[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 23-11376

Non-Argument Calendar

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

TERRANCE WELLONS, 

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 9:98-cr-08148-CMA-1

____________________

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Before ROSENBAUM, ABUDU, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Terrance Wellons appeals the revocation of his supervised 

release. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(g). The district court found that 

Wellons violated the conditions of his release by committing grand 

theft, in violation of Fla. Stat. § 812.014(1)(2)(c). Wellons maintains 

that the evidence shows he was merely an innocent bystander to a 

theft committed by another person. We affirm because the court’s 

view of the evidence is reasonable and supported by the record. 

I.

Wellons began serving his five-year term of supervised release in 2019, after President Barack Obama commuted the remainder of Wellons’s 420-month prison sentence for drug-trafficking 

and gun crimes. In April 2023, the probation office petitioned to 

revoke his supervised release after he was arrested and charged 

with grand theft, in violation of Fla. Stat. § 812.014(a)(2)(c).1 

At the revocation hearing, the government presented witnesses and video evidence about the theft from a Home Depot on 

February 23, 2023. Wayne Effort, a Home Depot loss prevention 

officer, testified that he observed Wellons enter the Home Depot 

with Willie Faulk, who had attempted to steal items from the store 

before. Near the tool corral, Faulk placed a table saw in the cart, 

1 Wellons was also charged with felony retail theft, but the government dismissed that ground for revocation at the revocation hearing.

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23-11376 Opinion of the Court 3

while Wellons added some car-cleaning supplies. Faulk then 

pushed the cart to the garden center, and Wellons walked “behind 

him making sure [no one] was watching.” At the garden center, 

Faulk added two trimmers to the cart while Wellons “stayed on the 

edge of the aisle looking left and right to see if anyone was coming.” Once the cart was full, Faulk and Wellons spoke, and then 

Faulk started walking with the cart towards the entrance door. 

Wellons followed a few paces behind Faulk and kept “looking left 

to right going out.” Faulk was arrested just after leaving the store. 

Meanwhile, Wellons hesitated when he heard a fire alarm and police sirens going off, and he was apprehended soon after. The total 

amount of merchandise stolen was $824.72. The government 

played portions of Home Depot surveillance footage during Effort’s testimony.

In Effort’s training and experience, retail thefts usually involved “one person pushing the cart” and another person acting as 

a lookout, plus a getaway driver waiting outside. Effort further 

testified that Wellons’s actions were consistent with acting as a 

lookout during the theft.

The government also called as a witness Kendra Strong, a 

police officer for the Boynton Beach Police Department, and introduced footage from her body-worn camera. Strong received updates about the two suspects from Effort, and she was involved in 

both arrests. Wellons denied any involvement in or awareness of 

the theft. He had some money in his pockets, enough to buy the 

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cleaning supplies he had added to the cart. And he was not carrying 

any items from the store.

Wellons argued that the evidence failed to show his participation in the theft beyond his mere presence with Faulk, the person 

who stole the items. The government responded that the evidence 

reflected that Wellons operated as a lookout while Faulk placed 

items in the cart.

The district court found that the government proved by a 

preponderance of the evidence that Wellons violated the conditions of his supervised release by committing the offense of grand 

theft with Faulk. In the court’s view, it was “abundantly clear” 

from the surveillance footage and Effort’s testimony that Wellons 

and Faulk were working together and that Wellons was not simply

present at the wrong place at the wrong time. After revoking 

Wellons’s supervised release, the district court sentenced him to 

eight months of imprisonment followed by an additional two years 

of supervised release. This appeal followed.

II.

We review a district court’s revocation of supervised release 

for an abuse of discretion, United States v. Vandergrift, 754 F.3d 1303, 

1307 (11th Cir. 2014), and its findings of fact for clear error, United 

States v. Almand, 992 F.2d 316, 318 (11th Cir. 1993). “[W]hen a fact 

pattern gives rise to two reasonable and different constructions, the 

fact finder’s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” 

United States v. Rodriguez, 34 F.4th 961, 970 (11th Cir. 2022). 

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A district court “may revoke a defendant’s term of supervised release and impose a prison sentence when it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition 

of his or her supervised release.” United States v. Hofierka, 83 F.3d 

357, 363 (11th Cir. 1996); 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). “A preponderance 

of the evidence is evidence which is more convincing than the evidence offered in opposition to it.” United States v. Watkins, 10 F.4th 

1179, 1184 (11th Cir. 2021) (quotation marks omitted). This standard requires the government to show only “that the existence of a 

fact is more probable than its nonexistence.” Id. (quotation marks 

omitted). 

In Florida, a person commits theft if he knowingly obtains 

someone else’s property with intent to either deprive the other person of a right to the property or appropriate the property to his 

own use. Fla. Stat. § 812.014(1). A person commits grand theft in 

the third degree if the stolen property is, among other things, valued at more than $750 but less than $20,000. Id. § 812.014(2)(c). 

A person is punishable as a principal for aiding and abetting 

a crime if he “intended that the crime[] be committed” and did 

“some act to assist another in committing the crime[].” Garcia v. 

State, 899 So. 2d 447, 449 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2005). Mere presence 

at the scene of the crime is insufficient to establish participation in 

the offense. Id. at 450. Instead, “one must have a conscious intent 

that the crime be done and must do some act . . . which was intended to and does incite, cause, encourage, assist, or advise 

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another person to actually commit the crime.” K.B. v. State, 170 So. 

3d 121, 123 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2015) (quotation marks omitted). 

Here, the district court did not abuse its discretion by revoking Wellons’s supervised release. The court determined by a preponderance of the evidence that Wellons aided and abetted the 

commission of grand theft. Having reviewed the surveillance footage and the revocation hearing transcript, we cannot say that the 

court clearly erred in finding that Wellons was not simply present 

at the scene of the theft. Rather, his actions were consistent with 

an inference that he participated in the crime and acted as a lookout 

for Faulk to help avoid detection. He entered the store with Faulk 

and walked around with or near him, added items to the cart Paulk 

was pushing, and was observed looking around as if to help Faulk 

to avoid detection, including when Faulk was leaving the store 

without paying. 

While the evidence did not rule out the possibility Wellons 

was unaware of any theft plans, that possibility cannot support reversal on this record. “[W]hen a fact pattern gives rise to two reasonable and different constructions, the fact finder’s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” Rodriguez, 34 F.4th at

970. Because the district court’s construction of the evidence was 

reasonable, the district court did not clearly err in finding that 

Wellons violated the conditions of his supervised release by committing a new crime. Accordingly, we affirm the revocation of 

Wellons’s supervised release. 

AFFIRMED.

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