Court Opinion

ID: 9475261
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:21:47.612316+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:36.411570
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
It is with the utmost reluctance that I indicate any dissent from the majority’s able, indeed valiant, effort to salvage this flawed prosecution. I cannot, however, bring myself to accept the reasoning which sustains both Counts 5 and 6 because I can find no way in logic to tie the government’s evidence to what the grand jury charged.
The grand jury charged that “[i]n or about March 1983, the exact date being to the grand jury unknown,” David Williams possessed with intent to distribute “approximately two pounds of Methamphetamine.” It then further charged that “[i]n or about the month of March 1983, the exact date being to the grand jury unknown,” David Williams possessed with intent to distribute “approximately one pound of Methamphetamine.” The government urges that two pieces of evidence prove these charges beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) as of January 1983 Williams was buying from Marlow one pound of methamphetamine every two weeks and (2) of the ten pounds of methamphetamine that Russell and Marlow brought to Evansville in March 1983, only three pounds remained by mid-April 1983.
The second bit of evidence is, so far as I can tell, wholly irrelevant. Nothing short of sheer speculation suggests that David Williams possessed any of the “missing" seven pounds of methamphetamine — except (perhaps) biweekly one-pound purchases. As for the evidence of these January purchases, the majority treats the two-month difference in dates as a nonfatal variance between indictment and proof. Maybe this is true; and maybe it would be reasonable in any event to infer that a business relationship that is thriving in January will not break up before March. However, I do not believe that the most liberal interpretation of the evidence presented — that during the early part of 1983 David Williams made a series of one-pound methamphetamine purchases — can be stretched to cover carefully drafted Counts 5 and 6, which charge that at one time in March 1983 Williams possessed two pounds of methamphetamine and that at another he possessed one pound. The evidence presented is clearly insufficient to sustain a conviction on both of these counts; perhaps it is barely sufficient to sustain a conviction on Count 6, possession of one pound of methamphetamine.
As to these counts, then, I respectfully dissent.