United States v. Walters

351 F.3d 159, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 23061, 2003 WL 22664478
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedNovember 12, 2003
Docket02-50874
StatusPublished
Cited by58 cases

This text of 351 F.3d 159 (United States v. Walters) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth 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. Walters, 351 F.3d 159, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 23061, 2003 WL 22664478 (5th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

ROSENTHAL, District Judge:

On July 31, 2001, Air Force officer Janet McWilliams opened a package addressed to her. It exploded when opened, causing severe injuries. The government charged defendant Brandon Walters with making and sending the bomb. Evidence at trial showed that Walters blamed McWilliams for his recent discharge from the Air Force on mental health grounds. A jury convicted Walters on all five counts charged in the indictment. The conviction included two counts under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) for using a destructive device during and in relation to two crimes of violence, one for assaulting a federal officer and one for damaging a federal building. The judge imposed a life sentence, mandatory for a second or subsequent conviction under section 924(c)(1). 18 U.S.C. § 924(l)(C)(Si).

Walters raises three arguments on this appeal: (1) the district court erred in admitting into evidence the title and portions of a book on explosives; (2) the district court erred in failing to find a violation of *162 the government’s obligation timely to disclose exculpatory evidence and in failing to grant Walters a continuance based on late disclosure; and (3) the district court erred in sentencing Walters based on two convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) arising from a single use of a single destructive device.

This court finds no merit to Walters’s first two challenges to his convictions. As to the third challenge, this court concludes that under this circuit’s decision in United States v. Phipps, 319 F.3d 177 (5th Cir.2003), the district court erred in sentencing based on two convictions under section 924(c)(1). Accordingly, we affirm the convictions; vacate the sentences imposed for the section 924(c)(1) counts; and remand for resentencing. On remand, the government is to elect which of the two section 924(c)(1) counts is to be dismissed and Walters is to be resentenced on the remaining count.

I. Background

On May 8, 2001, Brandon Walters joined the United States Air Force and reported to the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Walters had eight years of experience as an electronics technician in the United States Navy. Walters came to Lackland to take a course in electronics. Walters exhibited inappropriate and bizarre behavior to the personnel manager, First Sergeant Janet McWilliams, and to students. Based on her own observations and on reports from students, McWilliams recommended that Walters receive a mental health evaluation to assess his fitness for duty. Walters reacted by telling McWilliams that she and the students who complained about him were “in big trouble” because “there was nothing wrong with him.”

A military psychiatrist diagnosed Walters as having a narcissistic personality disorder, declared him “potentially dangerous,” and recommended his discharge from the Air Force. Walters was heard denouncing the people who were “ruining his career,” including McWilliams. On June 15, 2001, McWilliams and her supervisor met with Walters at the medical facility to deliver his discharge package. Seven days later, Walters received his discharge papers and a one-way plane ticket to his home state of Utah.

Walters was “extremely mate, disrespectful, [and] threatening” at this meeting. A nurse who witnessed the meeting reported that Walters told McWilliams that “she was no one, she could not control him.” When McWilliams demanded that Walters return his military identification, he refused and claimed to have lost it. As McWilliams left the room, Walters warned her to “beware, beware.” Hospital personnel overheard Walters declaring that McWilliams “was just scared because she messed up and she should be scared because he wasn’t going anywhere” and that “he would ... set a bomb off on the airplane just so that he would let the First Sergeant know that she could not control him anymore.”

On June 23, 2001, Air Force officers escorted Walters to the airport for his Utah flight. The officers informed Walters that he was not allowed back on the base and that his picture would be posted at the entrance gates. Walters refused to board the airplane. He ran from the officers, throwing his ticket into a trash can. Later that same day, Walters checked into the Cactus Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, using what the hotel owner believed to be a military identification card. Walters padlocked his hotel door and refused to permit anyone to enter, including the cleaning staff. During his thirty-day stay at the hotel, Walters asked a desk clerk where he could purchase fireworks. An *163 other clerk heard firecrackers exploding in Walters’s room on several occasions. A hotel guest observed Walters taking out his own trash, wearing latex rubber gloves.

On July 30, 2001, a Lackland instructor saw an individual in civilian clothes, whom he later identified as Walters, walking down the hall of a classroom building. Walters ignored the instructor’s greeting. Later that day, a student found a brown paper package the size of a shoe box, addressed to “First Sergeant Jan McWil-liams,” in the restroom of the same classroom building. The return address read “First Sergeants Association” of Clear-mont, Idaho. The student gave the package to his supervisor, who placed it in intra-base mail for delivery.

McWilliams received the package the following day and opened it in her office. She had just enough time to observe “coins, metal objects, and wires” when the package exploded. McWilliams saw her own hands and fingers flying off. She lost both hands and sustained second- and third-degree burns. McWilliams remained conscious and called out for help. When responders asked McWilliams who could have “possibly done this,” McWilliams identified Walters.

Law enforcement agents went to the Cactus Hotel on August 1, 2001 and caught Walters as he attempted to run out the back door. Agents found the military identification Walters had reported missing in his bag. The owner of the Cactus Hotel told agents that on the day of the bombing, Walters had watched the news on the television in the hotel lobby, something he had not done during his thirty-day stay at the hotel. Agents searched Walters’s hotel room and found a number of items consistent with materials recovered from the office where the bomb had exploded.

Federal agents investigating the site of the explosion recovered items that enabled experts to reconstruct the bomb and describe its design and components. The items recovered included part of a Panasonic battery box, two fragments of a steel bottle, two nickels, part of a battery, a capacitor, an end cap for an automobile dome lightbulb, an epoxy plug, blue-coated wire, and dental floss used in a “booby-trap” trigger device. Agents determined that the bomb assembly was contained in a box used to store Panasonic batteries and used an explosive charge of black powder found in fireworks. The powder was contained in a steel bottle and engaged a firing chain that used a green fireworks fuse, a battery, the circuit-board portions from a disposable camera, and the end cap of an automobile dome lightbulb. A gray epoxy was used to make the bomb.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. Ahmed
Fifth Circuit, 2022
United States v. Dennis
41 F.4th 732 (Fifth Circuit, 2022)
Jamie Courtney Wright v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2022
United States v. Albert Diaz
Fifth Circuit, 2019
Ramey v. Davis
314 F. Supp. 3d 785 (S.D. Texas, 2018)
United States v. Gary McDuff
639 F. App'x 978 (Fifth Circuit, 2016)
United States v. Arun Sharma
609 F. App'x 797 (Fifth Circuit, 2015)
United States v. Trevin Rounds
749 F.3d 326 (Fifth Circuit, 2014)
Bettye Barnes v. BTN, Incorporated
555 F. App'x 281 (Fifth Circuit, 2014)
United States v. Naser Abdo
733 F.3d 562 (Fifth Circuit, 2013)
United States v. Jonathan Francisco
497 F. App'x 412 (Fifth Circuit, 2012)
United States v. Robert Inzano
478 F. App'x 142 (Fifth Circuit, 2012)
Alejandro Hernandez v. The City of El Paso
397 F. App'x 954 (Fifth Circuit, 2010)
United States v. Manners
384 F. App'x 302 (Fifth Circuit, 2010)
United States v. Harper
Fifth Circuit, 2010
McGowen v. Thaler
717 F. Supp. 2d 626 (S.D. Texas, 2010)
United States v. Cockrell
587 F.3d 674 (Fifth Circuit, 2009)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
351 F.3d 159, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 23061, 2003 WL 22664478, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-walters-ca5-2003.