U.S. v. Miller, 08-1069.

Citation547 F.3d 718
Decision Date27 October 2008
Docket NumberNo. 08-1069.,No. 08-1089.,08-1069.,08-1089.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Leroy F. MILLER and Ricky L. Fines, Defendants-Appellants.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)
547 F.3d 718
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Leroy F. MILLER and Ricky L. Fines, Defendants-Appellants.
No. 08-1069.
No. 08-1089.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued September 23, 2008.
Decided October 27, 2008.

[547 F.3d 719]

John M. Maciejczyk (argued), Office of the United States Attorney, South Bend, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

H. Jay Stevens (argued), Indiana Federal Community Defenders, Inc., South Bend, IN, for Defendants-Appellants.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and KANNE and TINDER, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge.


Leroy Miller took in Ricky Fines as a boarder at his farm. Both Miller and Fines are interested in guns. They bought, refurbished, and sold many weapons while Fines lived in Miller's house. Both men cleaned guns on the same workbench—whether as a joint venture, or each working on individually owned weapons, is disputed but not important. When federal agents conducted a search in April 2004, they found three weapons in the house and 31 in a shed nearby. The guns in the shed had been wiped clean of fingerprints and wrapped in blankets; the jury was entitled to infer that Fines and Miller had moved the guns to the shed in anticipation of a search. And why should they fear a search? Because Fines had a felony conviction, and Miller (whose own record was clean) knew it. A jury convicted Fines of possessing weapons despite his conviction, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and Miller of aiding and abetting Fines's illegal possession. See 18 U.S.C. § 2. Fines was sentenced to 48 months' imprisonment and Miller to 10 months.

Miller contends that he is innocent, because he did not learn of Fines's criminal history until shortly before the search, and that after learning of Fines's conviction he did not allow Fines to handle guns—indeed, that the guns had been moved from the house to the shed before

547 F.3d 720

Fines became a boarder. In an interview with federal agents, however, Miller admitted that he learned of Fines's conviction in November 2002, give or take a few months. Evidence about the weapons' condition allowed the jury to infer that they had not entered the shed until the spring of 2004. (The shed was leaky and dirty, yet the weapons were in pristine condition.) Three guns were in the farmhouse when federal agents arrived. A sensible jury could find that Miller permitted Fines to work on guns with Miller's tools after November 2002. This is enough evidence to support the conviction for aiding and abetting; the record has additional evidence, but we need not canvass everything.

The evidence is also quite sufficient to support Fines's conviction. He maintains that the district judge should not have admitted two pictures of him, saluting, while sitting in a chair under a gun rack, or a folder of receipts showing that Fines had ordered and paid for gun parts. He argues that the pictures do not depict the condition of the room when the agents searched it, but that's beside the point. Fines is guilty if he possessed guns any time during five years (the period of limitations) before the indictment. The pictures are relevant because they show that guns and...

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    ...substance of the statements by the out-of-court witnesses. Hearsay may include implied assertions. See, e.g., United States v. Miller, 547 F.3d 718, 720 (7th Cir. 2008) (receipts were hearsay if offered for the truth of the sellers' (implied) assertions that the parts had been delivered); V......
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