Court Opinion

ID: 9398844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-01 15:02:07.81757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:37.222171
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-10904    Document: 41-1     Date Filed: 06/01/2023   Page: 1 of 9

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-10904
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       JAREECE EDWARD BLACKMON,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Middle District of Alabama
                 D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cr-00230-ECM-SRW-1
                          ____________________
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                22-10904

       Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               Jareece Blackmon challenges his conviction and sentence for
       various federal drug- and gun-related crimes, including murder.
       He claims that the evidence presented to the jury was not
       sufficient, that one of his counts should have been tried separately,
       and that his 480-month sentence is substantively unreasonable.
       After careful review of the record, we affirm.
                                        I.
              On August 15, 2017, a late-night drug deal went awry. Carl
       Sewell and a few others had traveled to a residence in Enterprise,
       Alabama to sell a large quantity of marijuana to Jareece Blackmon.
       Only Sewell went inside the house, where he was shot. He was
       later pronounced dead at the hospital. The next day, law
       enforcement arrested Blackmon at a house listed as his residence,
       where they recovered eighteen pounds of marijuana and three
       firearms, including the weapon used to shoot Sewell.
              A federal grand jury charged Blackmon with seven
       violations of federal law. Counts 1 and 5 were for conspiracy to
       distribute marijuana and possession with intent to distribute. See
       21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. Counts 2 and 4 were for possessing
       various firearms as a felon and Count 6 for using or carrying a
       firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. See 18 U.S.C.
       §§ 922(g)(1), 924(c)(1)(A). And Count 3 was for using a firearm to
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       22-10904               Opinion of the Court                        3

       commit murder in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. See 18
       U.S.C. § 924(c), (j)(1).
               Count 7 also charged Blackmon with possession of a firearm
       as a felon, but it arose from an incident one month earlier. Before
       trial, Blackmon moved to sever this count from his upcoming trial.
       See Fed. R. Crim. P. 14. The court denied the motion, deciding that
       Blackmon had not shown the necessary prejudice to warrant
       severance. But the court did take care to instruct the jury to
       consider each crime and its evidence separately, emphasizing that
       if the jury found Blackmon “guilty or not guilty of one crime, that
       must not affect your verdict for any other crime.”
              After a trial, the jury found Blackmon guilty on all seven
       counts. The court sentenced him to a total of 480 months of
       imprisonment and three years of supervised release. His sentence
       included 60 months for each of Counts 1 and 5, 120 months for
       each of Counts 2, 4, and 7, and 420 months for Count 3. These
       terms run concurrently. His sentence also included 60 months for
       Count 6 to be served consecutively, resulting in the 480-month
       total.
              Now on appeal, Blackmon makes three claims. First, he
       claims that the government did not present sufficient evidence to
       the jury for Counts 1–6, so the court should have granted his earlier
       motion for acquittal. Second, he argues that the court erred when
       it denied his motion to sever Count 7. Third, he submits that his
       480-month sentence is unreasonably high.
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       4                          Opinion of the Court                        22-10904

                                              II.
               We review challenges to the sufficiency of evidence de
       novo, but we view all “the evidence in the light most favorable to
       the government” and draw “all reasonable inferences and
       credibility choices in favor of the jury’s verdict.” United States v.
       Trujillo, 146 F.3d 838, 845 (11th Cir. 1998). With this lens, we ask
       whether “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential
       elements of the crime beyond reasonable doubt.” Id. (quotation
       omitted).
              We review the district court’s decision to deny a motion to
       sever under Rule 14 for abuse of discretion. United States v. Hersh,
       297 F.3d 1233, 1241 (11th Cir. 2002). That same standard applies to
       the substantive reasonableness of a sentence. United States v.
       Overstreet, 713 F.3d 627, 636 (11th Cir. 2013).
                                              III.
             The government presented sufficient evidence for the jury
       to convict Blackmon on Counts 1–6. 1
               We begin with Counts 1 and 5, the drug trafficking counts.
       Blackmon makes three non-conclusory arguments about the drug
       trafficking evidence. He claims that no reasonable jury could have
       believed the testimony of Cedric Moultrie, that the government

       1Blackmon also references Count 7 in this part of his brief, but he never
       addresses relevant evidence and only requests dismissal of Counts 1–6. So he
       has forfeited any argument about the sufficiency of the evidence for Count 7.
       See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681–82 (11th Cir. 2014).
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       22-10904               Opinion of the Court                         5

       presented no evidence that Blackmon knew about the marijuana
       recovered at his arrest, and that no evidence showed that he
       intended to distribute. As for Moultrie, Blackmon does not explain
       why the jury should not have trusted him, and, without anything
       more, we “are bound by the jury’s credibility choices.” United
       States v. Broughton, 689 F.3d 1260, 1277 (11th Cir. 2012) (quotation
       omitted).
              Moultrie’s testimony provided ample basis for Counts 1 and
       5. He testified that he routinely worked with Sewell to deal drugs,
       and that they sold to Blackmon multiple times, often meeting him
       in person. The day of Sewell’s death, Moultrie says he and Sewell
       traveled to Enterprise to sell Blackmon between 25 and 30 pounds
       of marijuana, which their texts and calls confirmed. This history,
       combined with the other evidence presented—especially the fact
       that law enforcement found the duffel bag with over eighteen
       pounds of marijuana when they arrested Blackmon—allowed a
       reasonable jury to conclude that Blackmon possessed the drugs and
       intended to distribute them.
              Counts 2, 4, and 6 all relate to possession of a firearm. Count
       2 refers to Blackmon’s possession (as a felon) of a Beretta Model
       Px4 Storm handgun. This gun was used to kill Sewell and
       recovered the next day during Blackmon’s arrest. Count 4 relates
       to Blackmon’s possession of that same gun and two others on the
       day of his arrest. And Count 6 charged him with using a firearm in
       furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
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       6                     Opinion of the Court               22-10904

              For all counts, Blackmon claims that he had no actual or
       constructive possession of the firearms. To show such possession,
       the government needed to only show—using direct or
       circumstantial evidence—that Blackmon “was aware or knew of
       the firearm’s presence” and “had the ability and intent to later
       exercise dominion and control over that firearm.” United States v.
       Perez, 661 F.3d 568, 576 (11th Cir. 2011). Moreover, the firearm
       “need not be on or near the defendant’s person in order to amount
       to knowing possession.” Id. (quotation omitted).
              Sufficient circumstantial evidence existed for a reasonable
       jury to conclude that Blackmon possessed the firearms and used
       the handgun to further a drug crime. For Counts 2 and 6, the
       evidence that we will discuss below—that Blackmon used the
       handgun to kill Sewell—supports these counts, most notably the
       eyewitness testimony and his DNA recovered from the weapon.
       For Count 4, the fact that law enforcement recovered all three
       firearms when they arrested Blackmon strongly supports that he
       knew about them and would later control them. But that was not
       all—a witness also testified that the rifle and shotgun were
       recovered from under furniture that Blackmon repeatedly reached
       under leading up to his arrest. A reasonable jury could infer that
       he possessed all three firearms from this and other evidence.
             Finally, Count 3 stands as well. Along with our conclusions
       about the other counts, a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(j)(1)
       requires that Blackmon “in the course” of committing the drug
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       22-10904                  Opinion of the Court                              7

       trafficking crime, “cause[d] the death of a person through the use
       of a firearm” and that this killing be “murder.”
               The government presented ample evidence that Blackmon
       shot Sewell. For one, cellular location data showed that he was
       near the site of the shooting on that night. One of the defense’s
       witnesses said she saw Blackmon off and on at the house the day of
       Sewell’s death. And two eyewitnesses placed Blackmon at the
       house where Sewell was shot when it happened. One was a man
       named Willie Coleman, who was at the house when law
       enforcement arrived. The other was Moultrie, who had travelled
       with Sewell to sell the marijuana to Blackmon. He told
       investigators that he saw Blackmon at the house that night. At
       trial, he recounted that he saw Sewell walk into the house—with
       the bag of marijuana, but no gun—and that after a few minutes, he
       heard gunshots. A forensic doctor testified that Sewell’s death was
       caused by his gunshot wounds, ruling it a homicide.
             From this evidence, a reasonable jury could infer that
       Blackmon shot Sewell in furtherance of his drug crimes.2 The jury
       heard evidence about the ongoing drug trafficking conspiracy,
       multiple eyewitness testimony that Blackmon was in the house
       with Sewell and the marijuana, and DNA evidence linking him to

       2 Blackmon does not challenge the mens rea requirement of 18 U.S.C.
       § 924(j)(1)—that the killing be with “malice aforethought”—so he has forfeited
       this argument. See 18 U.S.C. § 1111(a); Sapuppo, 739 F.3d at 681–82. His
       challenges revolve around the credibility of the witnesses and the possession
       of the gun used to kill Sewell.
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       8                      Opinion of the Court                22-10904

       the murder weapon. Altogether, and in the light most favorable to
       the verdict, sufficient evidence supported all six counts on appeal.
                                       IV.
             The court did not abuse its discretion in declining to sever
       Count 7. Generally, a court undertakes “a two-step analysis to
       determine whether separate charges were properly tried at the
       same time,” first analyzing initial joinder of counts under Rule 8(a)
       and then any request to sever under Rule 14(a). United States v.
       Walser, 3 F.3d 380, 385–87 (11th Cir. 1993); Fed. R. Crim. P. 8(a),
       14. Blackmon has only challenged the court’s refusal to sever
       under Rule 14(a).
             Relief under Rule 14 turns on a showing of prejudice. See
       Fed. R. Crim P. 14(a). But defendants must show more than “some
       prejudice” for us to find an abuse of discretion; a defendant must
       show both “an unfair trial” and “compelling prejudice.” Walser, 3
       F.3d at 386 (quotation omitted). This is a “heavy burden” that
       requires more than “mere conclusory allegations.” Id. (quotation
       omitted).
              Blackmon has not met this burden. In his brief, he only
       makes one specific allegation of prejudice: that Count 7 tended to
       “show bad character on the part of Mr. Blackmon.” This
       allegation, standing alone, is not compelling enough to label the
       court’s decision an abuse of discretion, especially given how it
       specifically instructed the jury to consider each crime separately.
       See Hersh, 297 F.3d at 1244.
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       22-10904                   Opinion of the Court                           9

                                            V.
              Finally, Blackmon claims that his 480-month sentence is
       substantively unreasonable. In evaluating reasonableness, this
       Court considers the “totality of the circumstances” guided by the
       statutory factors set out in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). United States v. Pugh,
       515 F.3d 1179, 1190 (11th Cir. 2008) (quotation omitted).
              Blackmon’s sentence is reasonable. To start, it fell within
       the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range of 420 months to life, which
       supports a finding of reasonableness.3 Id.; 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4).
       And the sentence was well below the statutory maximum here—
       life imprisonment—which is another “indicator of a reasonable
       sentence.” See 18 U.S.C. § 924(j)(1); United States v. Taylor, 997 F.3d
       1348, 1355 (11th Cir. 2021). And finally, despite Blackmon’s
       arguments to the contrary, the sentencing transcript reveals that
       the court appropriately considered the other § 3553(a) factors. The
       court not only recited several factors verbatim, but also explained
       the weight it gave to Blackmon’s “extensive criminal history
       involving guns and drugs and violence,” the effect of his actions on
       the victim and his family, the “danger to the community,” and
       more. We see no abuse of discretion.
                                      *      *      *
                We AFFIRM.

       3 On   appeal, Blackmon does not challenge the Guidelines computation.