United States v. Wesseh

531 F.3d 633, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 14263, 2008 WL 2631362
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedJuly 7, 2008
Docket07-3204
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 531 F.3d 633 (United States v. Wesseh) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth 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. Wesseh, 531 F.3d 633, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 14263, 2008 WL 2631362 (8th Cir. 2008).

Opinion

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Bill Africanus Wesseh of one count of credit union robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) and (d) and the district court 1 sentenced him to 87 months imprisonment. Wesseh challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction. We affirm.

On March 2, 2006, the Anoka Hennepin Credit Union (the credit union) in Champ-lin, Minnesota was robbed. The credit union was insured by the National Credit Union Administration at the time of the robbery. The robber, a lone male, entered the credit union, approached the teller station operated by Sarah Erickson, placed a handgun on the table pointed at Erickson, and said, “Give me all the money in the bottom drawer, bitch.” Erickson took approximately $12,325 from the bottom drawer and placed it in a white bag which the robber had thrown at her. She later described him as being approximately 6' tall, in his twenties, and dark complected.

Denise Erickson, the teller working at the next station, was on the phone at the time of the robbery but also saw the firearm and described the robber as approximately 5'10", in his early twenties, and very dark complected. Both tellers described the robber as wearing all black clothing, including a black hooded sweatshirt, with a cloth covering part of his face. Manager Mark Hodowanic had a view of the incident from further away. He saw a gun in the robber’s right hand as he was leaving, and described him as a dark complected black male in his late teens or early twenties between 5'10" and 6' tall.

After Sarah Erickson handed the money bag to the robber, he fled through the doors and ran over a hill behind the credit union. A canine unit was called to the scene and Officer Jason Majeski responded with his canine partner Rocky, who is trained to track crushed vegetation and fresh human scent although he is not scent specific and does not differentiate between human scents. Majeski and Rocky began their search just outside the doors of the credit union. Rocky tracked fresh human scent from there over the hill behind the credit union to an apartment complex approximately 1000 feet away. Along Rocky’s route Majeski observed footprints in the snow going down the hill and through a parking lot to the same apartment complex. Athough Rocky lost the scent briefly in the parking lot, he reacquired it and led Majeski to the second floor of the apartment complex, where he began circling, indicating that he had lost the scent. Majeski knocked on several doors on the second and third floors but *635 did not find a suspect. Although Sarah and Denise Erickson reported that they believed the robber had pushed open the credit union doors with his bare hand, fingerprints taken from the doors of the credit union did not match known prints, and no likely suspect was identified at that time.

There was another robbery of the credit union on April 3, 2006 and also an attempted robbery on May 11, 2006. On the day after the attempted robbery, Patrick Dor-ber, the lessor of unit 209 at the apartment complex the police had searched, received a call that rent had not been paid for his unit. When he went to the apartment, he found trespassers occupying it and called the police. Officer Brian Wentworth of the Champlin Police Department responded and found Wesseh and several other individuals in the apartment, including Donna Durga and Sam Mitchell. Officer Wentworth noticed a black and gray jacket on the floor which matched the description of the jacket worn during the attempted robbery on May 11. The next day Dorber contacted the police again to report a firearm he found in a container of flour while cleaning the kitchen in unit 209. Officer Heather Robinson responded and saw a handgun still inside the flour container; no fingerprints were recovered from it.

At trial Donna Durga testified that she and Wesseh had been living in unit 209 with Sam Mitchell and Mitchell’s girlfriend Lashondra, and that Wesseh, Durga, and Mitchell had been selling marijuana out of the apartment. She testified that she had been at the apartment with Wesseh, Mitchell, Lashondra, and Durga’s friend Lottie Lomax on March 2, 2006, the day of the first robbery at the credit union. Wes-seh was wearing all black, including a black hooded sweatshirt, when he left the apartment with Mitchell. Approximately five minutes later, Wesseh ran back into the apartment out of breath and threw a plastic bag onto the floor in the middle of the living room. Wesseh asked where Mitchell had gone, expecting that he would be there waiting for him. Wesseh then said to Durga, “I’m sorry I crashed your car,” and “I got you,” which Durga understood to refer to a recent incident in which her car had been crashed by Wesseh and Mitchell while returning from a trip to Chicago to purchase marijuana. Durga testified that Lashondra took the plastic bag to a nearby desk where she began removing stacks of money bound together with paper. Soon thereafter Mitchell returned to the apartment and gave Wesseh a hug. Then Durga heard dogs and police radios and saw that the parking lot was filled with police cars.

Lottie Lomax gave similar testimony. She related how Wesseh was wearing black pants and a black hooded sweatshirt when he ran into the apartment out of breath and threw a white plastic bag on the floor. Lomax left the room before seeing what was in the bag but observed that the contents had a greenish tint and a box like shape. Later that night Lomax and Durga drove Wesseh and Mitchell to the bus station because Wesseh wanted to leave town to escape police attention. Video surveillance from the bus station was admitted into evidence, and Durga identified herself, Wesseh, and Mitchell on the video. Bus company records show that two travelers including “Will Wessehl” bought tickets from Minneapolis to Chicago that day.

Wesseh returned from Chicago approximately one week after the March 2 robbery. He gave Durga some hundreds of dollars, and he told her that he had given Mitchell $5000 and used the rest of the money to buy over a pound of marijuana. Wesseh also told Durga how he had carried out the robbery, describing his route *636 over the hill, his entry into the credit union with a gun, and his demand to the teller to put the money in the bag.

Durga had been at the apartment when police responded to Dorber’s unwanted persons call on May 12, 2006. She testified that shortly before the officers entered, she observed Wesseh take a gun from his room and hide it in a pot of flour in the kitchen. Durga gave much of this information to officers on May 16, 2006, and Wesseh became a suspect in the March 2 robbery and the May 11 attempted robbery. His photograph was placed in a photo lineup, and teller Sarah Erickson identified him as the person who had robbed the credit union on March 2. At trial Erickson also made an in court identification of Wesseh but was unable to pick him out of the lineup exhibit until after she was shown her signature on it.

At trial the government also called two informants, Sedric Bady and Ernest Baugh. Bady testified that he lived in the same apartment complex as Wesseh and had given him a ride to the store one evening. During the ride Wesseh told him that he had severely damaged a friend’s car in Wisconsin and that police had seized marijuana from the wreckage.

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Bluebook (online)
531 F.3d 633, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 14263, 2008 WL 2631362, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-wesseh-ca8-2008.