Opinion ID: 3037794
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: September 20 Robbery and Conviction

Text: The Bank of America branch at 15 E. Guadalupe Road in Gilbert, Arizona, was robbed on September 20, 2000. According to eyewitnesses, the robber was a short, Hispanic woman with a pock-marked face. She conducted a fairly generic robbery—she posed as a bank patron, quietly passed her assigned teller a demand note that threatened force, and absconded with the stolen proceeds without having said a word. Working off a tip based on the robber’s physical description, the FBI suspected Jernigan and assembled a six-woman photospread containing her picture. Two days after the robbery, the bank teller who had interacted with the robber (the “victim teller”) viewed the photospread and identified Jernigan as the robber. Police arrested Jernigan on November 10, 2000, and she has since remained in custody. The government charged Jernigan with the September 20 bank robbery, unlawful use of a firearm during that robbery, and two additional bank robberies on October 11 and 25. The district court severed the charges involving the September 20 robbery for trial. Jernigan’s three-day trial began on March 20, 2001. The evidence against her included five eyewitnesses who, both 7104 UNITED STATES v. JERNIGAN prior to and during trial, identified her as the robber. There was also a surveillance video of the robbery which the jury watched four times. Jernigan’s defense was that the witnesses misidentified her and she was not the robber shown in the surveillance video. The jury returned guilty verdicts on both counts (armed bank robbery and use of a firearm during an armed bank robbery). The district court sentenced Jernigan to 168 months in jail, and five years of supervised release. The other two bank robbery charges were dismissed by stipulation.