Opinion ID: 678782
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Province of the Jury

Text: 27 It is a cardinal principle of our system of criminal law that the facts are settled by the trier of fact, be it a jury or a judge, and are not ordinarily to be redetermined by a reviewing court. On appeal from a general verdict finding a defendant guilty, the deference we owe to the trier of fact requires that we draw from the record all inferences that can justifiably be drawn in support of the conviction. Hence, in assessing the sufficiency of the evidence, as an appellate court we must ask not whether [we] believe[ ] that the evidence at the trial established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether the judgment was supported by substantial evidence. Woodby v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 385 U.S. 276, 282, 87 S.Ct. 483, 486, 17 L.Ed.2d 362 (1966). Or, as the Supreme Court said in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 319, 99 S.Ct. at 2789 (emphasis in original); see also United States v. Long, 905 F.2d 1572, 1576 (D.C.Cir.1990) (A jury is entitled to draw a vast range of reasonable inferences from evidence, but may not base a verdict on mere speculation). 28 Whether a gun was used during and in relation to a drug trafficking offense is, at its core, a question of fact. In a case where the gun was not actually fired or brandished during the commission of the crime, it may well be an ultimate rather than a basic fact, but it is still a question of fact and not of law. Of course, an appellate court may properly determine, as a matter of law, the baseline or minimum conduct that can constitute a use, and it must determine in each case, with appropriate deference to the jury, whether the record contains sufficient evidence of such conduct. The reviewing court does not sit, however, to make its own finding with respect to an ultimate fact. Weighing the evidence is a function assigned to the jury: We are not a second jury weighing the evidence anew and deciding whether or not we would vote to convict the defendant. United States v. Poston, 902 F.2d 90, 94 (D.C.Cir.1990). Yet the use of an approach that requires the court to weigh numerous factors and to determine the specific relevance of individual facts in order to assess the sufficiency of the evidence invites the court to do just that. 29 The Bruce-Morris- Derr approach strips from the jury its responsibility [as] the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. Jackson, 307 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. at 2789. For example, in United States v. Bruce, 939 F.2d 1053 (D.C.Cir.1991), we were at considerable pains to determine whether a small gun found in the pocket of a coat along with a stash of drugs was intended for use only at the time of distribution or was rather the sort of weapon a drug dealer would employ for protection against an effort to penetrate a crack house. Id. at 1055. Determining that the former was more likely true, we reversed the conviction. See id. at 1056. Similarly, in Derr andRobinson, the panel struggled to determine for itself the significance of the fact that the defendant's gun was locked respectively in a closet or trunk with a stash of drugs at the time of the defendant's arrest. See Robinson, 997 F.2d at 888; Derr, 990 F.2d at 1338. Determining the weight to be given a single piece of evidence is not ordinarily an appropriate function for an appellate court. 30 A due regard for the limits that the jury system necessarily places upon the scope of our review would not lead us to abdicate all our responsibility as an appellate court--for example by affirming any conviction in which a gun is found and there is some connection, no matter how speculative or remote, between the gun and the predicate drug offense. A jury may convict a defendant for any of a number of impermissible reasons, and therefore, if the defendant claims that the evidence against him is insufficient to sustain his conviction, we must as an appellate court review the record conscientiously. See United States v. Zeigler, 994 F.2d 845, 849 (D.C.Cir.1993). Nor does our recognition that the approach heretofore used in this circuit impinges upon the province of the jury by itself predetermine precisely how we ought to review a Sec. 924(c)(1) case. It does, however, strongly suggest that we must replace the open-ended Bruce-Morris- Derr approach with a manageable standard; we must, that is, state clearly the minimum showing that the government must make in order to put to the jury the question whether a defendant has violated Sec. 924(c)(1).