United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 13-2986

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Romondo Jenkins

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: May 23, 2014

Filed: July 15, 2014

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Before BYE, COLLOTON, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

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GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

Following a jury trial, Romondo Jenkins was convicted of possession of

cocaine base with the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The

district court sentenced Jenkins to 150 months’ imprisonment, within the range 1

The Honorable J. Leon Holmes, United States District Court Judge for the

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Eastern District of Arkansas.
prescribed by the advisory sentencing guidelines. Jenkins appeals both his conviction

and his sentence. For the reasons described below, we affirm.

On November 9, 2010, while investigating a suspected drug-trafficking ring

in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) agent Randy

Harness arranged for a confidential informant (“CI”) to conduct a controlled drug

purchase from Jenkins. When called by the CI, Jenkins agreed to sell her cocaine

base and provided an address at which they could meet. Before the controlled

purchase, Harness searched the CI to ensure thatshe did not have any contraband that

might taint the purchase. Harness then drove the CI to the proposed meeting location,

where the CI met Jenkins and purchased a bag of cocaine base from him. She then

delivered the cocaine base to Harness.

Harness kept the cocaine in his possession until he returned to his office later

that day. Once at the office, Harness sealed the cocaine in an evidence bag. He

completed a standardized form known as a DEA-12, which documents an exhibit’s

chain of custody. On the DEA-12, Harness described the exhibit. He then placed the

exhibit in a secure evidence locker. Little Rock Police Officer Willie Thomas, who

worked on a joint drug taskforce with Harness, attested on the evidence-locker log

book that he had witnessed Harness deposit the cocaine in the locker.

The following day, Detective Lee Freeman removed the cocaine from the

evidence locker and sent it by Federal Express to the DEA laboratory for testing. 

Along with the cocaine, he mailed a DEA-7, a standardized form that provides the

testing laboratory with information about the exhibit. On the DEA-7, Freeman

provided a narrative description of the exhibit and its origin that correctly identified

the date on which the exhibit was obtained and that the CI had purchased it from

Jenkins. Elsewhere on the DEA-7, however, Freeman erroneously identified the date

on which the exhibit was obtained and the date on which he had completed the form. 

Freeman also completed a DEA-12 to document his removal of the exhibit from the

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evidence locker. When Freeman generated the DEA-12, he used as a template a

DEA-12 created for a prior exhibit that had consisted of two bags. Freeman failed to

change the exhibit description on the form that remained from the prior exhibit. 

Thus, although Freeman knew that the cocaine in this case was contained in only one

bag, the DEA-12 that he generated nonetheless described the exhibit as “two

individually wrapped clear plastic bags containing off-white rock-like substance.” 

The DEA laboratory tested the exhibit sent by Freeman and determined it to be

cocaine base.

A grand jury indicted Jenkins on one count of possession of cocaine base with

the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). After a jury found

Jenkins guilty, the district court sentenced him to 150 months’ imprisonment, within

the range prescribed by the advisory sentencing guidelines. Jenkins timely appealed

both his conviction and his sentence.

On appeal, Jenkins first argues that the district court erred by denying his

motion for a judgment of acquittal on the ground that the Government failed to

present sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict. “We review the denial of a

motion for a judgment of acquittal based on the sufficiency of the evidence de novo.” 

United States v. Chatmon, 742 F.3d 350, 352 (8th Cir. 2014). “We will affirmunless,

viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government and accepting all

reasonable inferences that may be drawn in favor of the verdict, no reasonable jury

could have found [the defendant] guilty.” Id. (quoting United States v. Bynum, 669

F.3d 880, 883 (8th Cir. 2012)). In reviewing a conviction for sufficiency of the

evidence, we must “resolv[e] evidentiary conflicts in favor of the government.” 

United States v. Cook, 603 F.3d 434, 437 (8th Cir. 2010). In order to find that

Jenkins violated § 841(a)(1), the jury was required to find that he knowingly

possessed cocaine base and that he intended to distribute the cocaine base. United

States v. Parker, 587 F.3d 871, 881 (8th Cir. 2009). Jenkins does not argue on appeal

that he lacked the requisite intent to distribute. He argues only that the Government

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presented insufficient evidence to support the conclusion that he possessed cocaine

base.

Jenkins argues that, based on errors and inconsistencies in the evidence

presented by the Government, the jury could not have concluded beyond a reasonable

doubt that the substance found by the DEA laboratory to be cocaine base was the

same substance purchased by the CI from Jenkins. Jenkins focuses in particular on

the errors in the standardized forms created by Freeman. However, at trial, Freeman

explained that the errors in his DEA-12 arose because he had used a prior DEA-12

as a template but had forgotten to change certain fields on the form. He testified that

the cocaine base that he sent to the DEA laboratory was contained in only one bag,

and this description accords with Harness’s description of the substance obtained

from Jenkins and deposited in the evidence locker. Similarly, although Freeman

listed two erroneous dates on his DEA-7, other portions of the form provided the

correct dates, and his testimony at trial corroborated those latter portions. The jury

was permitted to credit Freeman’s testimony, which explained the errors and

supported the conclusion that the substance tested by the DEA laboratory was the

same substance deposited in the evidence locker by Harness. See United States v.

Wanna, 744 F.3d 584, 588 (8th Cir. 2014).

Jenkins also observesthat, at trial, Harness testified that the cocaine wasin one

piece when he placed it in the evidence locker, while Thomas testified that the

cocaine was in two pieces. Jenkins argues that this inconsistency undermined the

exhibit’s chain of custody so substantially asto preclude the jury fromfinding beyond

a reasonable doubt that the substance tested by the DEA laboratory was the same

substance that was purchased from him. However, the jury was permitted to credit

Harness’s testimony over Thomas’s, especially given that Harness’s description of

the exhibit matches the description provided at trial by Freeman. “The jury has the

responsibility of resolving conflicts or contradictions in testimony, and we resolve

any credibility issues in favor of the verdict.” Id. (quoting United States v. Ali, 616

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F.3d 745, 755 (8th Cir. 2010)). Thus, the jury reasonably could have concluded

beyond a reasonable doubt that the substance obtained by the CI fromJenkins wasthe

same substance determined by the DEA laboratory to be cocaine base. Even if the

evidence might have permitted the jury to draw a different conclusion, the jury did

not do so. “[T]he facts and circumstances relied on by the government must be

consistent with guilt, but they need not be inconsistent with any other

hypothesis . . . .” Chatmon, 742 F.3d at 353 (quoting United States v. Lam, 338 F.3d

868, 872 (8th Cir. 2003)). Thus, taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the

verdict, id. at 352, the Government presented sufficient evidence to permit the

conclusion that Jenkins possessed cocaine base. Accordingly, we affirm the district

court’s denial of Jenkins’s motion for a judgment of acquittal.

Jenkins next challenges his 150-month, within-the-guidelinessentence on both

procedural and substantive grounds. First, he argues that the district court committed

procedural error “by failing to give any meaningful consideration” to the sentencing

factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). A district court must consider the

§ 3553(a) factors when crafting a sentence. United States v. Shores, 700 F.3d 366,

375-76 (8th Cir. 2012). In doing so, the “court need not quote verbatim all of the

factors listed in § 3553(a).” Id. at 376. Here, however, the district court did

scrupulously identify each § 3553(a) factor and expressly stated that it was “taking

into account all of [those] factors.” In addition, the district court heard argument

from Jenkins’s counsel regarding the § 3553(a) factors and considered the

information contained in Jenkins’s presentence investigation report. See United

States v. Struzik, 572 F.3d 484, 487 (8th Cir. 2009) (concluding that district court

adequately considered § 3553(a) factors where it received “significant exposure” to

the defendant’s presentence investigation report and argument atsentencing hearing);

United States v. Battiest, 553 F.3d 1132, 1136 (8th Cir. 2009) (same). As such, we

are convinced that the district court adequately considered the factors enumerated by

§ 3553(a) and thus did not commit any procedural error.

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Second, Jenkins argues that the district court imposed a substantively

unreasonable sentence. “We review the reasonableness of a sentence under the

deferential abuse-of-discretion standard. A within-range sentence is presumptively

reasonable.” United States v. Huston, 744 F.3d 589, 593 (8th Cir. 2014) (quoting

United States v. Cromwell, 645 F.3d 1020, 1022 (8th Cir. 2011)). “A district court

abuses its discretion when it (1) ‘fails to consider a relevant factor that should have

received significant weight’; (2) ‘givessignificant weight to an improper orirrelevant

factor’; or (3) ‘considers only the appropriate factors but in weighing those factors

commits a clear error of judgment.’” United States v. Feemster, 572 F.3d 455, 461

(8th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Kane, 552 F.3d 748, 752 (8th Cir. 2009)). 

Jenkins takes issue with the district court’s statement that, because of his extensive

criminal history, it would focus “particularly [on] the need to protect the public from

further crimes of the defendant.” See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(C). We have held

consistently that a “district court has wide latitude to weigh the § 3553(a) factors in

each case and assign some factors greater weight than others in determining an

appropriate sentence.” United States v. Borromeo, 657 F.3d 754, 757 (8th Cir. 2011)

(quoting United States v. Bridges, 569 F.3d 374, 379 (8th Cir. 2009)). Jenkins’s

criminal history spans several decades and includes numerous convictions for

controlled-substance and other crimes. In addition, at the time ofsentencing, serious

criminal charges were pending against Jenkins in at least four other proceedings. 

Thus, the district court did not abuse its discretion by placing particular emphasis on

Jenkins’s consistent and recurring criminal conduct. See United States v. Timberlake,

679 F.3d 1008, 1012 (8th Cir. 2012) (holding that district court’s “emphasis on the

defendant’s criminal history . . . falls within a sentencing court’s ‘substantial latitude

to determine how much weight to give the variousfactors under § 3553(a)’” (quoting

United States v. Ruelas-Mendez, 556 F.3d 655, 657 (8th Cir. 2009))). Accordingly,

we find no basis for concluding that the sentence imposed by the district court was

substantively unreasonable.

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For the foregoing reasons, we affirm both Jenkins’s conviction and his

sentence.

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