United States v. Semaj Lemar Williams

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: August 14, 2023
• Docket: 22-1522
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 23a0372n.06

No. 22-1522 FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Aug 14, 2023 FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) Plaintiff-Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT v. ) COURT FOR THE WESTERN ) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SEMAJ LEMAR WILLIAMS, ) Defendant-Appellant. ) ) OPINION

Before: COLE, CLAY, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. Semaj Williams pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute

methamphetamine, reserving his right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress

evidence. The district court thereafter sentenced Williams to the bottom of his Guidelines range.

Williams now appeals both the denial of his suppression motion and his sentence. We reject his

arguments and affirm.

I.

A.

From 2019 to 2021, Semaj Williams trafficked drugs in western Michigan with two

co-conspirators, Tyler Shellenberger and Bryan MacMillan. Shellenberger told police that he first

bought methamphetamine from Williams in April 2018 and that, from “mid-February to mid-July

2019,” he bought ounce quantities of methamphetamine from Williams “almost daily and

sometimes twice per day.” Shellenberger also said that he and MacMillan “worked together to No. 22-1522, United States v. Williams

sell the methamphetamine” and that, in March 2019, the pair began buying multiple ounces per

day from Williams. MacMillan likewise confessed to buying drugs from Williams and selling

them with Shellenberger. According to the Probation Office, the three men were responsible for

more than 7,700 grams of methamphetamine.

On March 13, 2021, Kalamazoo Police Officer Colin Morgan saw a silver sedan parked in

front of a known drug house. When the car pulled away, it failed to signal; Morgan followed it

and ran its license plate through the police database. That search showed that the vehicle lacked

insurance, so Morgan pulled the car over.

Morgan approached the driver, Kaniya Ellis, and asked for her documents. A check of the

police database showed that she lacked a valid driver’s license and had an outstanding arrest

warrant. Morgan asked Ellis to step outside the car, where he asked her questions about her

warrant, her passengers, where she was coming from, and if she had made any recent stops. Ellis

lied twice: first, she denied having made any stops that night; then she said she had stopped, but

several blocks from the drug house. When Morgan told Ellis that he had seen her car stopped

directly in front of the house moments before, however, she admitted as much. She added that

Williams had gone inside the house and quickly returned to the car.

At that point, the traffic stop became a drug investigation, and Morgan asked all three

remaining passengers to get out of the car. Morgan said that he removed Williams first and patted

him down because Morgan recognized Williams as a “priority offender”—a label the Kalamazoo

Police uses for people who commit “the most crimes in the city specifically related to gun and

gang violence.” Morgan had also seen Williams make “furtive movements towards the center of

his body and feet” when Morgan first approached the car. Morgan also said that, “this being a

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narcotics investigation, people who are dealing narcotics often have weapons on them to defend”

themselves and their property.

Williams had no weapons or contraband, but Morgan found marijuana in another

passenger’s bag, so he called for a police dog to search the rest of the car. As they waited for the

K-9 unit, Morgan asked Ellis if the car contained any other contraband. She said she thought there

was methamphetamine in the car, that it belonged to Williams, and that Williams was a drug dealer.

After the dog arrived, it alerted to the floor of the rear passenger seat, where Williams had just

been sitting. There, officers found 0.98 grams of cocaine base and just over 68 grams of pure

methamphetamine. Morgan then arrested Williams for drug possession.

B.

A grand jury thereafter indicted Williams on one count of conspiracy to distribute and

possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, 21 U.S.C. §§ 846,

841(a)(1), (b)(1)(A)(viii), and one count of possession of 50 grams or more of methamphetamine

with the intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(A)(viii)—the latter charge being for

the drugs found during his arrest.

Williams moved to suppress the evidence seized from Ellis’s car. Williams conceded the

legality of the initial traffic stop, but argued that Morgan violated the Fourth Amendment by

impermissibly prolonging the encounter and by patting Williams down. The district court rejected

both arguments, after which Williams pled guilty to the conspiracy count—reserving his right to

appeal the denial of his suppression motion. In exchange, the government dismissed the

possession charge.

Williams’s presentence investigation report found him responsible for a total converted

drug weight of 16,816.51 kilograms under the Sentencing Guidelines, based largely on the amount

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of drugs that Shellenberger said the conspiracy had sold. See U.S.S.G. 2D1.1, App. N. 8(D). This

drug quantity, combined with Williams’s numerous prior criminal convictions, resulted in a

Guidelines range of 188 to 235 months’ imprisonment.

At sentencing, Williams argued that he should not be held responsible for the drugs found

during his arrest or for most of the drugs involved in the conspiracy. Williams also argued that

several factors related to his difficult upbringing and personal characteristics warranted a

below-Guidelines sentence. After a lengthy colloquy about these arguments, the court laid out

several reasons for its decision and imposed a 188-month prison sentence. This appeal followed.

II.

We begin with the denial of Williams’s suppression motion, reviewing the district court’s

factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. United States v. Pacheco,

841 F.3d 384, 389 (6th Cir. 2016).

A traffic stop “becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to

complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation.” Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S.

348, 350–51 (2015) (cleaned up). Beyond “determining whether to issue a traffic ticket,” however,

“an officer’s mission includes ordinary inquiries incident to the traffic stop,” such as “checking

the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and

inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance.” Id. at 355 (cleaned up). Nor do

“context-framing questions” about a driver’s “travel history and plans” impermissibly prolong the

stop. United States v. Williams, 68 F.4th 304, 307 (6th Cir. 2023) (internal quotation marks

omitted). To investigate beyond the initial traffic violation, rather, police need to clear only the

low bar of reasonable suspicion. Id. at 308.

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Here, Williams argues that Morgan prolonged the traffic stop beyond the time necessary

to issue Ellis a ticket. But Morgan soon had reasonable suspicion to extend the encounter.

Specifically, Morgan promptly learned that Ellis lacked a valid driver’s license, that her car lacked

insurance, and that both Ellis and another passenger had outstanding arrest warrants. Ellis then

repeatedly lied to Morgan about where she had just been driving. These lies, when viewed in the

totality of the circumstances, supported a determination that there was at least “a moderate chance

of finding evidence of illegality[.]” Id. at 308 (cleaned up). And Ellis then admitted that, minutes

before, the car had stopped at a known drug house, that Williams had gone inside and returned to

the car, and that she thought Williams was a drug dealer transporting methamphetamine. This

information created the reasonable suspicion necessary for Morgan to begin a narcotics

investigation and to call for a police dog to confirm Ellis’s report. See, e.g., id. And the “positive

indication from a narcotics-detection dog” in turn supplied Morgan with probable cause to conduct

a warrantless search of Ellis’s car. United States v. Figueredo-Diaz, 718 F.3d 568, 575 (6th Cir.

2013). Thus—from the initial traffic stop to the discovery of drugs at Williams’s feet—reasonable

suspicion supported each of Morgan’s decisions to extend his investigation.

Williams also argues that Morgan lacked reasonable suspicion to pat him down. But that

search produced no evidence, which means that it is immaterial to Williams’s motion to suppress.

This argument is therefore meritless.

We turn next to Williams’s challenges to his sentence, which we generally review for an

abuse of discretion. See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007).

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1.

Williams argues that the drugs found during his arrest were not part of the conspiracy and

that the court thus procedurally erred when it considered possession of those drugs “relevant

conduct” at sentencing. See U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(A). But Williams admitted in his plea

agreement both to “selling drugs directly to customers himself” as part of the conspiracy and that,

“on or about March 13, 2021,” he “agreed to sell a quarter pound (four ounces) of

methamphetamine to a customer in exchange for $1,800.” Moreover, his plea agreement stated

that “the Court may consider the dismissed” drug-possession count “in determining the applicable

Sentencing Guidelines range” for his conspiracy conviction. The district court therefore did not

abuse its discretion when it considered Williams’s drug possession as relevant conduct when

determining his sentence.

Williams next argues that the court procedurally erred when it attributed to him the full

amount of drugs that Shellenberger had said was part of the conspiracy. “A district court’s

drug-quantity determination is a factual finding that” this court reviews “under the clearly

erroneous standard. If the exact amount of drugs is undetermined, an estimate will suffice” if that

estimate is supported by a “preponderance of the evidence.” United States v. Jeross, 521 F.3d 562,

570 (6th Cir. 2008) (cleaned up). Testimonial evidence “from a coconspirator may be sufficient

to determine the amount of drugs for which another coconspirator should be held accountable.”

United States v. Swanberg, 370 F.3d 622, 625 (6th Cir. 2004) (cleaned up). Moreover, at

sentencing, coconspirators are responsible for “all acts and omissions of others that were

reasonably foreseeable in connection with that criminal activity.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B)(iii).

6 No. 22-1522, United States v. Williams

Here, based on Shellenberger’s statements, the district court adopted the Probation Office’s

“conservative estimate” that Williams was responsible for a converted drug weight of 16,816.51

kilograms. Williams contends that the district court instead should have considered only

MacMillan’s statements, in which he identified a smaller quantity of drugs. But Williams pled

guilty to supplying both Shellenberger and MacMillan with drugs; and Shellenberger said that

MacMillan “was with him most of the time” when Shellenberger bought methamphetamine from

Williams—not every time. Id. at 218. The district court therefore did not clearly err when it

credited Shellenberger’s proffer in its calculation of Williams’s relevant conduct under the

Guidelines. See Jeross, 521 F.3d at 570.

Williams next argues that the district court “did not adequately address” several arguments

Williams had raised in support of a lower sentence, including his “incomplete brain maturation,

traumas he has endured, and severe addictions he has suffered[.]” During sentencing, however,

the district court specifically asked Williams whether he was “satisfied I’ve addressed all of your

arguments on the record”; and Williams’s counsel answered “yes.” At most, therefore, we review

this argument for plain error. See United States v. Vonner, 516 F.3d 382, 386 (6th Cir. 2008) (en

banc).

There was none here. At Williams’s sentencing hearing, the district court engaged in a

lengthy colloquy in which it outlined the § 3553(a) factors, acknowledged the advisory nature of

the Guidelines, and said that it had taken them “into account as an initial benchmark or starting

point” in this case. The court also discussed, among other things, the destructive effects of

methamphetamine in western Michigan, and that—given Williams’s many prior convictions—

Williams needed “to be specifically deterred by the sentence” in this case. The court then imposed

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a sentence at the bottom of Williams’s Guidelines range. The court also included specific

recommendations that Williams receive substance-abuse and cognitive counseling and that he be

housed close to his family. Thus, “the record makes clear that the sentencing judge listened to

each argument, considered the supporting evidence, was fully aware of the defendant’s

circumstances and took them into account in sentencing him.” Vonner, 516 F.3d at 387. We see

no plain error regarding the procedure of Williams’s sentencing.

2.

Finally, Williams argues that his sentence was substantively unreasonable. We presume

the contrary, given that his sentence was within (indeed at the bottom of) his Guidelines range.

See, e.g., United States v. Lapsins, 570 F.3d 758, 774 (6th Cir. 2009). Williams has not rebutted

that presumption: his arguments amount to no more than a disagreement with the sentence chosen

by the district court. See United States v. Adkins, 729 F.3d 559, 572 (6th Cir. 2013).

The district court’s judgment is affirmed.