United States v. Harris
| Docket Number | s. 21-1405,21-1468,& 21-1991 |
| Decision Date | 14 October 2022 |
| Citation | 51 F.4th 705 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Yahtzee HARRIS, Antonio Walton, and Charles Gould, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
David E. Hollar, Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Hammond, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Thomas W. Patton, Attorney, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Peoria, IL, Daniel J. Hillis, Attorney, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Springfield, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Yahtzee Harris.
Vanessa K. Eisenmann, Justin J. Dreikosen, Michelle L. Jacobs, Attorneys, Biskupic & Jacobs, S.C., Mequon, WI, for Defendant-Appellant Antonio Walton.
James G. Vanzant, Attorney, Blaine & Vanzant LLP, Evanston, IL, for Defendant-Appellant Charles Gould.
Before Sykes, Chief Judge, and Scudder and Jackson-Akiwumi, Circuit Judges.
This case is about a large drug conspiracy in Gary, Indiana. A grand jury indicted more than 20 people associated with the conspiracy. Three of them are now before us on appeal. Charles Gould and Antonio Walton contend that the district court erred by holding a trial during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gould further challenges the sufficiency of the evidence at trial, while Walton challenges his sentence. Yahtzee Harris, who pled guilty and did not participate in the trial, contends that his written judgment contradicts the district judge's oral pronouncement of his sentence.
We affirm in all respects the judgments against each defendant. We take this opportunity, however, to clarify the effect of Harris's appeal waiver. The government contends that Harris's appeal should be dismissed because he waived his right to challenge his sentence as part of a plea agreement. But an argument that a written judgment conflicts with a sentencing judge's oral pronouncement is not a challenge to the sentence—rather, it is a request for imposition of the actual sentence the judge intended. United States v. Tancil , 817 F. App'x 234 (7th Cir. 2020). Thus, an appeal waiver will generally not bar this type of claim.
The drug conspiracy in this case involved three drug houses in Gary, Indiana. At the center of the conspiracy was Walton. He supplied crack cocaine to three people who ran drug houses: Ben Hickman, Keana Porter, and Harris. Gould dealt drugs out of a different drug house, run by Keana Porter, with whom he was in a romantic relationship.
Many of the conspirators pled guilty to drug charges, including Harris and the other two defendants who ran the drug houses. Walton, Gould, and a third defendant named Telisha French went to trial on charges that they conspired to distribute both powder and crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846.
After a six-day trial, a jury found Walton and Gould guilty of conspiring to distribute more than 280 grams of crack cocaine. The jury did not find them culpable, however, for any quantity of powder cocaine. The jury acquitted French of all charges.
The district court sentenced Walton to 360 months' imprisonment, Gould to 168 months' imprisonment, and Harris to 228 months' imprisonment. All three defendants received additional terms of five years' supervised release. All three appealed, and we consolidated the appeals.
Gould's, Walton's, and Harris's appeals raise four distinct issues. We address each issue in turn.
Gould and Walton contend that their convictions should be vacated because the district court violated their rights to due process by holding a trial in the Northern District of Indiana's Hammond courthouse during a pandemic. The district court set trial for March 9, 2020, which coincided with the first major wave of the COVID-19 infections in Indiana. Indiana declared a public health emergency three days before jury selection, and the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on the same day that the jury heard opening arguments. Two days later, the President of the United States declared a national emergency, and the Southern District of Indiana (the only other judicial district in Indiana) suspended all trials.1
Outside the presence of the jury, the court acknowledged the potential effect of the pandemic on the trial and indicated its intention to keep the trial "moving forward." The jury continued to hear evidence through the following week, while Indiana shut down bars and restaurants. As the pandemic progressed, the court emphasized to the parties (again, outside the presence of the jury) the need to wrap things up and "get this thing through the system given what's going on in the world right now." The court also cautioned, however, that the parties should not rush. The trial ended the next day, March 17, which is also when the Northern District of Indiana postponed all future trials.2 The day after that, all courthouses in the Northern District were closed to the public.3
Because defendants did not seek a mistrial or adjournment before the district court, we review the court's decision to hold the trial only for plain error. See United States v. Tanner , 628 F.3d 890, 898 (7th Cir. 2010). To succeed under plain-error review, the defendants must show that "(1) the error complained of actually occurred; (2) the error was clear or obvious; (3) the error affected [their] substantial rights (i.e. , [they] probably would not have been convicted absent the error); and (4) the error seriously impugned the judicial proceeding's fairness, integrity, or public reputation." Id.
The Due Process Clause gives criminal defendants the right to be tried before an impartial jury—that is, one made up of jurors who can "lay aside [their] impression[s] or opinion[s] and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court." United States v. McClinton , 135 F.3d 1178, 1186 (7th Cir. 1998) (quoting Murphy v. Florida , 421 U.S. 794, 800, 95 S.Ct. 2031, 44 L.Ed.2d 589 (1975) ). This right is violated when a jury is not capable or willing to decide the case solely on the trial evidence. Smith v. Phillips , 455 U.S. 209, 217, 102 S.Ct. 940, 71 L.Ed.2d 78 (1982). And to protect this right, trial judges should be "ever watchful" for prejudicial occurrences that could interfere with jurors' ability to perform this duty. Id.
Due process does not require, however, a new trial every time a juror has been placed in a potentially compromising situation. Id. ; United States v. Moore , 641 F.3d 812, 829 (7th Cir. 2011). For example, in Chandler v. Florida , 449 U.S. 560, 101 S.Ct. 802, 66 L.Ed.2d 740 (1981), the defendants challenged the trial court's decision to televise their trial, arguing that the sensational media atmosphere unfairly influenced the jurors. But because the defendants did "not attempt[ ] to show with any specificity that the presence of cameras impaired the ability of the jurors to decide the case on only the evidence before them," the Court refused to set aside his conviction. Id. at 581, 101 S.Ct. 802. See also Willard v. Pearson , 823 F.2d 1141, 1146–48 (7th Cir. 1987) ().
Defendants' arguments here suffer from similar shortcomings. Gould and Walton rely on the timing of various events as evidence that the pandemic presumptively interfered with the jury's deliberations: The district court allowed their trial to move forward even after the state's other federal judicial district (the Southern District of Indiana) suspended jury trials, and the Northern District of Indiana issued a general order suspending proceedings in all cases except theirs on the day of closing arguments. Defendants insist that halting proceedings was the only prudent decision in light of the emerging pandemic.
The record suggests, however, that the jurors carefully considered the evidence before rendering a verdict. To be sure, the pandemic would have been on the jurors' minds in the waning days of the trial. But we see no evidence that they rushed a verdict to go home early. The jury returned a mixed verdict—acquitting Walton and Gould on some counts and completely acquitting their codefendant French. And the jury did not deliver that verdict until around 7:00 p.m., after deliberating for six hours and asking the court for clarification about the court's instructions on how to calculate drug quantity. Because nothing at the time suggested that the pandemic stopped the jury from deciding the case "solely on the evidence before it," McClinton , 135 F.3d at 1186, and nothing suggests as much now, the district court did not plainly err when it decided to finish the trial.
The court's decision to finish the trial was also reasonable under the circumstances. Other courts in this circuit, like the Northern District of Illinois, likewise hesitated to stop criminal proceedings at the outbreak of the pandemic because of speedy trial concerns.4 Such concerns were especially salient in this case because Gould and Walton had already been in pretrial detention for two years and would have been entitled to release had they won at trial. French—who was acquitted—was in home detention. Indeed, without an objection from defendants, the court could have reasonably believed that defendants wanted the trial to finish so that they would not languish in pretrial detention for the remainder of an indefinite pandemic.
Although some district courts shut down earlier in March 2020, the Northern District of Indiana was not an outlier within this circuit. For instance, the Northern District of Illinois did not suspend criminal proceedings until March 16, only one day before the Northern District of Indiana did, and the Western District of Wisconsin did not suspend trials until after Gould's and Walton's convictions.5 As various courts...
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