United States v. Winfield, No. 16-1048 (7th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseA police informant, wearing a hidden camera, bought heroin and methamphetamine from Winfield during four controlled buys at Winfield’s apartment. Each time, the informant saw additional drugs and paraphernalia in the apartment. Days after the last buy, police obtained a warrant and searched Winfield’s apartment. They found almost $3000 in a closet, and a gram of heroin and drug paraphernalia in Winfield’s girlfriend’s purse. In the garage, in the trunk of Winfield’s car (in a hidden compartment in a brake‐fluid canister), they found 27 grams of methamphetamine and 38 grams of heroin. Winfield admitted that there were not more drugs in the apartment because “[h]e had flushed anything he had down the toilet when the SWAT team was approaching.” Winfield pled guilty to distributing heroin. The court applied a two‐level upward adjustment to Winfield’s sentence because he “maintained a premises for the purpose of manufacturing or distributing a controlled substance,” U.S.S.G. 2D1.1(b)(12). After calculating a guidelines range of 62-78 months, the court imposed a sentence of 55 months. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Nothing in the guideline requires a sentencing court to find that the defendant stored multiple kilograms of drugs over an extended time; the court need only find that a drug‐related activity was one of his “primary or principal” uses. Winfield’s drug‐related uses for his apartment were not merely “incidental” to his residence; he was “primarily living off proceeds from drug sales.”
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