United States v. Brown, No. 11-2737 (7th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseDefendant remained in the driver’s seat of his vehicle during a staged drug transaction involving an undercover officer. His loaded gun was found in a secret compartment in the vehicle, at a distance from where defendant was seated and accessible only by performing a complicated sequence of steps that would necessitate folding down seats. Convicted of attempting to possess cocaine with the intention of distributing it, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1), 846, and of possessing a firearm “in furtherance of any such crime,” 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1)(A), defendant was sentenced to 60 months for the gun crime, to run consecutively to a 175-month sentence for the drug crime, and challenged the gun conviction. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, reasoning that defendant “possessed” everything in the vehicle and may have been emboldened to agree to the transaction by the existence of a place to store the drugs and of a loaded gun in a location from which they were not likely to be snatched.
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