Court Opinion

ID: 9494869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:48:51.516922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:40.427180
License: Public Domain

TERENCE T. EVANS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Darrell Thomas dodged a bullet in 1998 when we reversed his conviction for conspiracy to distribute cocaine. United States v. Thomas, 150 F.3d 743 (7th Cir.1998). We reversed because the district court declined to give a “buyer-seller” jury instruction as Thomas had requested. *757Noting that the evidence presented against Thomas “was as consistent with intermittent sales as it was with criminal conspiracy,” we concluded that Thomas was prejudiced by the failure to give the “buyer-seller” instruction.1 We ordered a new trial.
Upon remand, the case was retried, a buyer-seller instruction was given (it was Seventh Circuit Pattern Instruction 6.12), and Thomas was again convicted. Today’s majority opinion reverses the new conviction, so Thomas has dodged another bullet. Because I think the majority has usurped the province of the jury, I respectfully dissent.
The line separating conspiracy from a mere buyer-seller relationship is not very bright. In a case like this, under our system of criminal procedure, it is a properly instructed jury that decides on which side of the fuzzy line a defendant’s conduct falls. That seems to me to be the message we sent the first time we saw this case when we found the evidence, as I have previously quoted, to be “as consistent with intermittent sales as it was with criminal conspiracy.”
The fatal flaw in the majority’s approach to this case is that it strains to infer what the evidence does not tell us, rather than follow our usual course and review the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. Thomas’ challenge today is nothing more than a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, and we have often held that we will set aside a verdict on this ground “only when the record contains no evidence, regardless of how it is weighed, from which the jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Brack, 188 F.3d 748, 760 (7th Cir.1999).
The evidence in this case does not show that a sophisticated Tony Soprano Paulie Walnuts Uncle Junior type criminal conspiracy was at work here. But we have observed that the “loosely-knit ensemble” of a drug conspiracy “can consist of an implicit understanding between the parties regarding the subsequent resale of drugs.” United States v. Smallwood, 188 F.3d 905, 912. A conspiracy agreement, we have also observed, can be established by circumstantial evidence. United States v. Brisk, 171 F.3d 514, 516 (7th Cir.1999). And that, I think, is what we have here.
The jury could have believed (and apparently did believe) that Thomas and the Joneses (primarily Mable) conspired to distribute crack for a 3-month period ending when the Joneses were busted by officers from the federal public housing narcotics task force on July 26, 1995.
If the only thing the evidence showed was that the Joneses bought personal-use-size quantities of crack from Thomas, nothing more than a simple buyer-seller arrangement would have been shown. But that’s not what we have here. The evidence, viewed favorably to the jury’s verdict, is sufficient to shove this case over the fuzzy line into conspiracy territory. It showed that Thomas sold resale-size quantities of crack to the Joneses on four occasions and that the Joneses resold the crack with Thomas’s knowledge. Apparently hopeful of providing even more crack for resale, Thomas gave the Joneses his phone and pager numbers so they could get in touch with him more easily. Plus, Thomas had an obvious stake in the Joneses’ success — every time he sold them crack for their resale purposes he made money. The more they would sell in the future, the better it would be for Thomas.
*758To set aside a verdict of a jury — especially after a hard-fought trial — is a drastic step. To do it twice, when the second trial proceeded exactly as we instructed with a proper buyer-seller instruction, is, in my opinion, a grave error. Had we thought the evidence insufficient to support a conspiracy conviction the first time around, the relief we would have ordered would have been a reversal with instructions to enter a judgment of acquittal. It would not have been to order a new trial. The majority’s opinion today means the time of 12 jurors, and that of Judge Gilbert, has been squandered while retrying this case.

. Although Thomas requested a buyer-seller instruction, he did not object to the failure of the judge to give one.