Opinion ID: 663071
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Overwhelming Evidence Against Brown

Text: 30 The government's case featured overwhelming physical evidence corroborated by the insider testamentary evidence of Heaven Sinclair. The November Search revealed the safe in Sinclair's bedroom, from the door of which the police lifted two of Brown's fingerprints, as well as two of his fingerprints from a digital scale inside the safe. The other evidence found inside the safe included, as we have said, two pistols, nine rounds of .32 calibre ammunition, forty rounds of nine millimeter ammunition, two razor blades with traces of white powder, packaging material, and over one hundred and thirty-five grams of cocaine base. A jury could have found Brown guilty of firearms possession and drug trafficking charges beyond a reasonable doubt on this physical evidence alone. 31 This evidence was corroborated by the sworn statements of Sinclair. On the day of the November Search, Sinclair told police that the drugs and firearms belonged to Brown. Then, during the February Search, police recovered additional physical evidence to support these and other drug trafficking and firearms charges: a safe key, which fitted into the cylinder of the safe in Sinclair's bedroom, with a four-digit number matching three of the digits of the number on that safe, the fourth number having been obliterated. The police also recovered a semiautomatic pistol and a telephone pager (the cross-admissibility of which we discuss infra ). 32 The admission into evidence of the pistol and the pager raises the issue of prejudice under Rule 8 and Rule 14. Nevertheless, from the other evidence, for example, a jury could have found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the safe belonged to Brown, that Brown was an armed drug dealer who cajoled Williams and Sinclair into using their home perhaps because it was so close to the Meyer Elementary School, and that Brown had placed the safe in Sinclair's bedroom to store the tools of his trade: the drugs, scale, firearms, and packaging material. The safe key and its four-digit number matching three of the digits of the number on the safe confirm the case against Brown.