Opinion ID: 216584
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Possession Of The Guns

Text: Regarding the gun charges, Leary appears to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence that he constructively possessed the guns found in the blue duffel bag. The law on constructive possession described above in relation to the possession of drugs also applies to the possession of firearms. The government must simply prove, using either direct or circumstantial evidence, that “the defendant had the ability to exercise knowing ‘dominion and control’ over the items in question.” Wettstain, 618 F.3d at 586 (internal quotation marks omitted). Dominion and control over the premises where the item is found is acceptable, see Kincaide, 145 F.3d at 782, but where evidence of a defendant’s mere presence near the guns is presented, there must also be some “‘other incriminating evidence’, coupled with presence, . . . [that] serve[s] to tip the scale in favor of sufficiency.” Bailey, 553 F.3d at 947 (quoting United States v. Arnold, 486 F.3d 177, 183 (6th Cir. 2007) (en banc)) (alterations in original). Bailey and Arnold provide good examples for comparison to the present case. In Bailey, we found the mere fact that the defendant had been driving the car in which a gun was found without any other passengers to be insufficient to establish constructive 13 No. 09-5418 United States v. Leary possession. 553 F.3d at 948–49. In Arnold, by contrast, the defendant had been sitting in the passenger’s seat of a car, under which police found a gun, but there was also other evidence linking the defendant to that gun: a witness had called 9-1-1 shortly before the arrest to report that the defendant had just threatened her with a gun matching the description of the one found in the car. 486 F.3d at 181–82. The evidence of constructive possession of firearms here is much more similar to the evidence in Arnold. Not only were the guns found in the closet—an area over which Leary exercised dominion and control, albeit shared—but Leary openly admitted that the blue duffel bag on the left side of the closet in which the guns were found was his, as were all of the other items on the left side of the closet. Furthermore, as in Arnold, Luhman had just reported to the police that Leary had pointed a small, black gun matching the description of one of the guns found in the blue duffel bag at her. She had also seen him take one of the assault rifles out of a duffel bag when he pointed a gun at her in mid-April. This evidence goes beyond that found to be sufficient in Arnold, thereby providing the district court with ample reason to deny Leary’s motion for a judgment of acquittal. We therefore affirm this portion of the district court’s decision as it relates to Counts Two through Five.