Opinion ID: 2978752
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of the evidence against Atkins

Text: Atkins first contends that the district court erred when it denied his motion for a judgment of acquittal pursuant to Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. “[W]here, as here, a defendant does not renew his motion for judgment of acquittal for insufficiency of the evidence at the close of all the proofs, appellate review is limited to determining whether there was a manifest miscarriage of justice.” United States v. Childs, 539 F.3d 552, 558 (6th Cir. 2008) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). “Such a miscarriage of justice occurs only if the record is devoid of evidence pointing to guilt.” Id. Furthermore, in reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, we will view the evidence “in the light most favorable to the prosecution.” United States v. Abboud, 438 F.3d 554, 589 (6th Cir. 2006). Atkins’s claim rests on two contentions. First, he asserts that the cell phone records introduced by the prosecution that purportedly document discussions between Atkins and his accomplices are too isolated in time and are too short in duration to establish his guilt. Atkins also -6- Nos. 08-2182, 08-2304 United States v. McDonel; United States v. Atkins surmises that other people living at his home during the relevant time period might have made the calls. In addition, Atkins highlights various discrepancies in the testimony of Cromer and Woodley in an effort to attack their credibility as witnesses. Neither of Atkins’s arguments is persuasive. Atkins points to no evidence presented at trial to counter the government’s showing that the cell phone recovered at the scene of the CVS robbery belonged to him and was used to call McDonel, Cromer, and Woodley in connection with the robberies. And although Atkins identifies inconsistencies in Cromer’s and Woodley’s testimony (all relating to minor details such as their familiarity with guns, whether they drank vodka before one of the robberies, and how they became involved in the robberies), our role is not to weigh the credibility of witnesses on review. See United States v. Maliszewski, 161 F.3d 992, 1006 (6th Cir. 1998) (holding that the appellant’s “attack on the credibility of prosecution witnesses gets her nowhere” on appeal because the court “draw[s] all available inferences and resolve[s] all issues of credibility in favor of the jury’s verdict”). Nor is the record otherwise devoid of evidence of Atkins’s guilt. Both Cromer and Woodley, two of Atkins’s accomplices, testified in detail as to his involvement in three of the armed robberies, and they identified Atkins in videotapes of the robberies captured by the stores’ security cameras. The district court therefore properly denied Atkins’s Rule 29 motion.