Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-15-02750/USCOURTS-ca8-15-02750-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Anthony P. Salsberry
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 15-2750

___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Anthony P. Salsberry

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Little Rock

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 Submitted: April 11, 2016

 Filed: June 10, 2016

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Before GRUENDER and KELLY, Circuit Judges, and ERICKSEN, District 1

Judge.

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ERICKSEN, District Judge.

The Honorable Joan N. Ericksen, United States DistrictJudge for the District 1

of Minnesota, sitting by designation.

Appellate Case: 15-2750 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/10/2016 Entry ID: 4410503 
Anthony P. Salsberry appeals from the revocation of his supervised release

following a hearing on violations of its conditions. He argues that the district court

2

abused its discretion in relying on the results of a preliminary, field drug test to find

that he committed a Grade B violation. We affirm.

A district court may revoke a defendant's termofsupervised release and impose

a sentence of imprisonment if the court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that

the defendant violated a condition of his supervised release. United States v. Miller,

557 F.3d 910, 913-14 (8th Cir. 2009) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3)). We review a

district court's decision to revoke supervised release for an abuse of discretion. Id.

at 914. We review for clear error the court's underlying factual findings asto whether

a violation occurred. Id.

In July 2015, Salsberry's probation officer filed a supplemental petition to

revoke supervised release on the grounds that Salsberry had violated multiple special

and general conditions of supervised release. One of the asserted grounds was that

on July 12, 2015, Salsberry tested positive for methamphetamine. At a hearing, the

district court considered the testimony of the probation officer; the county sheriff's

deputy who arrested Salsberry on July 12, 2015; jailer Morgan Varner, who

administered Salsberry's drug test on July 12, 2015; and Salsberry. Varner testified

that he administered the test of Salsberry's urine, which tested positive for

methamphetamine, and he authenticated Government's Exhibit A, a photograph that

he took of the device he used to test Salsberry showing the positive result. He also

testified that both before and after administering the test, when he asked Salsberry

about his drug use, Salsberry did not outright deny using drugs, but answered

evasively.

 The Honorable Brian S. Miller, United States District Judge for the Eastern 2

District of Arkansas.

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Appellate Case: 15-2750 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/10/2016 Entry ID: 4410503 
At the district court hearing, Salsberry objected to the admission of

Government's Exhibit A solely on chain-of-custody grounds. He also elicited crossexamination testimony intended to undercut "the level of reliability of the field test,"

including the fact that no confirmatory testing was performed in Salsberry's case. 

After hearing the testimony and receiving evidence, including Government's

Exhibit A, the district court found that Salsberry tested positive for

methamphetamine, a Grade B violation of the condition that he not possess any

controlled substances. The court stated that it understood Salsberry's argument and

that "he can take that up on appeal," but that Varner's testimony "wasn't just that [the

field test] came back positive," but was also that Salsberry responded evasively to

questions about his drug use. The court acknowledged Salsberry's argument that "the

test was one of those preliminary type of tests" that had not been confirmed, and

placed importance on the testimony about Salsberry's evasive responses to support

its finding.

On appeal, Salsberry challengesthe factual basis for the district court'sfinding,

contending that the proof of chain of custody for the failed drug test was inadequate

and that the test was "too unreliable" to be "sufficient to revoke." Put another way,

he reasserts his sole objection to the admissibility of the field test and also assertsthat

even if properly admitted, the field test alone is insufficient to meet the

preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

Salsberry's arguments, however, ignore that the district court did not rely solely

on the drug test result. Instead, the court relied on its assessment of the credibility of

the witnesses, explicitly crediting the testimony of Varner and the other two

government witnesses and discounting Salsberry's testimony as unbelievable. "[A]

district court's assessment of a witness's credibility is almost never clear error given

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Appellate Case: 15-2750 Page: 3 Date Filed: 06/10/2016 Entry ID: 4410503 
that court's comparative advantage at evaluating credibility." United States v.

Sandoval-Sianuqui, 632 F.3d 438, 443 (8th Cir. 2011) (quoting United States v.

Wahlstrom, 588 F.3d 538, 542 (8th Cir. 2009)). In evaluating the testimony, the court

placed particular weight on Salsberry's evasive answers to Varner's questions about

his drug use. Varner testified that both before he administered Salsberry's field test

and after he informed Salsberry of the test's positive result, Varner asked Salsberry

about his drug use, and both times, Salsberry replied evasively. The test result thus

provides context for Salsberry's on-the-spot statements to Varner on July 12. The

court recognized that the field drug test was a preliminary analysis, but found that the

testimony about Salsberry's evasive answers weighed in favor of finding the Grade

B violation. Furthermore, the court acknowledged Salsberry's cross-examination of

the government witnesses – which included questioning about the chain of custody

and reliability of the test used on Salsberry, and cross-examination going to whether

the sheriff's office was motivated by self-interest – but nonetheless admitted

Government's Exhibit A and found that the evidence, considered altogether, proved

the violation. The district court based this conclusion on its evaluation of the

testimony about Salsberry's evasive responsesin the context of the July 12 test result,

combined with all the other evidence at the hearing, including its assessment of

Salsberry's in-court testimony. Based on this record, we cannot say that the district

court's factual findings were clear error.

The materials that Salsberry relies on to argue that the field drug test result

alone is insufficiently probative do not compel a different conclusion. As an initial

point, Salsberry did not object to the admissibility of the test results on reliability

grounds. Moreover, as explained, the district court did not rely solely on the test 3

result. Rather, the court considered the test result as some evidence along with the

We also note that the case upon which Salsberry placesthe greatest emphasis,

3

Carter v. State, 82 So. 3d 993 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2011), was recently disapproved

in State v. Queior, No. SC15-367, 2016 WL 1592740, at *5 (Fla. Apr. 21, 2016). 

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Appellate Case: 15-2750 Page: 4 Date Filed: 06/10/2016 Entry ID: 4410503 
testimonial evidence. Cf. Harrison v. Dahm, 911 F.2d 37, 41 (8thCir. 1990) (finding,

in a different context, that the results of a urinalysis field drug test can, even without

a confirmatory second test, "provide some evidence of drug use") (emphasis added). 

In addition, even if we were to consider the "drug screen package insert" that

Salsberry quotes for the proposition that the test used on him "does not detect the

actual concentration of the drug," we still could not find any clear error in the district

court'sfindings. The district court did not, nor did it need to, find any particular drug

concentration level. In summary, it was not clear error for the district court to find

that Salsberry's field drug test result, taken together with the testimony at the hearing,

proved a Grade B violation by a preponderance of the evidence.

The district court also did not abuse its discretion in revoking Salsberry's

supervised release and sentencing him in accordance with its finding that he had

violated the condition not to possess controlled substances. See United States v.

Carothers, 337 F.3d 1017, 1019 (8th Cir. 2003). Salsberry does not challenge the

district court sentence except to the extent that it is based on the finding of a Grade

B violation. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

______________________________

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Appellate Case: 15-2750 Page: 5 Date Filed: 06/10/2016 Entry ID: 4410503