Opinion ID: 2791670
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility of Jail Calls

Text: Banks contends that the district court improperly admitted testimony identifying his voice on a series of outbound phone calls made from the Shelby County Jail. Specifically, he alleges that the government failed to establish the foundation for the introduction of such evidence because its witness, Officer Juaquatta Harris, was not personally familiar with his voice. 8 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. We review the district court’s admission of Officer Harris’s testimony for abuse of discretion. United States v. DeJohn, 368 F.3d 533, 542 (6th Cir. 2004). At trial, Officer Harris testified at length about how she isolated, traced, and identified the calls specific to Banks. Some of these calls were made using Banks’s Record and Identification (R&I) number, a unique number assigned to each inmate. Others (including those at issue here) were made from a general intake area, where inmates do not need to enter their R&I number but can make only outgoing calls. Harris linked these calls to Banks’s R&I calls by examining the numbers called and by listening in on the conversations that took place during these calls to pick up on any identifying information. Although Harris was not personally familiar with Banks’s voice, there are nonetheless sufficient indicia of reliability here to support admissibility. The Federal Rules of Evidence allow opinions identifying a person’s voice “based on hearing the voice at any time under circumstances that connect it with the alleged speaker.” Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(5) (emphasis added). Such circumstances exist here: the calls at issue were made to Banks’s mother, while Banks was in custody, concerning the carjacking that had occurred earlier that day. Officer Harris had gained familiarity with Banks’s voice by hearing him identify himself on a separate call using his R&I number. See United States v. Cruz-Rea, 626 F.3d 929, 935 (7th Cir. 2010) (upholding district court’s decision to admit identification testimony based on officer’s becoming familiar with defendant’s voice through fifteen-second voice exemplar). Banks’s reliance on the First Circuit’s decision in Ricci v. Urso, 974 F.2d 5, 7 (1st Cir. 1992), is misplaced. As the First Circuit later explained in United States v. Brown, 510 F.3d 57, 9 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. 68 (1st Cir. 2007), the Ricci court found the voice identification in that case to be unreliable because “the officer made the recording on a hand-held recorder” and “had no expert training in voice identification.” Here, Officer Harris culled the records through an established electronic monitoring system. She was able to compare multiple samples of Banks’s voice against one another. The subject matter of the conversations pointed directly to Banks. In light of these facts, the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing Officer Harris to testify at trial. B. Sufficiency of the Evidence to Support Banks’s Carjacking Conviction Banks next argues that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of carjacking. “We review a claim of insufficient evidence in the light most favorable to the government.” United States v. Fekete, 535 F.3d 471, 476 (6th Cir. 2008). Our review is limited to “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.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979) (emphasis in original). “To obtain a conviction for carjacking, the government must prove that the defendant, (1) with intent to cause death or serious bodily harm, (2) took a motor vehicle, (3) that had been transported, shipped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce, (4) from the person or presence of another (5) by force and violence or intimidation.” Fekete, 535 F.3d at 476 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 2119). Banks here contests only the first element—intent. On this point, we have held “that physically touching a victim with a weapon, standing alone, is sufficient to justify a finding that the victim faces an imminent threat of physical harm, and indicates an intent on the part of the defendant to act violently.” United States v. Adams, 265 F.3d 420, 425 (6th Cir. 2001). In 10 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. Adams, the defendant approached the victim and pointed a firearm at her. The victim fell to the ground after a brief skirmish. The victim left her keys in her car; after picking up some of the victim’s money, which had fallen to the ground, the defendant entered the victim’s car and drove away. Id. at 422. We upheld defendant’s conviction for carjacking in Adams against a sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge. This case involves facts that are even more egregious. According to Hall, Banks approached him with gun drawn. Hall and Banks engaged in a scuffle, during which Banks used a taser in an attempt to subdue Hall. When this failed (i.e., Hall was able to push himself off of Banks and run away), Banks drew his gun and tried to shoot Hall. Apparently, believing Hall to be dead, Banks then retrieved Hall’s keys, and drove off with Strong. After placing Banks and Strong under arrest, police uncovered, among other things, a loaded revolver in Hall’s car. See also Holloway v. United States, 526 U.S. 1, 12 (1999) (“The intent requirement of § 2119 is satisfied when the Government proves that at the moment the defendant demanded or took control over the driver’s automobile the defendant possessed the intent to seriously harm or kill the driver if necessary to steal the car (or, alternatively, [even] if unnecessary to steal the car).”). Banks’s contentions to the contrary are unavailing. Banks’s first argument—that his use of a taser was indicative of his intention to use non-lethal force—is meritless. Banks did in fact use lethal force, after he found the taser to be ineffective. Second, Banks argues that Hall testified that Banks shot at him with a semi-automatic pistol, but a later examination revealed that the only cartridge discharged was from a revolver. This distinction is insignificant, given that Hall was fleeing from Banks, with his back turned, at the time of the shooting. The jury 11 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Banks had discharged a firearm during the commission of this offense. Finally, Banks points to two cases from our sister circuits—United States v. Applewhaite, 195 F.3d 679 (3d Cir. 1999), and United States v. Harris, 420 F.3d 467 (5th Cir. 2005)—to argue that, in order to show carjacking, “the defendant must intend harm in order to complete the theft of the car.” United States v. Washington, 702 F.3d 886, 892 (6th Cir. 2012) (summarizing cases). In other words, the government must prove that Banks approached Hall in order to steal Hall’s car, and that the theft did not simply occur as an after-the-fact consequence of an altercation gone awry. We were presented with this very same argument in United States v. Washington. We declined, in that case, to endorse this interpretation of § 2119, and we see no reason to do so here. More importantly, we would find the evidence more than sufficient to convict Banks of carjacking even under such an interpretation. Banks and Hall did not know each other, Hall drove a Lexus—a vehicle he described as “very noticeable,” R. 84 (Trial Tr. at 397) (Page ID #609), and Banks left the scene immediately after he retrieved Hall’s keys. All of these facts suggest that Banks intended to harm Hall in order to steal Hall’s car. C. Career-Offender Enhancement Banks also objects to the district court’s classification of him as a career offender under the Sentencing Guidelines. Under the Guidelines, A defendant is a career offender if (1) the defendant was at least eighteen years old at the time the defendant committed the instant offense of conviction; (2) the instant offense of conviction is a felony that is either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense; and (3) the defendant has at least two prior felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense. 12 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1(a). Banks does not dispute (1) or (2). Nor does he contest that his prior conviction for manslaughter (originally charged as first-degree murder) constitutes a crime of violence. The only remaining question is whether Banks’s Class E felony conviction for evading arrest under Tennessee law is also a crime of violence. We determined, in United States v. Doyle, 678 F.3d 429, 437 (6th Cir. 2012), that such convictions were violent felonies under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”). We held that the felony in question—Tennessee Code Annotated § 39-16-603(b)(1)—fell within the ACCA’s residual clause, which classifies crimes as being violent felonies if they are “punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” and “involve[] conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” Id. at 431. That same reasoning applies to this case; indeed, the residual clauses in the ACCA and in the career-offender provision are identical to one another. Compare U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(2), with 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii).1 The district court properly found Banks to be a career offender. D. Application of Cross-Reference Provision for Attempted Murder Banks also faults the district court for its decision to calculate his base offense level by cross-referencing his conviction for felon in possession with attempted murder. We review the district court’s legal interpretation of the Guidelines de novo, United States v. Settle, 414 F.3d 629, 630 (6th Cir. 2005), but “accept factual findings made by the district court at sentencing unless they are clearly erroneous.” United States v. Phillips, 516 F.3d 479, 483 (6th Cir. 2008). 1 The Supreme Court recently heard argument in Johnson v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1871 (2014), a case where petitioners challenged the constitutionality of the ACCA’s residual clause. Pending the result in that case, we invite Banks to revisit our decision today by filing a petition for a writ of certiorari. 13 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. Section 2K2.1, the Guidelines provision for felon-in-possession offenses, contains a cross-reference provision that applies whenever the “defendant use[s] or possesse[s] any firearm or ammunition cited in the offense of conviction in connection with the commission or attempted commission of another offense.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(c)(1). That cross-reference directs us to apply U.S.S.G. § 2X1.1 if defendant’s base offense level with respect to the other offense is higher than the base offense level for defendant’s weapons possession. U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(c)(1)(A). Section 2X1.1, in turn, requires the district court to calculate defendant’s Guidelines range according to “[t]he base offense level from the guideline for the substantive offense, plus any adjustments from such guideline for any intended offense conduct that can be established with reasonable certainty.” U.S.S.G. § 2X1.1(a). Here, the district court cross-referenced Banks’s felon-in-possession conviction with attempted murder, under U.S.S.G. § 2A2.1, which provides a base offense level of 33 “if the object of the offense would have constituted first degree murder.” U.S.S.G. § 2A2.1(a)(1). The Guidelines state that “‘First degree murder’ means conduct that . . . would constitute first degree murder under 18 U.S.C. § 1111.” Id. at cmt. n.1. That provision defines murder in the first degree as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. [This includes] [e]very murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing.” 18 U.S.C. § 1111(a). In deciding to apply the cross-reference to attempted murder, the district court stated at sentencing that 14 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. There really wasn’t any proof that indicated anything other than attempt to shoot the victim as they were taking the car . . . . The defendant did not simply use or display a deadly weapon and, of course, sometimes that happens, certainly. He fired one shot at Hall subsequent to a physical altercation. That is true, there was a confrontation in the garage/driveway area. Hall was running away from the defendant when the defendant fired the shot and, of course, then we have the testimony at the trial about how this transpired, and certainly Hall’s perception of it. R. 101 (Banks Sentencing Hr’g Tr. at 5) (Page ID #1147). The district court then described the elements of first-degree murder, before concluding that “[i]f you shoot at somebody, you just miss them, but you intend to shoot them, or at least there’s every indication that you do, then that’s attempted murder.” Id. at 8 (Page ID #1150). These factual findings were not clearly erroneous. The district court relied on information presented at trial and in Banks’s Presentence Report (“PSR”). Its account was consistent with Hall’s version of events, an account which the government reiterated at sentencing. See R. 101 (Banks Sentencing Hr’g Tr. at 30–31) (Page ID #1172–73). These facts also support a legal finding that Banks acted with malice aforethought and premeditation. Banks approached Hall, gun drawn. He fired at Hall “after Mr. Hall [had] surrendered the keys [to his car] and [had] attempted to flee.” Id. at 31 (Page ID #1173). As the district court pointed out, Banks could have fired a shot into the ground to scare Hall, but chose instead to fire directly at him. Banks’s reliance on United States v. Morgan, 687 F.3d 688 (6th Cir. 2012), is not well taken. Unlike Morgan, the government did not in this case request an upward departure from the mandatory minimum for Banks’s § 924(c) conviction. Compare id. at 696 (remanding case 15 Nos. 13-6536/14-5168, United States v. Strong et al. because district court appeared to rely on same factor to apply attempted-murder cross-reference and to “increase Morgan’s sentence under § 924(c)”), with R. 101 (Banks Sentencing Hr’g Tr. at 67) (Page ID #1209) (giving mandatory minimum sentence to Banks for § 924(c) conviction). More importantly, unlike Morgan, the district court here also made a finding of specific intent. See id. at 5–6 (Page ID #1147–48) (“It appears that the conduct referenced could be characterized as an assault with intent to commit murder, attempted murder . . . . It appears the defendant’s actions do meet the definition of attempted murder, and that does appear to be correct.”). Banks’s objection is without merit.