Opinion ID: 4513522
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Distribution to Myers (Counts 2 and 3)

Text: Next, Hamm and Shields contend that there is insufficient evidence that the carfentanil Tracey Myers distributed to L.K.W. and her cellmates is the same substance Shields sold to Hamm in Cincinnati. This argument fails, too. As Hamm and Shields point out, there is some evidence that Myers had other suppliers. Jennifer Hamm testified that Myers sometimes bought her drugs from her own sources instead of going through the Hamms’ Cincinnati contacts. Myers also mixed her drugs with other substances; she did this in private in her room, and Jennifer Hamm never saw what substances, or in what quantities, Myers added. Moreover, Myers’s supply of carfentanil killed L.K.W., rendered L.K.W.’s girlfriend unconscious, and severely injured Myers’s cellmates (who would have died without prompt medical treatment). But the drugs that Shields sold to the Hamms did not cause the Hamms to overdose, and while the friend who went to Cincinnati with them had a bad reaction, he never lost consciousness and survived without any medical treatment. Nevertheless, a reasonable juror could have traced Myers’s carfentanil back to Hamm and Shields. Consider the following: On the morning of August 24, Myers was out of drugs—we know this because she told L.K.W. She also told L.K.W. in a text message that “[Hamm] is leaving to reup in an hour . . . I will text u when I get good.” About an hour later, L.K.W. made another inquiry. Myers texted back, “No hun I dont have anything. They just left to reup but will be back round 4 or so. . . . I will hollar at u when they get back and I get my shit ready for sell though.” That afternoon, Shields sold drugs to Hamm, and Hamm gave some of those drugs to Myers, who immediately prepared her share for resale. That same evening, Myers sold the fatal carfentanil to L.K.W. Finally, later that night or early the next morning, Myers was arrested and taken to the county jail, and she brought the carfentanil she gave her cellmates. A reasonable juror could have inferred from this timeline and Myers’s texts that she did not turn to any alternative suppliers. That leaves the observation that the Hamms had no negative reaction to the drugs they bought from Shields. A reasonable juror could have concluded that the Hamms sampled their purchase in small doses, or that they had developed a high tolerance from a long period of heavy Nos. 17-6383/18-5121 United States v. Hamm, et al. Page 11 opioid use. For example, at trial, a DEA agent estimated an individual dose of fentanyl at one tenth of a gram, but Jennifer testified that her daily consumption ranged from 0.5 to 2 grams. Hamm makes one other sufficiency argument regarding Counts 2 and 3. He claims that the government failed to prove that he knew the substance he distributed to Myers was carfentanil. But “the government need not ‘prove mens rea as to the type . . . of the drugs.’” United States v. Villarce, 323 F.3d 435, 439 (6th Cir. 2003) (quoting United States v. Garcia, 252 F.3d 838, 844 (6th Cir. 2001)). Hamm relies on cases involving “blind mules”—defendants who did not know (or claimed not to know) they were distributing drugs at all. There is no question that Hamm had “an intent to distribute a controlled substance[,]” which is all the government needed to prove.5 Ibid.