United States v. McIntosh (Samora)

514 F. App'x 783
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedApril 12, 2013
Docket11-3333
StatusUnpublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 514 F. App'x 783 (United States v. McIntosh (Samora)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth 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. McIntosh (Samora), 514 F. App'x 783 (10th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

BOBBY R. BALDOCK, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Defendant Samora McIntosh of one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A)(vii). He now appeals from his conviction and sentence on five separate grounds. Our jurisdiction arises under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742. We affirm.

I.

The facts relating to the larger marijuana trafficking conspiracy involved in this case are set forth more fully in United States v. Stephen Blackburn, — Fed. Appx. -, No. 11-3294, 2013 WL 1490797 (10th Cir.2013) (unpublished). Defendant’s active role in the conspiracy ended on May 2, 2007, when police executed a search warrant on a house in Avondale, Arizona. Police arrested Defendant along with four other men: Sheldon McIntosh (Defendant’s brother), Theodore McDowell, Dwight Rhone, and Ibrahima Kane. Officers had arrested the conspiracy’s ringleader, Curtis Pitter, a few hours earlier when he left the house in a van carrying saran-wrap style packaging with small amounts of marijuana stuck to it. A vehicle in the house’s garage contained approximately 630 pounds of marijuana in thirty boxes. The marijuana was wrapped in plastic and grease, then placed in cardboard boxes in which the conspirators had glued a thin wood lining. Defendant had glue on his shorts and his right hand. Inside the house, police found drug packing materials and $223,000 in cash hidden in a suitcase and a spare tire.

After Defendant’s arrest, an Arizona jury convicted him on state drug charges. Later, a federal grand jury in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas indicted him and nineteen other people on various drug-trafficking and money laundering charges. Specifically, the superseding indictment charged Defendant with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. At trial, the jury heard evidence linking Defendant and the Avondale house with a larger drug trafficking conspiracy headed by Curtis Pitter. The evidence showed that the conspirators would regularly drive or ride the bus from Kansas City, Missouri, to Phoenix, Arizona, carrying cash. They would then purchase marijuana, package it so as to reduce the smell, and ship it by UPS ground to Kansas City and sometimes other destinations. They would then fly back to Kansas City. Devon Thomas, a member of the conspiracy, testified the conspirators would frequently fly through Las Vegas because “it’s easier to take large quantities of money through Las Vegas because of gambling.” Record on Appeal (“ROA”), vol. II at 1437-38.

The jury heard that in November 2007 narcotics officers seized $139,980 in cash from one conspirator, Gladstone McDowell, who was traveling westbound on Highway 54 in the Oklahoma panhandle. It also heard that the ringleader, Pitter, mailed sixteen boxes of marijuana in June 2009 from a UPS store in Mesa, Arizona. Federal agents seized eight of these boxes, containing 200 pounds of marijuana, at a UPS distribution facility in Kansas City, Kansas. Finally, the jury heard that Glad *786 stone McDowell purchased a residence on Oldham Road in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2005 with cashier’s checks that had been sent from Jamaica. Closing for the purchase took place in Leawood, Kansas. The jury convicted Defendant of the charged conspiracy. The district court then sentenced him to 67 months’ imprisonment after reducing his sentence from 121 months to reflect the 54 months he had served in Arizona based on the same conduct. See U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b)(1).

On appeal, Defendant makes the following arguments: (1) the Government failed to prove venue was proper in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, (2) the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction on the conspiracy charge, (3) the facts proven at trial varied from the indictment, (4) the district court at sentencing erroneously calculated the drug quantity attributable to Defendant, and (5) the Government violated the Interstate Agreement on Detainers.

II.

We turn first to Defendant’s venue argument, which he preserved below in a motion for judgment of acquittal. Article III of the Constitution requires the trial of all crimes to be held “in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 3. See also U.S. Const. amend. VI. Echoing the constitutional command, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 18 directs that venue is proper “in a district where the offense was committed.” When the crime charged is conspiracy, “venue as to prosecution of all members of the conspiracy lies either in the jurisdiction in which the conspiratorial agreement was formed or in any jurisdiction in which an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy was committed by any of the conspirators.” United States v. Foy, 641 F.3d 455, 466 (10th Cir.2011) (quoting United States v. Rinke, 778 F.2d 581, 584 (10th Cir.1985)). The Government need only prove venue by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Acosta-Gallardo, 656 F.3d 1109, 1118 (10th Cir. 2011).

In this case, the properly-instructed jury found venue to lie in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. Defendant has not challenged the jury instructions, but only the adequacy of the evidence supporting venue. In reviewing a jury’s decision that venue lies in a particular district, we “view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government and make all reasonable inferences and credibility choices in favor of the finder of fact.” Id. (brackets omitted) (quoting United States v. Kelly, 535 F.3d 1229, 1232 (10th Cir.2008)).

The Government proposes several bases on which the jury could have rested its venue finding. First, the Government argues the jury reasonably could have found venue to lie in Kansas based on the seizure of eight boxes of marijuana in the UPS facility in Kansas City, Kansas. But although the conspirators certainly shipped the boxes through Kansas, the mere presence of the boxes in Kansas is hardly an “overt act.” Pitter committed an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy when he shipped the packages from the UPS store in Mesa, Arizona. But UPS’s transportation of the boxes through Kansas, even if foreseeable, was not an act committed by any of the conspirators. If this were a sufficient basis for venue, the Government could have brought the prosecution in any judicial district through which marijuana shipments passed. For this specific shipment, those districts might have included the District of New Mexico, the Western and Northern Districts of Oklahoma, and the Northern District of Texas.

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Related

United States v. Rhone
613 F. App'x 763 (Tenth Circuit, 2015)
McIntosh v. United States
134 S. Ct. 323 (Supreme Court, 2013)
United States v. Kane
520 F. App'x 761 (Tenth Circuit, 2013)

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514 F. App'x 783, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-mcintosh-samora-ca10-2013.