RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206
File Name: 10a0194p.06
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
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Plaintiff-Appellee, -
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
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No. 08-2070
v.
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Defendant-Appellant. -
VERNELL D. WILLIAMS,
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids.
No. 07-00249-001—Gordon J. Quist, District Judge.
Argued: June 8, 2010
Decided and Filed: July 8, 2010
Before: DAUGHTREY, GILMAN and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.
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COUNSEL
ARGUED: Michael D. Oppenheimer, ERICKSON & OPPENHEIMER, Chicago, Illinois,
for Appellant. B. René Shekmer, ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Grand
Rapids, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Michael D. Oppenheimer, Jon F. Erickson,
ERICKSON & OPPENHEIMER, Chicago, Illinois, for Appellant. B. René Shekmer,
ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Appellee.
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OPINION
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SUTTON, Circuit Judge. Vernell Williams challenges his jury conviction for
conspiracy to distribute cocaine on a number of grounds, all meritless. We therefore affirm.
1
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 2
I.
Williams grew up in Chicago near Marshon Weaver and Weaver’s stepbrother,
Homer Holmes. In 2002, Holmes moved to Lansing, where he earned a living selling
cocaine. Weaver, Williams and several other acquaintances from Chicago were Holmes’
primary suppliers. When Holmes needed a new supply of cocaine, he sent a courier or
traveled with a courier from Lansing to Chicago. Once there, Holmes (or the courier) would
seek cocaine from Weaver. If Weaver had cocaine, Holmes (or the courier) picked up the
drugs at Weaver’s residence, which Williams owned.
If Weaver did not have any cocaine, Holmes went to Williams. Typically operating
out of his parents’ house, Williams sold Holmes between one and two kilograms at a time
for $19,000 or so per kilogram. Williams often allowed Holmes to buy cocaine on partial
credit, and Holmes would pay Williams back after he sold the drugs in Lansing. If neither
Weaver nor Williams had enough cocaine, Holmes bought the drug from other Chicago
acquaintances. Holmes’ couriers transported the cocaine. They would drive it from Chicago
to Lansing, where Holmes would sell the drugs to three main customers, who generally
converted it into crack before selling it themselves.
On the evening of March 1, 2005, Illinois police arrested Williams for possessing
five kilograms of cocaine. After a series of start-and-stop discussions, in which Williams
would ask to talk about the case, expressly waive his rights, then (temporarily) decide he
wanted to speak to an attorney, Williams signed a Miranda waiver and gave an oral
statement to the officers. He confessed to buying cocaine regularly from a man named
“Jose,” selling ten to twenty kilograms of cocaine a week for the past two years and using
his drug profits to purchase a Bentley, among other high-end luxuries. He then wrote a
statement addressing that evening’s events, explaining: “I meet Jose in Country Club Hills
for five kilo and went to my mom’s house to meet Pow-Pow. The police pulled up and took
me in. The drugs was in the trunk. It was 18,500 per kilo.” Tr. 1, 25–26. The State, for
reasons of its own, did not prosecute Williams.
The arrest did not slow down Williams’ drug business, and neither did the decision
not to prosecute him. In 2006, Weaver died in a car accident. With Holmes’ primary
supplier dead, Holmes bought his cocaine from Williams and another Chicago acquaintance.
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 3
Williams began selling Holmes three kilograms of cocaine at a time, two that Holmes paid
for up front, one that he bought on consignment. When federal agents caught up with
Holmes, he confessed and identified Williams as one of his suppliers.
In October 2007, a grand jury indicted Williams for conspiring to distribute more
than five kilograms of cocaine. His co-conspirators, including Holmes and Holmes’ Lansing
buyers, each pleaded guilty to at least one related drug-conspiracy charge. Williams opted
for trial, and a jury found him guilty.
At sentencing, the district court determined that Williams had distributed more than
150 kilograms of cocaine, giving him a base offense level of 38. The district court sentenced
Williams at the bottom of the guidelines range, imposing a 292-month sentence.
II.
Williams argues that his 2005 confession to state police was involuntary and thus
should not have been admitted at his federal trial. The voluntariness of a confession turns
on a variety of circumstances, including “the length of the interrogation, its location, its
continuity, the defendant’s maturity, education, physical condition, and mental health,” as
well as whether the police advised the defendant of his Miranda rights and whether the
record contains evidence of police coercion. Withrow v. Williams, 507 U.S. 680, 693–94
(1993) (internal citations omitted).
The circumstances of Williams’ confession do not show involuntariness. At about
11:00 p.m. on March 1, the evening of Williams’ arrest, a state officer read Williams his
Miranda rights. Williams orally waived them but refused to sign the department’s waiver
form. Williams answered questions for about ten minutes. When the officers asked him to
write a statement, Williams said that “he felt uneasy putting anything down . . . without his
lawyer.” Tr. 1, 108. The officers stopped questioning him and left the interview room.
Several hours later, at roughly 3:00 a.m. on March 2, Williams asked to call his
girlfriend, and the officers permitted him to do so. Around 1:00 p.m. the next day,
Investigator Christopher Harris brought him a hot meal from McDonald’s. Harris brought
Williams from his cell to a room with a space for eating. While Williams ate, Harris sat with
him and filled out Williams’ arrest paperwork. Williams asked Harris if he could talk to him
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 4
“regarding the case.” Tr. 1, 9. Harris responded that “he should have his counsel present”
if he wanted to talk. Id. Williams replied, “Hey, man, f[---] that. He works for me. He ain’t
in jail, and I ain’t trying to go to jail.” Id. Harris asked Williams if he really wanted to speak
to him without counsel, to which Williams responded, “Yeah. I can’t go back to jail.” Tr.
1, 10. Harris left the room to get assistance in taking the statement.
Shortly before 4:00 p.m., Harris and DEA Agent George Ohlin, whom the state
police had called to the station, went to Williams’ cell. Ohlin read Williams his Miranda
rights, and Williams signed a waiver form. When Ohlin asked the first question, however,
Williams cut him off and said he wanted to have an attorney present. Ohlin ended the
interview.
At 10:00 that evening, Williams again asked to speak to Investigator Harris “about
the case.” Tr. 1, 18. Thinking that Williams was playing games with him, Harris told
Williams that, if he wanted to speak, he would have to do so in front of Harris and another
investigator, James Bolek. The officers again read Williams his rights, and he again signed
a waiver form.
This time, Williams spoke. He described his drug-trafficking activities over the past
two years and wrote a short statement about them. The officers contacted a state prosecutor,
who came to the station. Around 2:00 a.m. on March 3, the prosecutor read Williams his
rights. Williams signed another waiver, and Williams gave nearly an identical oral statement
to the prosecutor. The prosecutor asked Williams if he would make a written statement.
Williams declined, saying that he thought he should have his attorney with him to do that.
Far from bending his will, the events surrounding Williams’ confession suggest that
the officers fully respected his constitutional rights and that Williams participated in the
interrogation on his own terms from beginning to end. The officers gave Williams his
Miranda warnings four times. Williams orally waived them each time. And he signed a
waiver form three times. When, at various points during the detention, Williams said he did
not feel comfortable speaking without an attorney, the police stopped questioning him. See
Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484–85 (1991). When Williams, not the police,
repeatedly re-initiated the conversation by asking to talk about the case, he disclaimed any
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 5
interest in having an attorney present. Id. On this record, the police permissibly listened to
what Williams had to say each time.
The conditions of Williams’ confinement point in the same direction. Thirty-four
at the time of his arrest, Williams was a high-school graduate who was all too familiar with
the criminal justice system, as he already had eight arrests, two convictions and a four-year
prison term under his belt. Officers allowed him to call his girlfriend when he asked to, gave
him a hot meal, as required by department policy, and left him alone when he no longer
wanted to talk to them.
The only fact that cuts the other way is the length of his confinement—24
hours—before he confessed. Taken by itself, this feature of the interrogation might begin
to support Williams’ argument. See Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U.S. 737, 752 (1966) (16
days of repeated questioning led to an involuntary confession); Culombe v. Connecticut, 367
U.S. 568, 625–26 (1961) (five days of repeated questioning led to an involuntary
confession); Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 153–54 (1944) (36 hours of interrogation
“without respite” led to an involuntary confession). But we apply a totality-of-circumstances
test in this area, not a singular-fact test, and that makes all the difference. “[I]nterrogations
of great[] duration” have been deemed improper only when “they were accompanied . . . by
other facts indicating coercion.” See Berghuis v. Thompkins, ___ S. Ct. ___, slip op. at 15
(2010). And it is not even clear that a 24-hour interrogation amounts to one of “great[]
duration.” When a suspect repeatedly invokes his Miranda rights, then repeatedly waives
them, all while being treated fairly and humanely, it should come as no surprise when the
encounter spans 24 hours rather than a few hours. There was no evidence of police coercion,
and the length of the “interrogation” was a function of Williams’ repeated decision to start,
stop and start again the dialogue, not the officers’ application of the “third degree” or
anything approaching it.
Williams does no better in pressing a statutory rather than a constitutional premise
for his argument. Invoking a federal statute concerning confessions and delayed
presentments, 18 U.S.C. § 3501(c), Williams claims that the district court had no right to
admit his confession. His theory proceeds in two steps: (1) The provision says that “a
confession” “shall not be inadmissible solely because” federal agents delay presentment to
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 6
“a magistrate judge or other officer empowered to commit persons charged with” federal
crimes if the confession “was made . . . within six hours immediately following . . . arrest,”
id.; and (2) confessions like his, made more than six hours after arrest and prior to
presentment before a magistrate, therefore must be involuntary. This two-step contention
has at least three flaws. One, the statute creates a safe harbor for admitting, not excluding,
confessions. 18 U.S.C. § 3501(c). Two, the statute regulates federal prosecutions and
confessions, not confessions made in state custody. At the time Williams confessed, he was
held by the state police for potential state charges, well beyond the reach of the federal
statute. See United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U.S. 350, 352 (1994). Three, the statute
was designed to limit the requirement that federal agents promptly present a suspect to a
federal magistrate, which has nothing to do (whether as a matter of state or federal custody)
with this interrogation and confession. See Corley v. United States, 129 S. Ct. 1558, 1570
(2009).
III.
Even if his confession was voluntary, Williams argues, the district court violated
Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence in admitting it. Rule 404(b) prohibits courts
from admitting evidence of “other crimes,” save under certain exceptions. But Williams’
confession—detailing his ongoing drug sales, divulging how he obtained his drug supply and
admitting that he had been caught with five kilograms of cocaine in his car—was not
evidence of other crimes; it was evidence of the charged crime: a conspiracy to distribute
cocaine. A conspiracy, to be sure, may entail many acts, and many of them may themselves
be criminal, but that does not make them “other crimes” presumptively barred from
admission under Rule 404(b). Otherwise, it would be possible only to charge someone with
a drug-trafficking conspiracy, never to prove it. That is not how Rule 404(b) works.
IV.
Williams argues that the evidence does not support the verdict. He waived this
argument, however, by not renewing his pre-verdict motion for judgment of acquittal at the
conclusion of the evidence. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a); United States v. Khalil, 279 F.3d
358, 368 (6th Cir. 2002). That leaves us with the task of determining only whether the trial
resulted in a “manifest miscarriage of justice.” Id. It did not.
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 7
A “manifest miscarriage of justice” is no small matter. It means that the record is
“devoid” of evidence of guilt, United States v. Price, 134 F.3d 340, 350 (6th Cir. 1998),
something this record is not. A drug conspiracy requires: “(1) an agreement to violate drug
laws; (2) knowledge of and intent to join the conspiracy; and (3) participation in the
conspiracy.” United States v. Gunter, 551 F.3d 472, 482 (6th Cir. 2009). All of the key
players in Williams’ drug business, the record shows, knew each other, many since
childhood. It shows that Weaver, one of the principal drug sellers, lived in and conducted
his business out of a house owned by Williams. Most critically, it describes a supply chain
in which Holmes, if unsuccessful in obtaining cocaine from Weaver, could invariably seek
it from Williams. It suggests that Williams had “more than a buyer-seller arrangement” with
Holmes, based on his willingness to sell Holmes drugs on partial credit. See United States
v. Henley, 360 F.3d 509, 514 (6th Cir. 2004). And it indicates, based on Holmes’ attempt
to return a bad batch of cocaine that his customers could not turn into crack, that Williams
knew Holmes was re-selling the large amounts of drugs he bought. These facts gave the jury
plenty of reasons to find Williams guilty.
V.
Williams next claims a fatal variance, a theory of error often raised but seldom seen.
In the context of a conspiracy, a variance requires reversal only if (1) “the indictment alleged
one conspiracy, but the evidence can reasonably be construed only as supporting a finding
of multiple conspiracies,” and (2) the variance prejudiced the defendant. United States v.
Caver, 470 F.3d 220, 235–36 (6th Cir. 2006) (quotation marks and alterations omitted).
Williams must satisfy an even higher standard here because he failed to raise this contention
at trial, constraining us to review the claim under the plain-error standard. Id. at 235.
The evidence presented at trial did not depart from the conduct charged in the
indictment, much less do so plainly. The indictment alleged that Williams conspired “to
distribute more than 5 kilograms” of cocaine “from in or about 2002 to in or about October,
2007, in the Western District of Michigan, and elsewhere.” R.1, 3. At trial, the government
proved just that: Williams conspired to distribute cocaine “in the Western District of
Michigan” (Lansing), “and elsewhere” (Detroit). Williams insists that the evidence of drugs
flowing from Chicago to Lansing and from Chicago to Detroit shows not one overarching
No. 08-2070 United States v. Williams Page 8
conspiracy but two separate conspiracies. Yet the reality that Williams sold drugs that made
their way to Lansing and to Detroit does not mean that Williams was convicted of crimes
outside the bounds of his indictment. A conspiracy still counts as “one” conspiracy even if
it can be subdivided into multiple parts. United States v. Wilson, 168 F.3d 916, 924 (6th Cir.
1999).
VI.
Williams concludes by arguing that the district court improperly found him
responsible for more than 150 kilograms of cocaine at sentencing. Ample evidence supports
the district court’s finding.
Start with Williams’ confession. He admitted to selling ten to twenty kilograms of
drugs a week for at least two years. That by itself takes Williams well beyond the 150-
kilogram finding. Holmes’ testimony at the sentencing hearing comes to the same end.
Holmes testified that, beginning in 2001, he obtained “at least two [kilograms] a month”
from Chicago (24 per year for one year), that the quantity inched up to four kilograms a
month between 2002 and 2006 (48 per year for four years) and that “sometimes” Williams
would throw in additional kilograms. In weighing Holmes’ testimony, the district court
cautiously disregarded some of the sales to Holmes during 2001 and 2002, but even then that
left a drug quantity well above 150 kilograms. No error occurred.
VII.
For these reasons, we affirm.