Court Opinion

ID: 9852430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:30:16.659324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:27.674990
License: Public Domain

BYBEE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
It is said that the wife of English lexicographer Samuel Johnson returned home unexpectedly in the middle of the day, to find Dr. Johnson in the kitchen with the chambermaid. She exclaimed, “My dear Dr. Johnson, I am surprised.” To which he reputedly replied, “No my dear, you are amazed. We are surprised.”1
Earl Nevils was surprised when two LA police officers with guns drawn ordered him not to move. But Nevils was not amazed in the least by the circumstances in which he found himself: he had a loaded, chambered semiautomatic Tec 9 on his lap and a loaded, chambered .40 caliber pistol by his leg. Nor was he astonished by the marijuana, ecstasy, cash and a cellphone on a table a foot away. Although the unoccupied apartment was not his, Nevils wasn’t the least bewildered at finding himself in Apartment # 6 — officers had found drugs and guns in the apartment just three weeks earlier and had arrested Nevils there for parole violation. According to one of the officers, Nevils first impulse was to “grab towards his lap” where the Tec 9 lay and “then he stopped and put his hands up.” He later exclaimed to an officer, “I don’t believe this s — . Those m-left me sleeping and didn’t wake me.” The jury found him guilty of being a felon in possession.
The majority overturns his conviction because it finds the evidence insufficient to show that Nevils knowingly possessed the guns. It surmises that it is equally plausible that someone — anyone, actually, since the defense couldn’t finger any person in particular — set Nevils up by placing the guns on him while he was in a drunken stupor. Thus, the majority concludes, no reasonable juror — certainly not the twelve who did' — could have found that Nevils knowingly possessed the guns. Like Mrs. Johnson, I am both amazed and disappointed. I respectfully dissent.
I
To overturn a jury’s conclusion that evidence introduced in a trial was sufficient to convict the defendant we must, as the majority admits, “determine whether any rational jury could have found [the defendant] guilty of each element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Esquivel-Ortega, 484 F.3d 1221, 1224 (9th Cir.2007). Under this inquiry, *812we must not “question [the] jury’s assessment of witnesses’ credibility, and must presume that the trier of fact resolved any conflicting inferences in favor of the prosecution.” United States v. Johnson, 229 F.3d 891, 894 (9th Cir.2000). This standard is extraordinarily high. It means that to overturn a jury conviction based on sufficiency of evidence, the majority must conclude that no rational jury could have convicted Nevils under the evidence properly presented at trial. United States v. Barron-Rivera, 922 F.2d 549, 552 (9th Cir.1991).
In this case, for the purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), the jury had to find that the defendant had “knowing possession” of a firearm; that is, the jury must have concluded that Nevils “consciously possessed what he knew to be a firearm.” United States v. Beasley, 346 F.3d 930, 934 (9th Cir.2003). This conscious possession can either be actual or constructive, see United States v. Chambers, 918 F.2d 1455, 1457-58 (9th Cir.1990), but in either case the government must prove “a sufficient connection between the defendant and the [firearms] to support the inference that the defendant exercised dominion and control over the [firearms].” Gutierrez, 995 F.2d at 171 (quoting United States v. Terry, 911 F.2d 272, 278 (9th Cir.1990)). There is a “sufficient connection” in this case.
There was ample circumstantial evidence for a rational jury to conclude that Earl Nevils knew he possessed, at the least, the 9mm Luger semi-automatic handgun (also referred to in the record as a Tec 9) on his lap. The gun was loaded with several live rounds of ammunition, including one in the gun’s chamber. The jury heard evidence from which it could easily have inferred that Nevils knew the gun was there. Officer Clauss, one of the two police officers who apprehended Nev-ils, testified that when they came upon Nevils and announced themselves, “at that point, you know, his eyes, you know, kind of came full — fully opened and for a brief second he appeared like he was going to, you know, grab toward his lap and then he stopped and put his hands up.” A rational juror could equally infer from Nevils’ behavior that his first instinct was to reach for his weapon — an instinct that was suppressed when Nevils realized the officers had already drawn their guns and one of the officers had flanked him. Nevil’s subsequent behavior is consistent with the jury’s finding. When he talked to Sergeant Coleman after his arrest, Nevils did not express any consternation over waking up in a strange place, or amazement about finding guns on his person. He didn’t say “Hey, how did I get here?” or “Where did those guns come from?” Instead, he simply expressed anger over being left alone, proclaiming, “I don’t believe this s — . Those m-left me sleeping and didn’t wake me.”
II
The majority rejects these perfectly plausible explanations because it finds another explanation in equipoise with the government’s case and relies on the rule that where the evidence presented at trial does not “establish any reason to believe that an innocent explanation of that evidence was any less likely than the incriminating explanation advanced by the government,” it cannot establish the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Vasquez-Chan, 978 F.2d 546, 551 (9th Cir.1992). The majority’s “innocent explanation” in this case, however, is extraordinarily implausible. The defense’s theory, adopted by the majority, is that Nevils, after arriving at the apartment complex for a baby shower, became drunk, passed out, and *813was carried into the notorious Apartment # 6 by several female friends. He then remained unconscious for some seven hours (from approximately 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., a few hours after the baby shower ended, until around 11:45 p.m., when the police officers entered the apartment complex). During that period, one or more persons, whose identities and reasons are unknown, entered Apartment # 6, placed drugs in small baggies, a cell phone, and cash on the coffee table in front of Nevils and left a loaded semiautomatic handgun on Nevils’ lap and another loaded pistol leaning against his leg. This activity, apparently, did not wake the lethargic Nevils. Instead, the majority believes, he continued to sleep soundly until the police arrived, was awakened, and was amazed to find himself surrounded by drugs and guns.
Even more curious than Nevils’ behavior under the majority’s “innocent explanation” is the behavior of the anonymous drug dealers. What did the drug dealers do? There are a couple of options, none of them very good. As Mark Twain wrote, “[i]t would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up.” Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, in In Defense of HaRriet Shelley and Other Essays 60, 68 (1918). These drug dealers, according to one version of the theory, were surprised by the presence of a police car outside the apartment complex, got scared, and ran off. They decided it was best to leave their drugs and weaponry with the sleeping Nevils, and either threw or placed the heavy guns unto Nevils’ lap and leg (all without waking him) as they rushed to leave the premises. Although ordinary drug dealers might, with an eye towards profits, stuff the drugs, cash, and cellphones in their pockets while they were leaving, the majority’s anonymous constructs are no ordinary drug dealers. Instead, these guys were so frightened of being caught by the police that they left all their loot on the coffee table, ran out the front door of the apartment, and disappeared before the police arrived. Ironically, their haste did not appear to be necessary — the police officers saw no one leaving Apartment # 6 and were only drawn to the apartment after noticing a person furtively trying to enter it later.
Alternatively, the drug dealers deliberately decided to leave their paraphernalia in the apartment. But rather than leave one of their number behind to guard the loot, they set up a scarecrow of sorts— arming the unconscious Nevils and propping him up on the couch to look menacing. This plan, of course, was foiled by the arrival of the police, who weren’t impressed with the sleeping Nevils. This theory, like the first, is so farfetched that a rational jury could easily have rejected it in favor of the far more plausible conclusion that Nevils simply fell asleep while guarding the drugs.
The majority recognizes that its theory is implausible “in many towns and many apartment complexes.” Maj. Op. at 810. But it finds that its “innocent explanation” is “not implausible given the evidence that this neighborhood, this apartment complex, and Apartment 6 itself, were neck-deep in gang activity in the illegal drug trade.” Id. In other words, the alternate theory would be implausible if Nevils had been found in an ordinary apartment complex, but because this was a notorious drug area, anything can happen. The majority’s admission that its theory is generally implausible is healthy, but it can’t make its implausible theory plausible just because these events took place in a drug-infested area. No one — not even drug dealers, and maybe especially drug dealers — are going to go off and abandon their loaded weapons, drugs, cash and cellphones with a man *814sleeping off a drunken binge. It makes no sense whatsoever. If we are to assume, without any evidence, that people are that irrational, then we are going to have to revise our “innocent explanation” jurisprudence and overturn a bunch of our cases.
Ill
We don’t have any cases that address precisely how much the government must prove to show that a sleeping defendant is a knowing possessor. The two cases that are closest to this case come to opposite conclusions and each is distinguishable. The majority relies principally on United States v. Ruiz, 462 F.3d 1082 (9th Cir.2006). In that case, the defendants were arrested following a raid on a meth lab in a house. The officers found weapons in a couch in the loft area, in the main part of the residence, in a stairwell and under a sofa cushion in the garage. Id. at 1085. Other than the defendants’ mere presence at the house, nothing linked them to the weapons; there was no fingerprint evidence and they did not own the residence. Id. at 1088. Our decision is a model of common sense: although the men were present in a dwelling where weapons were found, there is nothing to show that they knowingly possessed the weapons. Like the defendants in Ruiz, Nevils did not own Apartment # 6, nor were his fingerprints found on the gun. However, unlike in Ruiz, where the defendants were simply present in the same house as the weapons, here Nevils had the weapons on his person, and they were loaded and chambered.
Our decision in United States v. Gutierrez, 995 F.2d 169 (9th Cir.1993), is closer to this case. In that case, the police stopped a car on a possible traffic violation. After taking the driver for a sobriety test and determining that the remaining two men did not possess a valid driver’s license, the police decided to tow the car. The officers discovered a loaded firearm under the left rear seat, where Gutierrez had been sitting. Acknowledging that “ ‘mere presence as a passenger in a car from which the police recover weapons does not establish possession,’ ” we found that “there was much more than ‘mere proximity’ or ‘mere presence’ ” in the car. Id. at 171 (quoting United States v. Soto, 779 F.2d 558, 560 (9th Cir.1986)). Rather, “[i]t would tax credulity to assert that Gutierrez was sitting on top of a pistol without knowing of its presence, or that he just happened to be a passenger in an automobile equipped with a pistol for each passenger, and the he knew nothing of that odd coincidence.” Id. If the majority applied its “innocent explanation” theory to Gutierrez, we would have deemed the evidence insufficient in that case. In Gutierrez, we might have easily said that Gutierrez’s explanation sounded implausible, but in this car, in this neighborhood, and with this defendant, anything was possible — including the possibility that Gutierrez was sitting in the back seat of a car with a loaded pistol under it and didn’t know it.
If the guns had been found elsewhere in the apartment, Nevils would have a good claim under Ruiz. If the guns were found on the table, the case would be a close one. The majority, however, has no plausible explanation — certainly nothing with a shred of evidence to support it — for how Nevils ends up with a loaded semiautomatic on his lap and a pistol against his leg.
Because the majority’s “innocent explanation” “tax[es] credulity,” Gutierrez, 995 F.2d at 171, a reasonable juror could find Nevils had control of the guns. I would affirm the district court’s determination that the evidence was sufficient to convict *815Nevils of knowing possession of the weapons. Thus, I respectfully dissent.

. The story has occasionally been attributed to Noah Webster.