United States v. Long, No. 11-3888 (7th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseHicks led a large organization that distributed crack cocaine in Chicago. He oversaw acquisition, processing, and packaging with help from Coprich, Williams, and others. Once processing was complete, Hicks sold the cocaine to distributors, including Long and Island. Hicks often sold drugs to his distributors on credit. The government wiretapped phone conversations between members of the conspiracy and trial evidence also included testimony from participants in Hicks’s organization, including Masuca, Hicks’s former right-hand man, and Williams, Hicks’s former girlfriend. Masuca testified that Long and Island were only customers of the conspiracy, not members of it. The government presented Masuca’s handwritten ledger, which listed the organization’s drug deals over a few months in 2008. The jury convicted the five defendants of conspiracy with intent to distribute over 50 grams of crack cocaine and other offenses. The judge declined to apply the Fair Sentencing Act’s higher quantity thresholds for mandatory minimum sentences and concluded that facts neither included in the indictment nor found by a jury could trigger an increased mandatory minimum sentence. The Seventh Circuit rejected all challenges except relating to application of the Fair Sentencing Act.
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