United States v. Brian Sawyers

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS OCT 24 2018
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 16-50480
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
2:15-cr-00070-RSWL-1
v.
BRIAN SAWYERS, AKA B, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Ronald S.W. Lew, District Judge, Presiding
Argued & Submitted October 11, 2018
Pasadena, California
Before: SCHROEDER and NGUYEN, Circuit Judges, and SIMON,** District
Judge.
Defendant Brian Sawyers appeals his conviction of two counts of
distribution of cocaine base in the form of crack cocaine, and his sentence. We
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Michael H. Simon, United States District Judge for the
District of Oregon, sitting by designation.
have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a), and
affirm.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting expert testimony
as to the meaning of drug code words and phrases. Such testimony was not
needlessly cumulative or unfairly prejudicial under Federal Rule of Evidence 403.
See United States v. Freeman, 498 F.3d 893, 901 (9th Cir. 2007) (quoting United
States v. Griffith, 118 F.3d 318, 321 (5th Cir. 1997)) (“Drug jargon ‘is a
specialized body of knowledge, familiar only to those wise in the ways of the drug
trade, and therefore a fit subject for expert testimony.’”).
The district court also did not abuse its discretion in declining to instruct the
jury specifically on implicit bias. Sawyers cites no authority requiring such an
instruction, nor does he cite any evidence of jury bias in this case.
Finally, Sawyers’s 180-month prison sentence is not substantively
unreasonable. The district court granted him a substantial downward departure
from his Sentencing Guidelines range of 360 months to life. United States v.
Treadwell, 593 F.3d 990, 1015 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting United States v. Carty, 520
F.3d 984, 994 (9th Cir. 2008)) (“Although we do not automatically presume
reasonableness for a within-Guidelines sentence, ‘in the overwhelming majority of
cases, a Guidelines sentence will fall comfortably within the broad range of
sentences that would be reasonable in the particular circumstances.’”).
2
AFFIRMED.
3