USCA11 Case: 22-10904 Document: 41-1 Date Filed: 06/01/2023 Page: 1 of 9
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-10904
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
JAREECE EDWARD BLACKMON,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Alabama
D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cr-00230-ECM-SRW-1
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-10904
Before JORDAN, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Jareece Blackmon challenges his conviction and sentence for
various federal drug- and gun-related crimes, including murder.
He claims that the evidence presented to the jury was not
sufficient, that one of his counts should have been tried separately,
and that his 480-month sentence is substantively unreasonable.
After careful review of the record, we affirm.
I.
On August 15, 2017, a late-night drug deal went awry. Carl
Sewell and a few others had traveled to a residence in Enterprise,
Alabama to sell a large quantity of marijuana to Jareece Blackmon.
Only Sewell went inside the house, where he was shot. He was
later pronounced dead at the hospital. The next day, law
enforcement arrested Blackmon at a house listed as his residence,
where they recovered eighteen pounds of marijuana and three
firearms, including the weapon used to shoot Sewell.
A federal grand jury charged Blackmon with seven
violations of federal law. Counts 1 and 5 were for conspiracy to
distribute marijuana and possession with intent to distribute. See
21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. Counts 2 and 4 were for possessing
various firearms as a felon and Count 6 for using or carrying a
firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. See
18 U.S.C.
§§ 922(g)(1), 924(c)(1)(A). And Count 3 was for using a firearm to
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22-10904 Opinion of the Court 3
commit murder in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. See
18
U.S.C. § 924(c), (j)(1).
Count 7 also charged Blackmon with possession of a firearm
as a felon, but it arose from an incident one month earlier. Before
trial, Blackmon moved to sever this count from his upcoming trial.
See Fed. R. Crim. P. 14. The court denied the motion, deciding that
Blackmon had not shown the necessary prejudice to warrant
severance. But the court did take care to instruct the jury to
consider each crime and its evidence separately, emphasizing that
if the jury found Blackmon “guilty or not guilty of one crime, that
must not affect your verdict for any other crime.”
After a trial, the jury found Blackmon guilty on all seven
counts. The court sentenced him to a total of 480 months of
imprisonment and three years of supervised release. His sentence
included 60 months for each of Counts 1 and 5, 120 months for
each of Counts 2, 4, and 7, and 420 months for Count 3. These
terms run concurrently. His sentence also included 60 months for
Count 6 to be served consecutively, resulting in the 480-month
total.
Now on appeal, Blackmon makes three claims. First, he
claims that the government did not present sufficient evidence to
the jury for Counts 1–6, so the court should have granted his earlier
motion for acquittal. Second, he argues that the court erred when
it denied his motion to sever Count 7. Third, he submits that his
480-month sentence is unreasonably high.
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-10904
II.
We review challenges to the sufficiency of evidence de
novo, but we view all “the evidence in the light most favorable to
the government” and draw “all reasonable inferences and
credibility choices in favor of the jury’s verdict.” United States v.
Trujillo,
146 F.3d 838, 845 (11th Cir. 1998). With this lens, we ask
whether “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential
elements of the crime beyond reasonable doubt.”
Id. (quotation
omitted).
We review the district court’s decision to deny a motion to
sever under Rule 14 for abuse of discretion. United States v. Hersh,
297 F.3d 1233, 1241 (11th Cir. 2002). That same standard applies to
the substantive reasonableness of a sentence. United States v.
Overstreet,
713 F.3d 627, 636 (11th Cir. 2013).
III.
The government presented sufficient evidence for the jury
to convict Blackmon on Counts 1–6. 1
We begin with Counts 1 and 5, the drug trafficking counts.
Blackmon makes three non-conclusory arguments about the drug
trafficking evidence. He claims that no reasonable jury could have
believed the testimony of Cedric Moultrie, that the government
1Blackmon also references Count 7 in this part of his brief, but he never
addresses relevant evidence and only requests dismissal of Counts 1–6. So he
has forfeited any argument about the sufficiency of the evidence for Count 7.
See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co.,
739 F.3d 678, 681–82 (11th Cir. 2014).
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22-10904 Opinion of the Court 5
presented no evidence that Blackmon knew about the marijuana
recovered at his arrest, and that no evidence showed that he
intended to distribute. As for Moultrie, Blackmon does not explain
why the jury should not have trusted him, and, without anything
more, we “are bound by the jury’s credibility choices.” United
States v. Broughton,
689 F.3d 1260, 1277 (11th Cir. 2012) (quotation
omitted).
Moultrie’s testimony provided ample basis for Counts 1 and
5. He testified that he routinely worked with Sewell to deal drugs,
and that they sold to Blackmon multiple times, often meeting him
in person. The day of Sewell’s death, Moultrie says he and Sewell
traveled to Enterprise to sell Blackmon between 25 and 30 pounds
of marijuana, which their texts and calls confirmed. This history,
combined with the other evidence presented—especially the fact
that law enforcement found the duffel bag with over eighteen
pounds of marijuana when they arrested Blackmon—allowed a
reasonable jury to conclude that Blackmon possessed the drugs and
intended to distribute them.
Counts 2, 4, and 6 all relate to possession of a firearm. Count
2 refers to Blackmon’s possession (as a felon) of a Beretta Model
Px4 Storm handgun. This gun was used to kill Sewell and
recovered the next day during Blackmon’s arrest. Count 4 relates
to Blackmon’s possession of that same gun and two others on the
day of his arrest. And Count 6 charged him with using a firearm in
furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-10904
For all counts, Blackmon claims that he had no actual or
constructive possession of the firearms. To show such possession,
the government needed to only show—using direct or
circumstantial evidence—that Blackmon “was aware or knew of
the firearm’s presence” and “had the ability and intent to later
exercise dominion and control over that firearm.” United States v.
Perez,
661 F.3d 568, 576 (11th Cir. 2011). Moreover, the firearm
“need not be on or near the defendant’s person in order to amount
to knowing possession.”
Id. (quotation omitted).
Sufficient circumstantial evidence existed for a reasonable
jury to conclude that Blackmon possessed the firearms and used
the handgun to further a drug crime. For Counts 2 and 6, the
evidence that we will discuss below—that Blackmon used the
handgun to kill Sewell—supports these counts, most notably the
eyewitness testimony and his DNA recovered from the weapon.
For Count 4, the fact that law enforcement recovered all three
firearms when they arrested Blackmon strongly supports that he
knew about them and would later control them. But that was not
all—a witness also testified that the rifle and shotgun were
recovered from under furniture that Blackmon repeatedly reached
under leading up to his arrest. A reasonable jury could infer that
he possessed all three firearms from this and other evidence.
Finally, Count 3 stands as well. Along with our conclusions
about the other counts, a conviction under
18 U.S.C. § 924(j)(1)
requires that Blackmon “in the course” of committing the drug
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22-10904 Opinion of the Court 7
trafficking crime, “cause[d] the death of a person through the use
of a firearm” and that this killing be “murder.”
The government presented ample evidence that Blackmon
shot Sewell. For one, cellular location data showed that he was
near the site of the shooting on that night. One of the defense’s
witnesses said she saw Blackmon off and on at the house the day of
Sewell’s death. And two eyewitnesses placed Blackmon at the
house where Sewell was shot when it happened. One was a man
named Willie Coleman, who was at the house when law
enforcement arrived. The other was Moultrie, who had travelled
with Sewell to sell the marijuana to Blackmon. He told
investigators that he saw Blackmon at the house that night. At
trial, he recounted that he saw Sewell walk into the house—with
the bag of marijuana, but no gun—and that after a few minutes, he
heard gunshots. A forensic doctor testified that Sewell’s death was
caused by his gunshot wounds, ruling it a homicide.
From this evidence, a reasonable jury could infer that
Blackmon shot Sewell in furtherance of his drug crimes.2 The jury
heard evidence about the ongoing drug trafficking conspiracy,
multiple eyewitness testimony that Blackmon was in the house
with Sewell and the marijuana, and DNA evidence linking him to
2 Blackmon does not challenge the mens rea requirement of
18 U.S.C.
§ 924(j)(1)—that the killing be with “malice aforethought”—so he has forfeited
this argument. See
18 U.S.C. § 1111(a); Sapuppo,
739 F.3d at 681–82. His
challenges revolve around the credibility of the witnesses and the possession
of the gun used to kill Sewell.
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8 Opinion of the Court 22-10904
the murder weapon. Altogether, and in the light most favorable to
the verdict, sufficient evidence supported all six counts on appeal.
IV.
The court did not abuse its discretion in declining to sever
Count 7. Generally, a court undertakes “a two-step analysis to
determine whether separate charges were properly tried at the
same time,” first analyzing initial joinder of counts under Rule 8(a)
and then any request to sever under Rule 14(a). United States v.
Walser,
3 F.3d 380, 385–87 (11th Cir. 1993); Fed. R. Crim. P. 8(a),
14. Blackmon has only challenged the court’s refusal to sever
under Rule 14(a).
Relief under Rule 14 turns on a showing of prejudice. See
Fed. R. Crim P. 14(a). But defendants must show more than “some
prejudice” for us to find an abuse of discretion; a defendant must
show both “an unfair trial” and “compelling prejudice.” Walser,
3
F.3d at 386 (quotation omitted). This is a “heavy burden” that
requires more than “mere conclusory allegations.”
Id. (quotation
omitted).
Blackmon has not met this burden. In his brief, he only
makes one specific allegation of prejudice: that Count 7 tended to
“show bad character on the part of Mr. Blackmon.” This
allegation, standing alone, is not compelling enough to label the
court’s decision an abuse of discretion, especially given how it
specifically instructed the jury to consider each crime separately.
See Hersh,
297 F.3d at 1244.
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22-10904 Opinion of the Court 9
V.
Finally, Blackmon claims that his 480-month sentence is
substantively unreasonable. In evaluating reasonableness, this
Court considers the “totality of the circumstances” guided by the
statutory factors set out in
18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). United States v. Pugh,
515 F.3d 1179, 1190 (11th Cir. 2008) (quotation omitted).
Blackmon’s sentence is reasonable. To start, it fell within
the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range of 420 months to life, which
supports a finding of reasonableness.3 Id.;
18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4).
And the sentence was well below the statutory maximum here—
life imprisonment—which is another “indicator of a reasonable
sentence.” See
18 U.S.C. § 924(j)(1); United States v. Taylor,
997 F.3d
1348, 1355 (11th Cir. 2021). And finally, despite Blackmon’s
arguments to the contrary, the sentencing transcript reveals that
the court appropriately considered the other § 3553(a) factors. The
court not only recited several factors verbatim, but also explained
the weight it gave to Blackmon’s “extensive criminal history
involving guns and drugs and violence,” the effect of his actions on
the victim and his family, the “danger to the community,” and
more. We see no abuse of discretion.
* * *
We AFFIRM.
3 On appeal, Blackmon does not challenge the Guidelines computation.
