Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01994/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01994-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Scott Weldon
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15‐1994

SCOTT WELDON,

Petitioner‐Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:14‐cv‐00691‐DRH — David R. Herndon, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED AUGUST 9, 2016 — DECIDED AUGUST 24, 2016

____________________

Before BAUER, POSNER, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The defendant pleaded guilty to

having distributed an illegal drug, resulting in a death.

See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C). Because he agreed to

cooperate with the government in the prosecution of another

person who had contributed to the death, he received a

prison sentence of only eight years. Three years later he filed

a motion to vacate his conviction and sentence on the

principal ground (and the only we need discuss) that his

Case: 15-1994 Document: 48 Filed: 08/24/2016 Pages: 4
2 No. 15‐1994   

lawyer had rendered ineffective assistance by persuading

him to plead guilty because (according to the lawyer), the

defendant had no possible defense. The district judge denied

the motion, precipitating this appeal.

The facts giving rise to the defendant’s prosecution and

conviction are as follows. Defendant Weldon, his girlfriend

Andrea Fields, and their friend David Roth pooled $120

(Roth contributing $100 and Weldon and Fields $20 jointly)

to buy heroin from Weldon’s drug dealer. The three drove in

Roth’s car (Roth driving) to meet the dealer. Roth parked

behind the dealer’s car at the arranged meeting place and

Weldon got out of Roth’s car, walked to the dealer’s car,

gave the dealer the $120 for the heroin, and returned with it

to Roth’s car. Weldon gave the heroin, which was wrapped

in a dollar bill, to Fields, who tucked it away. Roth then

drove to his home, where Fields mixed the heroin with

water, divided the mixture into three equal parts, and

injected it into the three of them. Roth died from the mixture

injected into him. Fields was tried for her role in Roth’s

death, but argued that what she did in injecting Roth was

not distribution, and she was acquitted.

Suppose you have lunch with a friend, order two

hamburgers, and when your hamburgers are ready you pick

them up at the food counter and bring them back to the table

and he eats one and you eat the other. It would be very odd

to describe what you had done as “distributing” the food to

him. It is similarly odd to describe what either Weldon or

Fields did as distribution. They had agreed to get high

together, they shared the expense, they all went together to

the drug dealer, and they shared the drug that they bought

from him. It’s true that only Weldon transferred the money

for the drug to the dealer, but it was the pooled money that

Case: 15-1994 Document: 48 Filed: 08/24/2016 Pages: 4
No. 15‐1994 3

he was handing over, although his contribution to the pool

had been slight. It’s true that having paid he carried the drug

back to Roth’s car. But it would have been absurd for all

three to have gone up to the dealer and each pay him

separately, and even more absurd for them to have carried

the minute package, containing less than half a gram of

powder, together to the car and from the car to Roth’s

residence. And remember that a jury rejected the argument

that Fields’ injecting Roth with the heroin (which

metabolized to morphine after it was injected) was the

distribution of the heroin‐morphine to Roth.

United States v. Swiderski, 548 F.2d 445, 450 (2d Cir. 1977),

holds that individuals who “simultaneously and jointly

acquire possession of a drug for their own use, intending

only to share it together,” are not distributors, “since both

acquire possession from the outset and neither intends to

distribute the drug to a third person,” and so “neither serves

as a link in the chain of distribution.” This reasoning has

been approved in several cases, see United States v. Layne,

192 F.3d 556, 569 (6th Cir. 1999); United States v. Hardy, 895

F.2d 1331, 1334–35 (11th Cir. 1990); United States v. Rush, 738

F.2d 497, 514 (1st Cir. 1984); cf. United States v. Mancuso, 718

F.3d 780, 798 and n. 10 (9th Cir. 2013), though our court has

had no occasion to opine on it.

The government argues (with no judicial support) that

the holding of Swiderski is inapplicable to this case because

“Weldon was the only one of the three to get out of Roth’s

car and conduct a hand‐to‐hand exchange of money for

heroin with the dealer.” The implication is that the rule of

Swiderski requires absurd behavior. Imagine Weldon, Roth,

and Fields squeezing into the dealer’s car and each handing

the dealer a separate handful of money. What on earth

Case: 15-1994 Document: 48 Filed: 08/24/2016 Pages: 4
4 No. 15‐1994   

would the dealer think of such antics? How would he react?

What would he do? If he gave them the drug would they

have to divide it on the spot in order to avoid being guilty of

distribution?

What matters is that the defendants were participants in

the same transaction. No cases require literal simultaneous

possession; Swiderski and another decision (very like the

present case) implicitly reject such a requirement. United

States v. Swiderski, supra, 548 F.2d at 448; United States v.

Speer, 30 F.3d 605, 608–09 (5th Cir. 1994). Given these

decisions, the insistence of Weldonʹs lawyer to his client

“umpteen times” that a defense to the charge of distribution

had a zero chance of success was constitutionally deficient.

Itʹs true that to be entitled to a new trial Weldon has to

establish “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s

errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have

insisted on going to trial,” Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 59

(1985), an insistence that might have persuaded the

government to negotiate a settlement with him that would

(without the uncertainty of a trial) have reduced his

punishment significantly. See Missouri v. Frye, 132 S. Ct.

1399, 1409 (2012); Kovacs v. United States, 744 F.3d 44, 53 (2d

Cir. 2014). Weldon is entitled to an evidentiary hearing to

determine that probability. The judgment of the district

court is therefore vacated and the case remanded for further

proceedings consistent with this opinion. (The government

has filed a motion to supplement the record on appeal, but

we deny the motion; it is better for the district court to have

the full record before it on remand.)

VACATED AND REMANDED

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