United States v. Lincoln Moquete

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 15-4805
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
LINCOLN NORMANDO MOQUETE,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. William D. Quarles, Jr., District
Judge. (1:13-cr-00419-WDQ-2)
Submitted: October 13, 2016 Decided: October 17, 2016
Before NIEMEYER, DUNCAN, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
C. Justin Brown, BROWN & NIETO, LLC, Baltimore, Maryland, for
Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney,
Christopher J. Romano, Assistant United States Attorney,
Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Lincoln Normando Moquete appeals from the criminal judgment
convicting him of conspiracy to distribute and possess with
intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and
possession with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of
cocaine and sentencing him to a 144-month term of imprisonment.
Moquete argues that the court erred in failing to issue a jury
instruction regarding witness hostility or bias toward Moquete.
He also contests the quantity of drugs attributed to him at
sentencing. We affirm.
First, Moquete objects to the district court’s refusal to
give a proposed jury instruction on witness hostility and bias.
“We review for abuse of discretion the district court’s denial
of . . . proposed jury instructions.” United States v. Sonmez,
777 F.3d 684, 688 (4th Cir. 2015). We see no abuse of
discretion in this regard. A “district court d[oes] not abuse
its discretion” by refusing a proposed instruction that was
“clearly covered by the instructions given,” United States v.
Green, 599 F.3d 360, 378 (4th Cir. 2010), just because “a more
specific instruction might have been desirable to” the
defendant, id. (quoting United States v. Patterson, 150 F.3d
382, 388 (4th Cir. 1998)). Moquete’s reasoning for the
instruction seemed to be that the testifying witnesses in
general were biased against him. He did not advance any
2
evidence related to a particular witness. The district court
instructed the jury on evaluating the credibility of witnesses.
There was simply no basis on which to find an abuse of
discretion.
Moquete also challenges the district court’s calculation of
the drug weight, asserting that the court improperly credited
the testimony of two coconspirators whose testimony was
allegedly vague, inconsistent, and lacking credibility. In
reviewing the district court’s calculations under the Sentencing
Guidelines, “we review the district court’s legal conclusions de
novo and its factual findings for clear error.” United
States v. Manigan, 592 F.3d 621, 626 (4th Cir. 2010) (internal
quotation marks omitted). We will “find clear error only if, on
the entire evidence, we are left with the definite and firm
conviction that a mistake has been committed.” Id. at 631
(internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).
The district court need only find the drug quantity
attributable to the defendant by a preponderance of the
evidence. United States v. Bell, 667 F.3d 431, 441 (4th Cir.
2011). The court, therefore, “must only determine that it was
more likely than not that the defendant was responsible for at
least the drug quantity attributed to him.” United States v.
Kiulin, 360 F.3d 456, 461 (4th Cir. 2004). Having reviewed the
3
record on appeal, we conclude that the district court did not
clearly err in calculating the drug weight.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment. We dispense with oral
argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately
presented in the materials before this court and argument would
not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
4