UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 13-4122

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

 Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

KEVIN COREY MCRAE,

 Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle 

District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. William L. Osteen, 

Jr., Chief District Judge. (1:12-cr-00226-WO-1)

Submitted: September 20, 2013 Decided: October 3, 2013

Before WYNN, FLOYD, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Michael E. Archenbronn, LAW OFFICE OF MICHAEL E. ARCHENBRONN, 

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for Appellant. Graham Tod Green, 

Assistant United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, 

for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

Kevin Corey McRae appeals from the revocation of his 

supervised release and his resulting twenty-four-month sentence. 

On appeal, counsel has filed an Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 

738 (1967) brief, averring that there are no meritorious issues 

for appeal but questioning whether there was sufficient evidence 

to support the finding that McRae committed a crime while on 

supervised release. Neither McRae nor the Government has filed 

a brief. We affirm.

On appeal, McRae asserts that the Government did not 

satisfy its burden of proof with regard to the charged 

supervised release violation of committing another crime. 

Specifically, the district court determined that McRae possessed 

a substantial amount of cocaine while on supervised release. 

McRae argues that an informant’s hearsay evidence that McRae 

would be possessing cocaine was not credible given that the 

informant was his girlfriend. Further, he contends that the 

“only evidence” presented regarding the identification of the 

substance found on him was Officer Wenzel’s conclusory response 

to a leading question.

The district court need only find a violation of a 

condition of supervised release by a preponderance of the 

evidence, see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3) (2006), and this court 

reviews for clear error the district court’s factual 
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determinations informing its conclusion that a violation 

occurred. See United States v. Carothers, 337 F.3d 1017, 1019 

(8th Cir. 2003); United States v. Whalen, 82 F.3d 528, 532 (1st 

Cir. 1996). When reviewing the district court’s factual 

determinations under the preponderance of the evidence standard, 

the relevant facts must be shown more likely to be true than 

not. See United States v. Kiulin, 360 F.3d 456, 461 (4th Cir. 

2004). 

We conclude that the district court did not abuse its 

discretion in finding, by a preponderance of the evidence, that 

McRae violated the condition of supervised release that 

prohibited him from committing any additional crimes. Taken in 

the light most favorable to the Government, United States v. 

Green, 599 F.3d 360, 367 (4th Cir. 2010), the Government 

proffered ample evidence to satisfy its burden of proof. 

Officer Wenzel’s testimony established that McCrae possessed the 

substance in question, and Officer Ognosky’s field test 

indicated that the substance was in fact cocaine. Moreover, the 

manner in which the substance was secreted on McRae’s body 

suggested its illicit nature. Finally, the two officers 

testified that they recognized the substance to be cocaine. 

This evidence was more than sufficient to establish the 

illegality of McRae’s conduct by a preponderance of the 
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evidence.* See United States v. Copley, 978 F.2d 829, 830-31 

(4th Cir. 1992) (holding that testimony regarding marijuana 

plants found at defendant’s home—which he shared with others—and 

defendant’s proximity to those plants was sufficient to 

establish violation of defendant’s supervised release). 

Pursuant to Anders, we have reviewed the entire record 

for reversible error and have found no meritorious issues for 

appeal. This court requires that counsel inform McRae in 

writing of his right to petition the Supreme Court of the United 

States for further review. If McRae requests that a petition be 

filed, but counsel believes that such a petition would be 

frivolous, then counsel may motion this court for leave to 

withdraw from representation. Counsel’s motion must state that 

a copy thereof was served on McRae. We dispense with oral 

argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately 

presented in the materials before this court and argument would 

not aid the decisional process. 

AFFIRMED

 * While the district court also considered, to a certain 

degree, the corroborated hearsay testimony that McRae was buying 

cocaine and manufacturing crack, any error in that regard was 

merely harmless as the remaining evidence was clearly sufficient 

without considering the truth of the informant’s allegations. 

See United States v. Johnson, 617 F.3d 286, 292 (4th Cir. 2010) 

(standard of review for improper evidentiary rulings).