UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-4805

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

LINCOLN NORMANDO MOQUETE,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. William D. Quarles, Jr., District 

Judge. (1:13-cr-00419-WDQ-2)

Submitted: October 13, 2016 Decided: October 17, 2016

Before NIEMEYER, DUNCAN, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

C. Justin Brown, BROWN & NIETO, LLC, Baltimore, Maryland, for 

Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, 

Christopher J. Romano, Assistant United States Attorney, 

Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.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

Lincoln Normando Moquete appeals from the criminal judgment 

convicting him of conspiracy to distribute and possess with 

intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 

possession with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of 

cocaine and sentencing him to a 144-month term of imprisonment. 

Moquete argues that the court erred in failing to issue a jury 

instruction regarding witness hostility or bias toward Moquete. 

He also contests the quantity of drugs attributed to him at 

sentencing. We affirm.

First, Moquete objects to the district court’s refusal to 

give a proposed jury instruction on witness hostility and bias. 

“We review for abuse of discretion the district court’s denial 

of . . . proposed jury instructions.” United States v. Sonmez, 

777 F.3d 684, 688 (4th Cir. 2015). We see no abuse of 

discretion in this regard. A “district court d[oes] not abuse 

its discretion” by refusing a proposed instruction that was 

“clearly covered by the instructions given,” United States v. 

Green, 599 F.3d 360, 378 (4th Cir. 2010), just because “a more 

specific instruction might have been desirable to” the 

defendant, id. (quoting United States v. Patterson, 150 F.3d 

382, 388 (4th Cir. 1998)). Moquete’s reasoning for the 

instruction seemed to be that the testifying witnesses in 

general were biased against him. He did not advance any 
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evidence related to a particular witness. The district court 

instructed the jury on evaluating the credibility of witnesses. 

There was simply no basis on which to find an abuse of 

discretion.

Moquete also challenges the district court’s calculation of 

the drug weight, asserting that the court improperly credited 

the testimony of two coconspirators whose testimony was 

allegedly vague, inconsistent, and lacking credibility. In 

reviewing the district court’s calculations under the Sentencing 

Guidelines, “we review the district court’s legal conclusions de

novo and its factual findings for clear error.” United 

States v. Manigan, 592 F.3d 621, 626 (4th Cir. 2010) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). We will “find clear error only if, on 

the entire evidence, we are left with the definite and firm 

conviction that a mistake has been committed.” Id. at 631 

(internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).

The district court need only find the drug quantity 

attributable to the defendant by a preponderance of the 

evidence. United States v. Bell, 667 F.3d 431, 441 (4th Cir. 

2011). The court, therefore, “must only determine that it was 

more likely than not that the defendant was responsible for at 

least the drug quantity attributed to him.” United States v. 

Kiulin, 360 F.3d 456, 461 (4th Cir. 2004). Having reviewed the 
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record on appeal, we conclude that the district court did not 

clearly err in calculating the drug weight.

Accordingly, we affirm the judgment. 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