Opinion ID: 809227
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence for Count One

Text: All defendants challenge the sufficiency of the evidence for their guilty verdicts under Count One, conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute. See 21 U.S.C. § 846. To establish the conspiracy, the government had to prove: (1) the existence of an agreement between 2 or more persons to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; (2) that the defendant knew of the agreement; and (3) that the defendant intended to join the agreement. United States v. Spagnola, 632 F.3d 981, 986 (7th Cir. 2011). 8 Nos. 10-3725, 10-3726, 11-2262 & 11-2439 Put simply, the Government presented a mountain of evidence against these defendants to prove that they agreed with each other to steal cocaine. We needn’t detail each piece of evidence produced at the trials; suffice to say, the Government was able to use the defendants’ own words against them because of the extensive recordings of conversations with Agent Gomez. Additionally, Kindle waived his Miranda rights at the time of his arrest and made statements that were used at trial. And of course, a wealth of physical evidence was seized from the brown van that the defendants planned to use for the robbery. Keeping in mind that we view these factors in the light most favorable to the Government, a rational jury could easily find that the defendants agreed with each other to steal cocaine. But the real gist of the defendants’ argument is that even if there was a conspiracy between them to steal cocaine, there was no evidence of an intent to distribute it, a required element under Count One. We have en- countered this argument before in contexts very similar to this one, and we have rejected it. See, e.g., United States v. Walker, 673 F.3d 649, 654-55 (7th Cir. 2012) (rejecting a lack-of-evidence-to-distribute argument in another case involving the planned robbery of a fictitious stash house); United States v. Lewis, 641 F.3d 773, 782 (7th Cir. 2011) (same). As we explained in Lewis, 641 F.3d at 782, there are several permissible inferences a reasonable jury could draw from the type of evidence presented here. First, the plan was to rob a stash house containing a large Nos. 10-3725, 10-3726, 11-2262 & 11-2439 9 amount of cocaine (probably somewhere between 25 and 35 kilograms). Law enforcement officials at trial testified that 25 to 35 kilograms of cocaine is not a personal-use amount, and the jury could reasonably infer that given the sizeable quantity, Mayfield and his crew intended to distribute it. Additionally, recordings of the conversations between Gomez and the robbery crew suggest that the stakes were high in this operation; the crew members demonstrated a preoccupation with how to deal with the armed guards in the fictional stash house, and at one point Kindle even suggested that they would kill the guards. Indeed, the weapons found in the van showed that the crew meant business. A jury could infer that, given the huge risk the defendants planned on exposing themselves to, they must have expected an equally huge reward. Such a reward would require distribution. In short, the jury had ample reason for finding that the defendants intended to distribute whatever amount of cocaine that they expected to recover.