U.S. v. Jarrett

• Decision Date: 08 January 1998
• Docket Number: 96-2808,Nos. 96-2615,96-2999,96-2844,96-2842,96-2900,96-3533 and 96-3534,96-2957,96-3510,s. 96-2615
• Citation: 133 F.3d 519
• Parties: 48 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 723 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Derrick JARRETT, Lawrence McCarroll, Jeffrey Brock, Jamie J. Key, Dwight Anderson, Samir Hameen, and Judy McCarroll, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 519

133 F.3d 519

48 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 723

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Derrick JARRETT, Lawrence McCarroll, Jeffrey Brock, Jamie J.

Key, Dwight Anderson, Samir Hameen, and Judy

McCarroll, Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 96-2615, 96-2808, 96-2842, 96-2844, 96-2900, 96-2957,

96-2999, 96-3510, 96-3533 and 96-3534.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 11, 1997.

Decided Jan. 8, 1998.

Barry Rand Elden, Chief of Appeals, Daniel Howard Parish (argued), Office of the United States Attorney, Criminal Appellate Division, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Kent R. Carlson (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Derrick Jarrett.

Chester Slaughter, Freddrenna M. Lyle, Lyle, Slaughter & Brewer, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Lawrence McCarroll.

Joshua Sachs, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Jeffrey Brock.

Jeffrey J. Levine (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellants Jeffrey Brock, Jamie J. Key.

Donald E. Joyce (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Dwight Anderson.

Cynthia Giacchetti (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellants Lawrence McCarroll, Samir Hameen.

Ellen R. Domph (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Judy McCarroll.

Before FLAUM, RIPPLE, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

Lawrence McCarroll and his associates based their drug enterprise in Chicago's Ida Wells housing complex. Over the thirteen-month period in which the Government monitored their activities, the conspirators bought, diluted, packaged, and sold vast quantities of heroin. A jury convicted all defendants after a lengthy trial, and the district court sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 235 to 328 months and entered a joint-and-several liability forfeiture order in excess of $3.3 million against all appellants except Jamie Key. This consolidated appeal challenges various aspects of each appellant's conviction and sentence. We affirm the jury's verdicts and the district court's sentences.

I. BACKGROUND

Lawrence McCarroll became known as the "King of Ida Wells" for the grand lifestyle he enjoyed amidst the poverty of that south-side housing project. Although he was only twenty years-old, he acted as the conspiracy's "CEO" and supervised purchases of high-purity heroin by his mother (Judy McCarroll) and Samir Hameen. Some of Lawrence's fellow conspirators--Derrick Jarrett, Dwight Anderson, Jamie Key, and Jeffrey Brock--would then dilute the heroin at a laboratory on the far south side of Chicago, package it into half-gram bags or multiple-gram packages, and then make the sales to customers at Ida Wells. Judy McCarroll served as the conspiracy's bookkeeper and, along with her son and two co-defendants who did not join this appeal, laundered the huge profits yielded from the conspiracy's sales. The conspiracy's success manifested itself in the expensive cars, fur coats, and jewelry possessed by the appellants.

These ostentatious displays of wealth tipped off law enforcement authorities to the conspiracy's activities. In December 1993, the Government began gathering evidence of the conspiracy's operations from surveillance agents, undercover purchasers, and items seized from the conspirators during arrests. The most prolific source of evidence, though, came from a wiretap which ran at different times from November 1994 until January 1995 and which recorded over 2500 calls among the coconspirators. In addition, the prison authorities at the Metropolitan Correctional Center recorded the appellants' post-arrest calls to outsiders in which the parties discussed, among other things, selling the conspiracy's assets in order to raise money for legal representation.

In the following sections, we summarize the extensive evidence of the conspiracy's illegal activities, describe the items seized during Appellants' arrests, and then discuss their convictions and sentences.

A. Evidence of Illegal Activity

Law enforcement officials began to gather circumstantial evidence of the conspirators' criminal activities in late 1993. Members of the Chicago Police Department who patrolled Ida Wells testified to seeing Lawrence McCarroll, Brock, Anderson, Key, and Jarrett frequently conversing in small groups that would quickly disperse if approached. At trial, Chicago Housing Authority officers confirmed this description of the appellants' furtive actions. A CHA officer also remembered observing Lawrence McCarroll driving through the neighborhood around Ida Wells in a variety of cars, including a Toyota Land Cruiser, a Lexus, a Honda, a Pontiac Grand Am, and a Nissan Maxima. Police officers followed Lawrence McCarroll, Brock, and Jarrett to the conspiracy's laboratory in south Chicago and once photographed the group at that location.

The officers also observed more direct evidence of drug sales. One CHA officer, in particular, testified that he saw Key taking money from persons in exchange for small objects while Jarrett "looked out" for Key. Numerous police officers also testified to seeing Anderson, Key, and Jarrett handing small packages to customers in cars in exchange for money. An officer once retrieved one of these packages and found that it contained white powder.

Most dramatically, on October 21, 1994, a CHA officer observed an unindicted co-conspirator named "Sconey" at Ida Wells hawking heroin like hotdogs at a ball game. The "brand" name of the conspirators' heroin was "Thunder," and Sconey was observed yelling, "Thunder, Thunder, I got that whip!" For the benefit of other pushers, he would also yell out "Car 13" whenever a CHA car drove by and "Car 15" when a CPD vehicle approached. Sconey unwittingly approached a CHA officer's unmarked car and asked the officer if he wanted some Thunder. When the officer declined, Sconey asked him to move his car away so other customers could get theirs.

The conspirators also provoked suspicion of their activities in a number of confrontations with law enforcement officials. When stopped by police on December 30, 1993 Appellant Anderson stated that he was unemployed and could not explain his possession of $4,252 in cash. Just three days later, Anderson was stopped again by police after he sat in a car near Ida Wells receiving money; Anderson took the police on a six-block car chase, but he was eventually apprehended and found to be carrying $4,150 in cash. Appellants Key and Brock also led police officers on a brief car chase on January 21, 1994. The two co-conspirators abandoned their car after crashing it and fled in different directions; a police officer caught Brock and found him in possession of $470 in cash. Four days after this incident, police stopped Anderson for traffic violations and found him carrying $390.

The conspirators continued to entangle themselves with the police throughout 1994. On April 3, a patdown search of Lawrence McCarroll and Anderson revealed over $650 in cash on McCarroll and over $1,000 in cash on Anderson. The next day, Anderson was again in trouble with the law. Upon seeing a CPD officer, Anderson threw a marijuana package to the ground and ran into his apartment. The officer chased Anderson into the apartment and discovered $12,750 cash in a pail, as well as 30-50 gym shoes and a great deal of designer clothing in Anderson's closet. Anderson was again stopped for a traffic violation on May 20, 1994, along with Derrick Jarrett; a pat-down of Jarrett found $1,220 in cash even though he stated that, like Anderson, he was unemployed.

Incidents like these convinced law enforcement officials that the conspirators were operating an enormous drug enterprise out of the Ida Wells complex. The Joint Task Force on Gangs, an interagency unit headquartered in the F.B.I.'s Chicago office, installed wiretaps on the conspirators' phones. The conversations secretly taped in late 1994 provided some of the most incriminating evidence against the appellants. The wiretaps recorded countless calls in which the conspirators updated each other on the progress of their heroin sales on the street, called for more heroin to be delivered to those sellers, discussed "cutting" (diluting) high-purity heroin, and instructed each other about where to deposit the proceeds of their drug sales. The Task Force's wiretaps operated from November 14 until December 22, 1994, and ran again from January 1 until appellants' arrests on January 23, 1995.

In particular, the wiretaps captured incriminating conversations among the conspirators regarding their purchases of large amounts of high-purity heroin (which they, in due course, would dilute at their laboratory and sell in small increments at Ida Wells). Appellant Samir Hameen spoke with Lawrence McCarroll on December 3, 1994, about paying $12,500 for one hundred grams of heroin. One week later, Lawrence McCarroll and Hameen agreed to "take care of some business" that day, and then later complained about the way in which their heroin supplier had driven a hard bargain. Hameen and Lawrence McCarroll spoke again on December 18 about their need to buy more heroin from their wholesale seller before Christmas. Calls from a three-week period showed that the conspiracy regularly bought many hundreds of grams of highgrade heroin.

The wiretaps also provided evidence of a wholesale purchase on January 15, 1995, just before law enforcement officials arrested the conspirators. Accompanied by Judy McCarroll and Lawrence McCarroll's young son, Hameen drove to a meeting at which he tried to purchase more than 500 grams of high-purity heroin from "Sam," the conspirators' wholesale seller; Sam only had 500 grams available but said that he would have more heroin the next day. Over a cellular phone, Lawrence instructed Hameen to pay $58,000 for the 500 grams. Hameen later reported to Lawrence over the phone that Sam had stated that this amount was insufficient and had insisted on their usual rate of $12,500 per 100 grams. Hameen told Lawrence that he had promised...