Opinion ID: 766904
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Lipscomb's Motion for Severance

Text: 58 Pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 8(b), Lipscomb argues that her trial was improperly joined with Webb and Pigee. She contends that joining her drug charges with the weapons charges against Pigee and Webb confused the jury and prejudiced Lipscomb. Lipscomb asserts that the district court should have granted her motion for severance because all of the charges in the indictment were not a part of the same set of acts. 59 We review the defendant's claim of misjoinder de novo. See United States v. Stillo, 57 F.3d 553, 557 (7th Cir. 1995). However, a misjoinder 'requires reversal only if the misjoinder results in actual prejudice because it had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict.' United States v. Schweihs, 971 F.2d 1302, 1322 (7th Cir. 1992), quoting United States v. Lane, 474 U.S. 438, 449, 106 S.Ct. 725, 732, 88 L.Ed.2d 814 (1986). In making this determination of whether the misjoinder was harmless, we may consider the effect of appropriate limiting instructions charging the jury to consider the guilt or innocence of each defendant individually. Id. 60 Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, defendants may be charged jointly if they participated in the same act or transaction or in the same series of acts or transactions constituting an offense or offenses. Fed. R. Crim. P. 8. Rule 8(b) does not require that the defendants be charged with identical crimes. See United States v. Marzano, 160 F.3d 399, 401 (7th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 1095 (1999). The focus is on the underlying acts that constitute criminal offenses. The defendants must be charged with crimes that well up out of the same series of such acts, but they need not be the same crimes. Id. (citation omitted). 61 Counts 6 and 7 of the indictment charge Lipscomb with owning and operating crack houses at 539 and 541 Highland Avenue in Alton, Illinois. Count 1 charges Lipscomb, Pigee, and Webb with conspiring to deal cocaine and cocaine base. In Counts 9 and 10, the indictment charges Pigee and Webb with the unlawful possession of firearms. 62 Lipscomb owned the houses named in the indictment, and Pigee and Webb rented one of the houses from Lipscomb. When police executed the search warrants of 539 and 541 Highland Avenue, they found two guns at 539 and two more at 541, one of which was found near 4.2 grams of cocaine. 63 This Court has noted that where firearms have been discovered along with evidence of a defendant's drug trafficking, joinder of firearms and weapons charges has been approved due to the natural inferences that may be drawn from the contemporaneous possession of guns and drugs or drug paraphernalia: the firearm is an indication of drug activity, and participation in drug trafficking supplies a motive for having the gun. United States v. Hubbard, 61 F.3d 1261, 1270 (7th Cir. 1995) (holding misjoinder inappropriate where discovery of the guns occurred more than seventeen months after the narcotics transaction between the defendants) (citations omitted). See also United States v. Jones, 880 F.2d 55, 62 (8th Cir. 1989); United States v. Gorecki, 813 F.2d 40, 42 (3d Cir. 1987); United States v. Sanko, 787 F.2d 1249, 1251 (8th Cir. 1986); United States v. Cox, 934 F.2d 1114, 1119 (10th Cir. 1991); United States v. Valentine, 706 F.2d 282, 289 (10th Cir. 1983). 64 In the instant case, we believe that joinder of these defendants was appropriate under Fed. R. Crim P. 8(b). Possession of firearms and drug trafficking are closely related. See United States v. Cooper, 19 F.3d 1154, 1163 (7th Cir. 1994) (stating that [t]his Court has previously held that weapons are 'tools of the trade' of drug dealers), citing United States v. Rush, 890 F.2d 45, 49 (7th Cir. 1989). Additionally, all of the violations charged in the indictment occurred at the same time and place, and clearly constituted a series of acts. There is also no evidence that Lipscomb suffered any prejudice as a result of the joinder. Finally, the court gave the appropriate instructions to the jury, advising it to consider each count on its own and to analyze what the evidence in the case shows with respect to each defendant, leaving out of consideration any evidence admitted solely against some other defendant or defendants. Therefore, we hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying Lipscomb's Motion for Severance. 65