United States v. Barnes

Acting on information from Holt, a confidential informant (CI) who had purchased oxycodone from Barnes during three recent controlled buys in coordination with law enforcement, federal agents executed a search warrant on Barnes’s trailer home in rural Eastern Tennessee. They found roughly 300 pills in the trailer, mostly in prescription bottles bearing Barnes’s name, and some in bottles prescribed to other individuals, plus at least $1700 in cash—including marked bills from the CI’s controlled buys—and ammunition and firearms. Two guns were tucked under the corners of a mattress in the living room where Barnes slept and where he was seated when agents arrived. A jury convicted Barnes of drug trafficking and firearms offenses including, possession with intent to distribute oxycodone, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C) and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The Sixth Circuit​ affirmed rejecting claims that insufficient evidence supported the Section 924(c) conviction, that the district court wrongly admitted evidence of calls recorded while he was in jail with respect to his possession with intent to distribute conviction, and that the district court improperly considered a 1998 drug conviction when determining Barnes’s guidelines sentencing range. View "United States v. Barnes" on Justia Law