United States v. Terrell Jason Armstrong, No. 21-1299 (8th Cir. 2022)
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The district court sentenced Defendant to 264 months’ imprisonment for drug trafficking conspiracy. Defendant asserted on appeal that the district court erred by admitting certain evidence at trial and that the court imposed an unreasonable sentence.
The Eighth Circuit concluded that there was no reversible error, and therefore affirmed the judgment. Defendant first challenged the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence. He sought to exclude a statement about employment that he made to a detective during the search of his residence in 2019. The court wrote that employment is a standard element of a booking inquiry because a judicial officer is required by statute to consider “employment” in deciding whether to release or detain a defendant pending trial. Employment status is not so central to a drug investigation that it must be excised from the routine biographical information that is collected in the course of arrest and booking.
Further, Defendant claimed that the disputed evidence concerned “other acts” of the defendant and should have been excluded as inadmissible character evidence. The court concluded that the district court properly deemed the evidence probative of the charged conspiracy. The evidence tended to show that Defendant and the co-conspirator acted to protect the “turf” of their drug trafficking organization and to “warn” potential competitors. That sort of activity is relevant to the crime charged.
Finally, in sentencing Defendant, the district court varied downward by eight years from the bottom of the advisory range, and the court did not abuse its discretion by declining to vary downward even further.
Court Description: [Colloton, Author, with Loken and Shepherd, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law and sentencing. Officer's pre-Miranda question about defendant's employment was a standard booking question, and defendant's response was admissible; the district court did not err in admitting evidence of defendant's 2018 visit to rival drug dealers as it was relevant to defendant's actions in establishing his drug trafficking organization; nor did the court commit plain error in admitting evidence of a 2015 traffic stop as it was not plainly irrelevant to proving the existence of a later conspiracy and defendant's knowledge and intent to commit the charged offense; defendant's sentence, a downward variance, was not substantively unreasonable, and his sentence did not create an unwarranted disparity with a co-conspirator.
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