United States v. Murry, Darnell

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJanuary 3, 2005
Docket03-2413
StatusPublished

This text of United States v. Murry, Darnell (United States v. Murry, Darnell) 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. Murry, Darnell, (7th Cir. 2005).

Opinion

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 03-2413 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v.

DARNELL MURRY, Defendant-Appellant.

____________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 02 CR 1056—Suzanne B. Conlon, Judge. ____________ ARGUED APRIL 6, 2004—DECIDED JANUARY 3, 2005 ____________

Before RIPPLE, KANNE and ROVNER, Circuit Judges. ROVNER, Circuit Judge. A jury found Darnell Murry guilty of one count of transporting fraudulently obtained merchandise across state lines in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2314 and 2, and one count of obtaining goods valued at over $1000 through the unauthorized use of an access de- vice in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1029(a). On appeal, Murry challenges both his conviction and his sentence, claiming the district court erred in several evidentiary rulings and in instructing the jury on the use of summary charts admitted into evidence. He complains the court also erred in setting 2 No. 03-2413

the amount of restitution he is required to pay as part of his sentence. We affirm the conviction but vacate and remand the sentence so that the district court may adjust the restitution order.

I. Murry devised a simple scheme to lift large amounts of merchandise from stores without paying for it so that he could resell it on the street. In the beginning of this ill-con- ceived venture, Murry simply added himself as an autho- rized user on the store credit card accounts of unsuspecting shoppers. He then purchased goods in person at the stores or placed telephone orders for merchandise and sent his cousin, Horatio Jones, to pick up the items with a rented truck. Co-defendant Kwonnie Stanciel also assisted Murry by finding buyers for the fraudulently obtained merchan- dise. Evidence at the trial showed that Murry used twenty- five credit card account numbers belonging to twenty-three different victims to complete or attempt to complete pur- chases totaling more than $250,000 at Home Depot, Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart stores in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana. All of these stores had credit programs run by GE Capital. The purchases were made between March 28, 2002 and October 31, 2002. Jones was eventually arrested trying to pick up a load of hardwood flooring that Murry had ordered using one of the fraudulent accounts. Jones agreed to cooperate with the government in an investigation of Murry’s fraudulent pur- chases. Jones subsequently recorded phone calls with Murry in which Murry asked Jones to pick up more hardwood flooring from Home Depot stores in Michigan and Indiana. On October 31, 2002, the scheme came to an end. Jones had recorded calls in which Murry asked him to pick up $12,000 worth of hardwood flooring from a Home Depot store in Indiana. Murry had ordered the flooring by phone, again No. 03-2413 3

using one of the accounts to which he had fraudulently added his name as an authorized user. Murry and Stanciel drove a car to the Indiana Home Depot with Jones following in a truck. Unbeknownst to Murry, their small convoy was accompanied by a number of federal agents witnessing the transaction. After the merchandise pick-up, Murry directed Jones to an alley in Chicago to deliver the goods. Murry was then arrested and charged as we have described above. All of the purchases that were at issue at trial were sum- marized in charts admitted as Exhibits 222 and 223.1 The charts were prepared by Kellie Meador, an employee of GE Capital, and were based on the business records of GE Capital. Exhibit 222 displayed the purchases made at Home Depot stores, and Exhibit 223 illustrated the purchases at Sam’s Club stores. Although the underlying business rec- ords of GE Capital were not introduced into evidence at trial, for every transaction listed on the summary charts a corresponding receipt or order form was introduced into evidence from the records of the stores themselves. The Home Depot summary chart consisted of eleven columns, titled “Account #”, “Name”, “Auth Name”, “Auth User Added”, “Account Open Date”, “Write Off/Adj Amt”, “Date of Transaction”, “Transaction Amount”, “Store #”, “Called By”, and “Call Date”. The Sam’s Club summary chart consisted of ten columns, identical to those included on the Home Depot chart minus the “Auth User Added” column. For five of the Home Depot accounts, the authorized user listed is Darnel Murry. Other authorized users included David Cole and Thomas Toomey, aliases linked to Murry by other evidence submitted at trial. On the Sam’s Club accounts, the authorized users added to the accounts were either Darnel Murry or Darael Murry, another alias linked

1 The charged conduct included both completed and attempted transactions. For brevity, we will simply refer to the attempted and completed transactions together as “purchases.” 4 No. 03-2413

to the defendant. The “Called By” column listed phone numbers from which GE Capital received inquiries about the account in question. The six different phone numbers used to access account information were all linked to Murry through cell phones or through his home address through other evidence at trial. After two of the primary account holders testified at trial that they did not know Murry, never added him to their credit card accounts as an autho- rized user, never made the purchases in question and did not authorize Murry to make any purchases for them, Murry stipulated that the rest of the account holders would testify in the same manner. This stipulation established that each and every purchase was unauthorized. The summary charts were not the only evidence against Murry. A Home Depot loss prevention employee testified that he observed Murry purchase several expensive tools, including multiples of the same tool, from the store’s “tool corral,” an area that contains high end, frequently stolen merchandise. The employee videotaped the purchase, which Murry made with one of the fraudulently obtained credit cards. The receipt for this purchase was also admitted as evidence, showing that Murry had used one of the fraudu- lently obtained credit cards. The purchase totaled approxi- mately $1400. The prosecution entered into evidence another videotape of Murry making a different purchase using that same credit card, and again the receipt was admitted into evidence. This receipt displayed Murry’s driver’s license number, which was written down by a store clerk at the time of the purchase. One of Murry’s cohorts in this crime spree testified against him at trial. His cousin, Horatio Jones, testified that he picked up merchandise for Murry on multiple occasions from Home Depot stores in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Jones’ testimony was corroborated by the recorded phone calls we mentioned above and by order forms for the purchases, each bearing Jones’ signature, an account num- No. 03-2413 5

ber of one of the victims, and a phone number linked to Murry from which the order was placed. For these transac- tions alone, the purchases totaled more than $80,000. Additional evidence was provided by a Sam’s Club em- ployee who testified that Murry added himself as an au- thorized user to one of the victim’s credit card accounts by filling out a form at the store. The employee photocopied Murry’s driver’s license as part of the transaction, and both the application form and the driver’s license photocopy were admitted as evidence.

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United States v. Murry, Darnell, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-murry-darnell-ca7-2005.