Opinion ID: 1406231
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reliability of the Confidential Informant's Statements

Text: Next, Mays claims that the confidential informant's allegations of his involvement in drug trafficking that were recounted in the PSR were unreliable and that the district court erred by relying on that information in determining his sentence. A defendant has a constitutional right to be sentenced on the basis of accurate information. United States v. Rollins, 544 F.3d 820, 838 (7th Cir.2008). The evidentiary standards at sentencing are relaxed, however, and a court may consider information that possesses sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy. Id. (quotation marks and citations omitted). Therefore, a court can rely on facts contained in a PSR if the PSR is founded on sufficiently reliable information. Id. The defendant bears the burden of showing a PSR is inaccurate or unreliable, but more than a bare assertion of inaccuracy is required. Id. The defendant must furnish some evidence that calls into question the reliability or correctness of the facts contained in the PSR. United States v. Willis, 300 F.3d 803, 807 (7th Cir.2002). If the defendant can produce such evidence, the burden shifts to the government to demonstrate the accuracy of the information. United States v. Heckel, 570 F.3d 791, 795-96 (7th Cir.2009). At the sentencing hearing, Mays claimed the confidential informant's statements were unreliable because there were three outstanding warrants for the informant's arrest around the time he made the statements. In addition, court orders allegedly were in force prohibiting the informant from making contact with Mays and Mays's residence. (Mays learned during discovery that the informant was his son-in-law). Although Mays introduced no documentation in support of these claims, we will assume for the sake of argument that he presented sufficient evidence to call into question the reliability of the informant's statements and thereby shifted the burden of showing their accuracy to the government. We review the district court's determination of the reliability of the confidential informant's hearsay statements for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Omole, 523 F.3d 691, 702 (7th Cir.2008). Reliability may be established by corroborating evidence, United States v. Martinez, 289 F.3d 1023, 1029 (7th Cir.2002), and there was evidence in the record corroborating the confidential informant's statements in the PSR. Over a year after the informant reported that Mays regularly bought cocaine from a man named Stan from Schaumburg and trafficked drugs with the assistance of men named Steve and Bruce, Mays placed calls from jail seeking bail from a man in Schaumburg and men named Steve and Bruce. In addition, during his conversation with the man from Schaumburg, Mays stated: I gotthey caught me with a gun. That's it. They got me with a gun. That's it. It was reasonable for the district court to infer from that statement that Mays was telling the person from Schaumburg that he had been caught with only a gun and not with evidence of other crimesfor example, drugs. That statement thus corroborated the informant's statements that Mays was involved in drug trafficking with a man from Schaumburg. The district court then was justified in relying on the informant's other statementthat men named Steve and Bruce were helping Mays with drug traffickingespecially in light of the fact that Mays later placed calls from jail to men with the same names seeking bail money. Moreover, the sizeable sum of cash Mays was carrying when he was arrested, the drug-detection dog's alerting to the cash and Mays's vehicle, and the correlation of firearms with drug activities [4] further corroborated the informant's statements that Mays was involved in drug dealing. Accordingly, we see no abuse of discretion in the district court's conclusion that the confidential informant's statements bore sufficient indicia of reliability to support their probable accuracy. Mays also contends there was not enough evidence to support the district court's finding that he possessed the gun because he was selling drugs. The district court's standard of proof for finding facts affecting a defendant's sentence is a preponderance of the evidence, United States v. Sliman, 449 F.3d 797, 800 (7th Cir. 2006), and our review is for clear error, United States v. Foster, 577 F.3d 813, 815 (7th Cir.2009). We see no clear error on this record. The informant's statements concerning Mays's drug activities that were corroborated by Mays's phone calls from jail, along with the $2500 in cash he was carrying, the drug-detection dog's alerts to the cash and his automobile, and the common association of firearms with drug activities, easily permitted the district court to find by a preponderance of the evidence that Mays's motivation for possessing the .380-caliber pistol was because he was engaged in drug dealing.