Court Opinion

ID: 9487104
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:08:07.479417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:05.779534
License: Public Domain

SEYMOUR, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I am in general agreement with the majority opinion and the statement set out in footnote one, as far as it goes. I thus agree that our use of the term “nexus presumption” means only that we are performing our usual appellate review of the sufficiency of the evidence and its reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the government. Nonetheless, in my view the use of this language, even as read in light of footnote one, is obfuscating and creates an unnecessary risk of misapplication. If the nexus presumption is intended to do no more than indicate that we are viewing the inferences from the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, we should simply say that is what we are doing, reject the presumption language as confusing, and eliminate it entirely from our cases. No explanation has been offered for singling out these particular cases as requiring us to reformulate a well-established standard of review. I see no reason to retain an extra layer of terminology that evokes inapplicable legal principles to articulate a rule that is familiar and already clearly described. I would eliminate all references to presuming a nexus between a firearm and a drug trafficking offense.