United States v. Kadeem Burden ( 2020 )


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  •     Case: 19-30394   Document: 00515476398     Page: 1     Date Filed: 07/02/2020
    IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
    FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
    United States Court of Appeals
    Fifth Circuit
    FILED
    No. 19-30394                      July 2, 2020
    Lyle W. Cayce
    Clerk
    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
    Plaintiff−Appellee,
    versus
    KADEEM BURDEN; TIMMY SCOTT, also known as Timothy Scott,
    Defendants−Appellants.
    Appeals from the United States District Court
    for the Middle District of Louisiana
    Before SMITH, HIGGINSON, and ENGELHARDT, Circuit Judges.
    JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:
    Kadeem Burden and Timmy Scott appeal their convictions and sentences
    for unlawfully possessing firearms as felons. We affirm.
    I.
    Police officer Jesse Barcelona was driving his patrol car when he ap-
    proached an intersection. Facing in the perpendicular direction were an SUV
    and a Mercedes. As Barcelona passed through the intersection, two or three
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    black males in white t-shirts and blue jean shorts exited the SUV, approached
    the Mercedes, and began repeatedly discharging firearms into it. When Barce-
    lona turned his car around to return to the scene, the SUV sped away, leaving
    the shooters running after it with Barcelona in pursuit (the occupants of the
    Mercedes, providentially it would seem, were uninjured).
    The shooters turned to look at Barcelona’s approaching car. Barcelona
    “could tell that one [of them] was still armed with what appeared to be an
    AK-47 rifle.” Further, “they appeared to have something [black] covering their
    face[s].” They then ran into the local residential block, around which Barcelona
    (and other officers) secured a perimeter while awaiting the arrival of a canine
    unit.
    Shortly thereafter, an officer at the perimeter spotted two black males,
    “fully clothed,” “come out . . . from behind a residence and then run back in.”
    “Under a minute” later, two black men “came back out . . , not clothed . . . [and
    were] [s]weating pretty profusely.” With hands raised, the two men shouted
    “[w]e just got robbed, we just got robbed.”         The officers “[took] them into
    custody[ and] place[d] them in the back of” a police car, awaiting further
    instruction.
    Inside the perimeter and assisted by a dog tracker, officers (including
    Barcelona) recovered various items. By one side of a house they found “a black
    plastic Halloween-style mask on the ground,” and underneath the other side
    they found another such mask and two firearms. 1 Before completing their
    search, the unit discovered two cellular phones on the ground and “a pair of
    blue jean shorts and a pair of white Nike shoes” nearby.
    The firearms were later identified as a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol and a Century
    1
    Arms 7.62x39mm rifle pistol.
    2
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    Upon returning to the perimeter, Barcelona went to the police car, where
    he “observed Mr. Kadeem Burden [ ] wearing only black or dark-colored under-
    wear and some socks, and Mr. Scott was only wearing . . . [b]lue jean-style
    shorts.”     Based on their general physical appearance, Barcelona “firmly
    believe[d] that those were the two individuals [he] observed shooting the fire-
    arms,” though he had not seen the shooters’ faces uncovered.
    DNA and forensic examination linked Burden to one of the weapons and
    Scott to both phones and one of the masks. Further examination established
    that the nineteen bullets came from one or both of the firearms discovered at
    the scene.
    II.
    Burden and Scott were charged in an indictment alleging solely that
    they, “having each individually been convicted of a crime punishable by impris-
    onment for a term exceeding one year, a felony, knowingly did possess firearms
    . . . [that] had previously been shipped and transported in interstate commerce”
    in violation of 
    18 U.S.C. § 922
    (g)(1). The indictment did not allege that they
    knew of their felon status at the time of their possession, though both stipu-
    lated at trial that they were in fact felons at the time of their arrest.
    Days after his federal arrest, Burden admitted to the Louisiana Parole
    Board that he had violated the conditions of his state parole by possessing a
    firearm. That prompted Scott to file a severance motion, which the district
    court denied. Notwithstanding that denial, the court instructed the jury that
    it was not to consider Burden’s admission as evidence against Scott.
    At trial, evidence was presented establishing that the defendants, upon
    surrendering to the officers, had claimed that they had just been robbed of their
    clothing (presumably by the shooters). That jury failed to reach a verdict.
    3
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    Before the second trial, the district court ordered that the parties obtain
    its prior approval before “mention[ing] or elicit[ing] any testimony” regarding
    the supposed robbery. No party objected; neither did any party proceed to seek
    such approval. The second jury thus heard nothing about the defendants’
    robbery-related statements. After receiving the court’s instructions outlining
    the elements of the crime—including that “[t]he government must prove that
    the defendant knew that he possessed a firearm, but not that the defendant
    knew that he was a qualifying felon”—the second jury found both men guilty.
    The final presentence reports (“PSRs”) recommended finding that the
    defendants “used and possessed” the firearms “in connection with attempted
    first degree murder.” Neither defendant objected to his PSR, whose findings
    the district court therefore adopted.
    III.
    The appeal presents four broad issues: (1) the denial of Scott’s motion
    for severance, (2) errors relating to the defendants’ knowledge (or lack thereof)
    that they were felons at the time of the incident, (3) the district court’s limi-
    tation on evidence or testimony regarding the defendants’ robbery claims, and
    (4) the cross-reference to attempted first-degree murder at sentencing.
    A.
    A criminal defendant enjoys “the right . . . to be confronted with the wit-
    nesses against him.” U.S. CONST. amend. VI. “Ordinarily, a witness whose
    testimony is introduced at a joint trial is not considered to be a witness ‘against’
    a defendant if the jury is instructed to consider that testimony only against a
    codefendant.” Richardson v. Marsh, 
    481 U.S. 200
    , 206 (1987). There is, how-
    ever, “a narrow exception to this principle: . . . [W]hen the facially incriminat-
    ing confession of a nontestifying codefendant is introduced at [a] joint trial,” it
    4
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    is not enough for “the jury [to be] instructed to consider the confession only
    against the codefendant.” 
    Id. at 207
    . See also Bruton v. United States, 
    391 U.S. 123
    , 135–36 (1968).
    Otherwise, “even if prejudice is shown . . . [Rule 14] leaves the tailoring
    of the relief to be granted, if any, to the district court’s sound discretion.” Zafiro
    v. United States, 
    506 U.S. 534
    , 538–39 (1993). “[A] district court should grant
    a severance under Rule 14 only if there is a serious risk that a joint trial would
    compromise a specific trial right of one of the defendants, or prevent the jury
    from making a reliable judgment about guilt or innocence.” 
    Id. at 539
    . “When
    the risk of prejudice is high, a district court is more likely to determine that
    separate trials are necessary, but . . . less drastic measures, such as limiting
    instructions, often will suffice to cure any risk of prejudice.” 
    Id.
     And generally
    speaking, “juries are presumed to follow [such] instructions.” 
    Id. at 540
    .
    The district court denied severance. We review that denial for abuse of
    discretion. See 
    id. at 541
    . That review is “exceedingly deferential,” requiring
    that “[t]he appellant [ ] show that (1) the joint trial prejudiced him to such an
    extent that the district court could not provide adequate protection; and (2) the
    prejudice outweighed the government’s interest in economy of judicial admin-
    istration.” United States v. Xie, 
    942 F.3d 228
    , 240–41 (5th Cir. 2019) (quotation
    marks omitted).
    Scott, for his part, recognizes the herculean nature of his task. He
    “acknowledges the challenge he faces with the Supreme Court[’s] holding [in
    Marsh, 
    481 U.S. at 211
    , that] ‘the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the
    admission of a nontestifying codefendant’s confession with a proper limiting
    instruction when . . . the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defen-
    dant’s name, but any reference to his or her existence.’” Such redaction did
    occur, Scott concedes: “Burden’s statement did not mention Scott, and other
    5
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    evidence was [indeed] needed to show the linkage to [Scott].”
    Scott would have us nevertheless hold that the district court abused its
    discretion. Although Burden’s redacted statement made no mention of Scott,
    “the effort needed to” link the statement to Scott “was slight, and the prejudice
    was great, since the whole focus of the Government’s case was that only two
    shooters were involved, and the only two shooters were the defendants on
    trial.” And the jury instruction not to consider Burden’s statement as evidence
    against Scott “was equivalent to asking the jurors not to look at the proverbial
    pink elephant, inevitably the other defendant before them.” 2
    That contention is without merit. “The key analytic factor in [Marsh] is
    that the statement did not clearly refer to the defendant and could only be
    linked through additional evidentiary material.”                United States v. Powell,
    
    732 F.3d 361
    , 376–77 (5th Cir. 2013). Scott claims that Burden’s statement
    should be distinguished because other evidence too easily allowed him to be
    linked to the statement, but “the source of the linking factors . . . [is not] sig-
    nificant. Rather, [Marsh] focuses on whether the statement facially implicates
    the defendant—or at least acknowledges the existence of another person.
    Here, [Burden’s] statement[] do[es] not.” 
    Id. at 377
    .
    Scott’s true qualm is not with Burden’s statement but with the mountain
    of other evidence against him. As Scott himself notes, “eyewitness and scien-
    tific evidence point[ed] to the two defendants on trial.” Specifically, Barcelona
    testified to a belief that Scott and Burden were the shooters he witnessed; DNA
    evidence linked Scott to one of the masks and Burden to one of the firearms;
    and Scott and Burden were found together, first fully clothed, then partially
    2 By “not to look at the proverbial pink elephant,” we assume that Scott is referring to
    a popular exercise in which one is challenged not to imagine a pink elephant, the point being
    that an instruction not to think of something all but ensures that the person will think of it.
    6
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    naked less than a minute later. Any potential ease in linking Burden’s state-
    ment to Scott arose not from the mere fact that they were tried together but
    because other evidence independently and overwhelmingly implicated Scott.
    That kind of linkage is not unduly prejudicial. See United States v. Chapman,
    
    851 F.3d 363
    , 379 (5th Cir. 2017).
    By stating that the limiting instruction was “equivalent to asking the
    jurors not to look at the proverbial pink elephant,” Scott implicitly attacks the
    very legitimacy of limiting instructions. It might be, as Scott suggests, that
    instructing a jury not to consider certain testimony in fact highlights that tes-
    timony and, perversely, increases the odds that the jury should consider it. But
    we assume that juries can and do sort through complex issues. 3 In any case,
    “juries are presumed to follow their instructions.” Zafiro, 
    506 U.S. at 540
    . 4
    Scott has not overcome that presumption; the district court did not abuse its
    discretion.
    B.
    After the convictions but before this appeal, the Supreme Court decided
    Rehaif v. United States, 
    139 S. Ct. 2191
     (2019). It “held that the mens rea
    requirement in 
    18 U.S.C. § 924
    (a)(2)—‘knowingly’—applies to both the ‘con-
    duct’ and ‘status’ elements in § 922(g).” United States v. Huntsberry, 
    956 F.3d 270
    , 281 (5th Cir. 2020). “That is, the Government ‘must show that the defen-
    dant knew he possessed a firearm and also that he knew he had the relevant
    status [here, being a felon] when he possessed it.’”                
    Id.
     (quoting Rehaif,
    3 See Marsh, 
    481 U.S. at 206
     (“[It is an] almost invariable assumption of the law that
    jurors follow their instructions, which we have applied in many varying contexts.”) (citation
    omitted).
    4 See also Chapman, 851 F.3d at 379 (“The defendant must [ ] show that the district
    court’s instructions to the jury did not adequately protect him from any prejudice resulting
    from the joint trial.” (ellipsis omitted)).
    7
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    139 S. Ct. at 2194
    ).
    Both the government and the district court operated on the pre-Rehaif
    assumption that a conviction for firearms possession under 
    18 U.S.C. § 922
    (g)(1) need not require proof that the defendants knew they were con-
    victed felons. Hence, (1) the indictment did not allege that they possessed such
    knowledge; (2) the government did not present any relevant evidence thereto;
    and (3) the court explicitly instructed that “[t]he government . . . [need] not
    [prove] that the defendant knew that he was a qualifying felon.”
    As it happens, the defendants also assumed that a conviction would not
    require a showing that they knew they were convicted felons. They did not
    object to the indictment’s failure to allege subjective knowledge of their felon
    status; they did not suggest in their Rule 29 motion that the government’s case
    should be dismissed for lack of proof suggesting subjective knowledge of the
    felonies; and they did not object to the relevant portion of the instructions. The
    defendants concede that their argument—at least regarding the indictment
    and instructions—is unpreserved and that, accordingly, the proper standard of
    review is plain error. 5
    It is unclear from their briefing whether the defendants’ plain-error
    concession applies to their sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim. The government
    appears to accept that de novo review applies, and indeed this court has
    recently opined that “[w]e review the sufficiency of the evidence de novo . . . [if
    the defendant] made general objections to the sufficiency of the evidence.”
    United States v. Staggers, No. 18-31213, 
    2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 18085
    , at *14,
    5 Some circuits have held that Rehaif error is structural and therefore reversible even
    absent prejudice. See, e.g., United States v. Gary, 
    954 F.3d 194
    , 203 (4th Cir. 2020). This
    circuit, however, has “held the opposite—that defendants must show that any error under
    Rehaif actually prejudiced the outcome.” United States v. Lavalais, 
    960 F.3d 180
    , 184 (5th
    Cir. 2020).
    8
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    961 F.3d 745
    , ___ (5th Cir. June 9, 2020). 6 Because our disposition of the claim
    remains unaffected, we assume, arguendo only, that de novo review applies to
    the insufficiency claim.
    1.
    “Plain error requires that there was (1) error, (2) that is plain, and
    (3) that affects substantial rights.” United States v. Anderton, 
    901 F.3d 278
    ,
    282 (5th Cir. 2018) (quotation marks omitted). If those conditions are met, this
    court “should exercise its discretion to correct the forfeited error if the error
    seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceed-
    ings.” Rosales-Mireles v. United States, 
    138 S. Ct. 1897
    , 1905 (2018).
    The defendants have identified errors meeting the first two prongs. “The
    district court’s failure to instruct the jury concerning [the defendants’] knowl-
    edge of [their] felon status[es] was plainly erroneous,” Huntsberry, 956 F.3d
    at 283, as was the government’s “failure to inform [them] of the knowledge
    element as required in Rehaif,” Lavalais, 960 F.3d at 187. Our analysis thus
    turns to the third prong—whether the identified errors affected the defendants’
    substantial rights.
    Under that prong, the defendant 7 bears the burden to “demonstrate ‘a
    reasonable probability that, but for [the error claimed], the result of the pro-
    ceeding would have been different.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Dominguez
    Benitez, 
    542 U.S. 74
    , 82 (2004)). “The probability of a different result must be
    6 But see Huntsberry, 956 F.3d at 282 (applying plain-error review because “the objec-
    tion targeted a different element of the charged crime: whether [the defendant] knowingly
    possessed the firearms, not whether he knew his felon status”).
    7 The shifted burden is “one important difference” between harmless-error review of
    preserved errors and plain-error review of unpreserved errors: In the latter cases, such as
    this one, “[i]t is the defendant rather than the Government who bears the burden of persua-
    sion with respect to prejudice.” United States v. Olano, 
    507 U.S. 725
    , 734 (1993).
    9
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    sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the proceedings.” Hunts-
    berry, 956 F.3d at 283. That standard, i.e., “[d]emonstrating prejudice under
    Rehaif[,] will be difficult for most convicted felons for one simple reason: Con-
    victed felons typically know they’re convicted felons[,] [a]nd they know the
    Government would have little trouble proving that they knew.” Lavalais,
    960 F.3d at 184.
    This case is a perfect illustration. Burden’s arrest for felony possession
    “occurred only days [after he was] released on [his] first parole for simple rob-
    bery,” and Scott had been paroled from a three-year suspended prison sentence
    for simple burglary only a few months earlier. 8 Moreover, both defendants
    stipulated at trial that they were felons. The notion that either was unaware,
    as of October 2017, that he had been convicted of a felony, or that the govern-
    ment would have been unable to prove it, is unrealistic. 9 Accordingly, the
    defendants cannot meet their burden to show that Rehaif error affected their
    substantial rights.
    2.
    In reviewing a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, we ask whether, based
    on the evidence presented at trial, any “reasonable jury ‘could have found the
    essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.’” Staggers, 
    2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 18085
    , at *19, 961 F.3d at ___ (quoting Jackson v. Virginia,
    
    443 U.S. 307
    , 319 (1979)). That “familiar standard gives full play to the
    8 “[O]n plain error review, it is appropriate for us to judicially notice the facts of [the
    defendants’] prior felony conviction[s].” Huntsberry, 956 F.3d at 284. And even if we are
    limited to the facts presented to the jury at the third prong of the plain-error analysis, there
    is no doubt that, under the fourth prong, we can rely on the entire record before us. See
    Staggers, 
    2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 18085
    , at *17, 961 F.3d at ___.
    9 See Huntsberry, 956 F.3d at 286 (“Taken together with his stipulation, these facts
    lead us to conclude that [the defendant] could not have been ignorant of his status as a con-
    victed felon at the time the firearms were found in his possession.”).
    10
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    responsibility of the [jury] fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh
    the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate
    facts.” Jackson, 
    443 U.S. at 319
    . In any case, the question is not “whether [we]
    believe[] that the evidence at the trial established guilt beyond a reasonable
    doubt . . . but whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable
    to the prosecution, any rational [jury] could have” found such guilt established.
    
    Id.
    The only evidence relating to whether the defendants knew that they
    were convicted felons at the time of their arrests was the stipulation at trial
    that they were in fact convicted felons. Although that stipulation alone does
    not necessarily place the question entirely beyond debate, “absent any evidence
    suggesting ignorance, a jury applying the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard
    could infer that [the] defendant[s] knew that [they were] convicted felon[s]
    from the mere existence of [their] felony conviction[s].” Staggers, 
    2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 18085
    , at *20, 961 F.3d at ___ (emphasis added). Therefore,
    regardless of the standard of review, the evidence was sufficient to support the
    conviction.
    C.
    When discovered by police, the defendants stated that they had just been
    robbed of their clothing. For the second trial, the district court ordered the
    attorneys to seek approval before mentioning or eliciting testimony concerning
    those statements. That requirement, defendants contend, inhibited their abil-
    ity to present a “plausible defense” and constitutes plain error.
    “[A] district judge has broad discretion in managing his docket, including
    trial procedure and the conduct of trial.” United States v. Gray, 
    105 F.3d 956
    ,
    964 (5th Cir. 1997). “In reviewing a district judge’s trial procedure and conduct
    of the trial, we ordinarily determine whether the cumulative effect of the
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    judge’s actions amount to an abuse of discretion.” 
    Id.
     Even an abuse of discre-
    tion, however, would not itself be enough to reverse or vacate the verdict in
    this case: “[B]ecause appellants never objected to the court’s actions during
    trial, our appellate review is confined to the plain error standard” described
    above. 
    Id.
    The defendants spill much ink explaining why, if they had attempted to
    introduce evidence or elicit testimony relating to the supposed robbery, it
    should have been properly admitted under an exception to hearsay. That line
    of reasoning, as the government correctly notes, entirely misses the point: The
    district court never prevented the defendants from presenting such evidence
    but only instituted a procedure for such presentation. The proper analysis
    therefore focuses not on whether the evidence was admissible but on whether
    the procedure to determine its admissibility was an abuse of discretion (which,
    in turn, constitutes plain error). See 
    id.
    The defendants cannot begin to demonstrate such abuse. The relevant
    order specified, solely, “that no party [should] mention or elicit any testimony
    about defendants’ claims that they were the victims of an armed robbery on
    the night of the alleged incident without prior approval of the [district] Court.”
    The defendants never sought such approval, so we can only speculate as to how
    the court might have ruled or to what further procedure, if any, would have
    been required beyond making the request itself. The court’s “procedure[]”—
    i.e., that a party submit a request for prior approval—was “adequate on [its]
    face, and without trying [it], [the defendants] can hardly complain that [it
    would] not [have] work[ed] in practice.” Dist. Attorney’s Office for Third Judi-
    cial Dist. v. Osborne, 
    557 U.S. 52
    , 71 (2009).
    The defendants would have us nevertheless proceed as though the dis-
    trict court’s procedural order were effectively a substantive ruling in their
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    disfavor. They write that, “at the unrecorded status conference . . . , the judge
    was abundantly clear: he was not going to allow it. . . . We [therefore] deemed
    it would have been futile to have attempted to raise the issue.” Whatever the
    value of form, “the real world situation facing counsel,” they say, was that
    “[t]he Court had ruled.”
    It is not, however, “elevating form over function” (defendants’ words) to
    note the distinction between a court’s hypothetical, expected, or even likely
    ruling and an actual one. It might be that counsel’s intuitions were correct and
    the court would have withheld its approval inevitably. 10 But absent even a
    cursory request, the defendants ask us to hold that the court abused its dis-
    cretion by perhaps intimating that it would likely refuse counsel’s request. We
    decline. The defendants (in their reply briefing) ultimately acknowledge the
    futility of their position, writing that “[i]f the defendants must suffer the con-
    sequences of counsel not preserving the ability to present such a defense by
    requesting a [Federal Rule of Evidence] 104(a) preliminary determination of
    admissibility during the trial, so be it.” The district court did not err, much
    less plainly so.
    D.
    At sentencing, the district court adopted an uncontested PSR cross-
    referencing of the firearms possession with attempted first-degree murder.
    Defendants contend that the facts at trial do not establish that attempt, so the
    court plainly erred.
    In finding that the defendants attempted first-degree murder, the dis-
    trict court necessarily found, as relevant here, that their actions were “willful,
    10  Even then, it would have been wise to make the futile attempt and preserve the
    objection.
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    deliberate, malicious, and premeditated.” 
    18 U.S.C. § 1111
    (a). “Although . . .
    deliberation and premeditation . . . involve[s] a prior design to commit murder,
    no particular period of time is necessary for such deliberation and premedita-
    tion[,] . . . [just that] [t]here must be some appreciable time for reflection and
    consideration before execution of the act . . . .” 11
    Ordinarily, a “factual finding[] [is] reviewed for clear error.” United
    States v. Barfield, 
    941 F.3d 757
    , 761 (5th Cir. 2019). “A factual finding is not
    clearly erroneous if it is plausible in light of the record as a whole.” 
    Id.
     “Th[is]
    Court will find clear error only if a review of all the evidence leaves [it] with
    the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.” 
    Id.
    at 761–62 (quotation marks omitted).
    Because the defendants did not preserve the error, we would have the
    discretion to grant relief only if the clear error should constitute plain error.
    The Supreme Court has recently abrogated this circuit’s “outlier [former]
    practice of refusing to review certain unpreserved factual arguments for plain
    error.” Davis v. United States, 
    140 S. Ct. 1060
    , 1061 (2020) (abrogating United
    States v. Lopez, 
    923 F.2d 47
    , 50 (5th Cir. 1991) (per curiam)). Thus, this court
    is to consider the defendants’ unpreserved challenge as it would any other. See
    
    id.
     at 1061–62.
    The defendants claim that “no evidence was presented at trial, either
    direct or circumstantial, that could reasonably lead to a conclusion that the act
    was premeditated.” They note that the evidence establishes merely that “[t]wo
    men exited the[ir] SUV and opened fire on the occupants of the Mercedes” that
    had stopped behind them while they themselves were at a stop sign. Because
    11 United States v. Shaw, 
    701 F.2d 367
    , 392–93 (5th Cir. 1983), abrogated on other
    grounds as recognized in United States v. Gurrola, 
    898 F.3d 524
    , 537 n.31 (5th Cir. 2018).
    14
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    “[b]oth the driver and the passenger of the Mercedes denied any knowledge of
    who shot at them,” defendants suggest, the record shows that “the shooting
    . . . was a spur of the moment crime of convenience, rather than any deliber-
    ate, considered murder plot.” It would have been rather “convenient” indeed
    that the shooters possessed not only two fully loaded, high-powered 12 firearms
    but also two black plastic masks, 13 that they happened to be wearing when
    they decided, apparently unprovoked and on the “spur of the moment,” to exit
    their vehicle and fire nineteen rounds into the victims’ occupied Mercedes. 14
    Defendants have shown, at most, that the shooters might not have held
    a “deliberate, considered, murder plot” specifically to kill the persons who were
    occupying the Mercedes. In that sense, it might have been “convenient” that
    the Mercedes and its occupants happened to stop behind the shooters’ vehicle.
    It might be true that the shooters cared not for the identity of the Mercedes’s
    occupants; perhaps they would have opened fire on anyone unlucky enough to
    have found themselves behind the shooters’ SUV. And, had no such person
    arrived, it is perfectly plausible that the shooters would not have attempted to
    kill anyone at all.
    But all that is entirely irrelevant. “Perhaps the best that can be said of
    deliberation is that it requires a ‘cool mind’ that is capable of reflection, and of
    premeditation that it requires that the one with the ‘cool mind’ did, in fact,
    Barcelona testified that one of the shooters’ weapons was “a very high caliber rifle”
    12
    that would penetrate even his armored police car, let alone an ordinary automobile.
    We note that the incident took place in October 2017, long before the current viral
    13
    pandemic that might lend more plausibility to the notion that one in the shooters’ position
    might have been wearing a mask coincidentally.
    14See Trottie v. Stephens, 
    720 F.3d 231
    , 246, 250 (5th Cir. 2013) (stating that, although
    “Trottie argue[d] that . . . evidence [] would have undermined the jury’s conclusion that he
    premeditated the murders,” “the state presented evidence that Trottie [] wore a ski mask,
    which greatly undermines [that argument]”).
    15
    Case: 19-30394          Document: 00515476398          Page: 16       Date Filed: 07/02/2020
    No. 19-30394
    reflect, at least for a short period of time before his act of [attempted] killing.” 15
    That “period of time ‘does not [necessarily] require the lapse of days or hours[,]
    or even minutes.’” 16
    The record supports the finding that the shooters coolly reflected on their
    actions before taking them. As the defendants themselves note, there is no
    evidence that the shooters and the victims had ever previously interacted or
    known of the other’s existence; in other words, nothing suggests the shooters
    were in a state of provocation that might have denied them the ability to reflect
    on their actions. Neither is there any evidence that the defendants are or were
    fundamentally incapable of such reflection. Even if there were no grand plot
    to murder specifically the persons occupying the Mercedes, there was ample
    opportunity to appreciate the situation while readying and wielding the guns,
    donning the masks, exiting the SUV, walking to the Mercedes, and opening
    fire repeatedly. That time was enough, and, again, that they “wore . . . mask[s]
    . . . greatly undermines” the notion that their actions were not premeditated.
    Trottie, 720 F.3d at 250.
    The district court did not err. 17 The judgments of conviction and sen-
    tence are AFFIRMED.
    15United States v. Shaw, 
    701 F.2d 367
    , 393 (5th Cir. 1983), abrogated on other grounds
    as recognized in United States v. Gurrola, 
    898 F.3d 524
    , 537 n.31 (5th Cir. 2018) (citing
    WAYNE R. LAFAVE & AUSTIN W. SCOTT, JR., CRIMINAL LAW 563 (1972)).
    16   
    Id.
     (quoting Bostic v. United States, 
    94 F.2d 636
    , 639 (D.C. Cir. 1937)).
    17   It follows that, absent error, there cannot be plain error.
    16