affirmance on a theory that prosecutors never presented to a jury. To

the contrary, the Supreme Court has told us that we “are not permitted to

affirm convictions on any theory [we] please simply because the facts

necessary to support the theory were presented to the jury.” McCormick v.

United States, 500 U.S. 257, 270 n.8 (1991).

For our purposes in this case, though, we need not and do not pass

upon how McCormick may limit our authority to review perjury convictions

for sufficiency. That is because we find that there was sufficient evidence to

convict on one of the statements that prosecutors did expressly argue to the

jury. Namely, prosecutors argued in closing arguments that Mayfield

committed perjury when she told the grand jury that she did not see Atkins

fire any shots. Prosecutors presented sufficient evidence that this statement

was both material and false.

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Materiality is easy. A statement is material if it has a “natural

tendency to influence, or [is] capable of influencing, the decision required to

be made.” United States v. Leifson, 568 F.3d 1215, 1220 (10th Cir. 2009)

(quoting United States v. Durham, 139 F.3d 1325, 1329 (10th Cir. 1998)).

The decision before the grand jury was whether to indict Atkins for assault

based on the shooting of Brown. That decision obviously required the grand

jury to decide whether Atkins shot Brown in the first place. A statement

like Mayfield’s – that she did not see Atkins fire any shots at all – goes to

the heart of that decision.

Mayfield counters that her statement was not material because the

grand jury was operating under the probable cause standard, not the higher

beyond a reasonable doubt standard. But the ultimate burden of proof is

beside the point. Materiality turns on tendency to influence and does not

require proof that a statement actually influenced a decision. United States

v. Williams, 934 F.3d 1122, 1129 (10th Cir. 2019).

Mayfield also suggests that her statement was not material because

elsewhere in her grand jury testimony, she admitted that the shots had to

have come from either Atkins or Davis. That other testimony, she says,

supplied probable cause to indict Atkins. Maybe so. But Mayfield overlooks

the fact that, had she testified to seeing Atkins fire the shots instead of

denying that she had seen anything, the grand jury would have had greater

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cause to indict. Certainly, that additional evidence would have influenced

the grand jury’s decision. We therefore conclude that the Government

presented sufficient evidence of materiality.

Falsity is somewhat more challenging. To support perjury, a

statement must be more than “arguably misleading by negative

implication.” Strohm, 671 F.3d at 1183 (quoting Bronston v. United States,

409 U.S. 352, 352–53 (1973)). If a statement is literally true, it is not

perjurious even if it “implies [some] material matter that [the speaker] does

not believe to be true.” Id. at 1184 (quoting Bronston, 409 U.S. at 357–58).

Mayfield invokes this literal truth defense.

The thrust of Mayfield’s argument is that she was not looking at

Atkins when shots were fired, so she literally did not see Atkins firing the

shots. And to be sure, there was no direct evidence that Mayfield was

watching Atkins. The surveillance video that exists is too low in resolution

for anyone to see which direction Mayfield was looking in when Atkins

opened fire.

That said, the circumstantial evidence is fatal to Mayfield’s position.

As Mayfield admitted, at the time of the shooting she was in the driver’s

seat of her SUV, and Atkins was in the passenger seat next to her. She also

claimed to be looking directly at Brown when he was shot. Since Brown was

standing by the rear wheel on the passenger side of the SUV, that means

10 Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 11

Mayfield was facing in Atkins’s direction. As the diagram below illustrates,

a rational jury could infer from these facts, beyond a reasonable doubt, that

Atkins was within Mayfield’s line of sight when he pulled the trigger. That

would make Mayfield’s statement literally false, supplying sufficient

evidence to support falsity.

Resp. Br. at 12. 2

Accordingly, we conclude that there was sufficient evidence to convict

Mayfield of perjury.

2 This diagram was presented as a demonstrative exhibit in the Government’s appellate brief, not as evidence at trial. We include it here for demonstrative purposes only. To avoid confusion, we have also removed the labels for the other individuals in the SUV. 11 Appellate Case: 25-5013 Document: 68-1 Date Filed: 03/03/2026 Page: 12

With that, we turn to Mayfield’s constitutional argument. In Doyle v.

Ohio, the Supreme Court held that it violates due process to use a

defendant’s invocation of the right to silence against her at trial. 426 U.S.

610, 618 (1976); see also United States v. Oliver, 278 F.3d 1035, 1039 (10th

Cir. 2001). Mayfield asserts that the Government crossed this line when one

of its witnesses – the Tulsa police officer with whom she had spoken – told

the jury that she had invoked her rights.

Mayfield concedes, though, that she did not object to this testimony

during trial. Thus, we review for plain error. United States v. LaVallee, 439

F.3d 670, 684 (10th Cir. 2006). Under plain error review, we reverse only if

(1) there was error that (2) was plain, and that error (3) caused prejudice

and (4) affected the fairness and integrity of judicial proceedings. Christy,

916 F.3d at 843. We may affirm, however, on any one prong. See United

States v. Lacy, 904 F.3d 889, 894–95 (10th Cir. 2018) (affirming based solely

on the third prong). We affirm here on the third prong.

As the appellant, Mayfield bears the burden of proving prejudice

under the third prong. United States v. Gonzalez-Huerta, 403 F.3d 727, 733

(10th Cir. 2005). Mayfield must convince us there is “a reasonable

probability that, but for the error claimed, the result of the proceeding

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would have been different.” Id. (quoting United States v. Dominguez

Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 82 (2004)). She has not carried that burden.

Assuming without deciding that the Government committed a plain

Doyle error, we find that Mayfield nonetheless suffered no prejudice

because that error was a little more than a blip in the context of the entire

trial. Here is the entirety of the challenged testimony:

Q. Did you interview Sidney Mayfield?

A. Yes, I did. Asked her to step outside and speak with me. She did. We went to my patrol vehicle, and I read her her Miranda rights.

***

Q. What did Ms. Mayfield say during that interview?

A. When I read her the Miranda rights, she stated that she did not want to speak with me, and I ended the interview at that point. I exited my vehicle, and left her sitting in the front passenger’s seat of my vehicle.

Q. And did you – did she later change her mind, agree to talk [to you]?

A. Yes. Uh, while other officers in my unit were searching [her] vehicle, uh, she stated she did want to speak with me. I again informed her of her Miranda rights. She requested to waive those rights, and speak with me freely.

R. III at 115–16.

As this shows, the testimony about Mayfield’s Miranda rights

consisted of brief, unsolicited comments. Prosecutors moved on quickly. And

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other than a short mention of the Miranda invocation by Mayfield’s own

attorney, the topic did not come up again during the trial, not even in

prosecutors’ closing arguments. Significantly, the testifying officer also

revealed that Mayfield agreed to speak with him almost immediately after

she initially invoked her rights. The fact that jurors heard about how

Mayfield spoke with the officer makes it unlikely for them to infer from

Mayfield’s invocation of rights that she had something to hide or had

otherwise done anything wrong.

All in all, Mayfield has not shown how the challenged testimony

reasonably could have affected the outcome of her trial. As a result, she has

not established reversible error.

AFFIRMED.

Entered for the Court

Richard E.N. Federico Circuit Judge