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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 16-11576
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 4:15-cr-00204-WTM-GRS-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
LARRON R. BRUCE,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
________________________
(December 19, 2016)
Before TJOFLAT, WILLIAM PRYOR, and ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
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Larron R. Bruce (“Bruce”) appeals his 170-month sentence of imprisonment
after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine
hydrochloride (“cocaine”) and cocaine base (“crack cocaine”) to manufacture
crack cocaine. On appeal, Bruce argues that the district court clearly erred in
applying the relevant-conduct guideline, U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3, when calculating the
drug quantity for which he was held responsible at sentencing. The district court,
Bruce asserts, improperly enhanced his sentence using unreliable information
about prior crack-cocaine sales which were not part of the same scheme or course
of conduct as the offense of conviction. After careful review, we affirm.
I.
Bruce was a supplier of cocaine and crack cocaine in Liberty County,
Georgia. The investigation into Bruce’s activities began in June 2014, when a
confidential informant (“CI”) purchased one gram of crack that was delivered to
the dealer by Bruce during the course of the transaction. From June 2014 to
October 2015, law enforcement investigated Bruce’s activities using controlled
drug buys, surveillance, court-authorized tracking devices and pen registers,
witness interviews, and other techniques.
Bruce was arrested on the night of October 27, 2015, after the fifteen-year-
old daughter of Timecka Green, a co-defendant, called police to report that Bruce
and others were manufacturing crack cocaine at Green’s home while her mother
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was away. The fumes from the manufacturing process were making the girl and
five other children in the home nauseous. When officers arrived at the home,
Bruce and several other men fled into a nearby wooded area, where Bruce was
quickly located and arrested. Officers found 21.5 grams of cocaine and $7,100 in
Bruce’s underwear.
Soon after, officers executed a search warrant at Green’s home and found
453 grams of cocaine, 40.8 grams of crack cocaine, and other items commonly
used in manufacturing crack cocaine. The fifteen-year-old girl told officers that
she had seen Bruce “cooking crack” at the home on multiple occasions.
Bruce agreed to talk to officers the morning after his arrest. During the
interview, he stated that it was “an everyday thing” for him to manufacture crack
cocaine at Green’s home, that others used the home for the same purpose, and that
he had manufactured crack cocaine at the home on twenty separate occasions.
Over the course of the investigation, officers also interviewed several
witnesses, including Charles Mention, Anthony Andrews, Leigh Taylor, and the
CI. According to Mention, Bruce was one of the top three crack-cocaine
distributors in Liberty County, and he manufactured crack cocaine at the homes of
both his mother and his cousin, Willie Nelson Bruce. Mention bought crack
cocaine from Bruce on at least one-hundred separate occasions.
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According to Andrews, Bruce manufactured and sold crack cocaine. For
some unspecified period of time, Andrews bought 5 grams of crack cocaine from
Bruce every three to four days. At least once, Andrews bought 20 grams of crack
cocaine. The largest amount of drugs Andrews ever saw in Bruce’s possession
was 7 ounces (198.4 grams) of cocaine in the fall of 2014. The last time Andrews
bought crack cocaine from Bruce was in the fall of 2014 at Bruce’s mother’s home,
where he saw Bruce sell crack cocaine to two other persons.
Taylor likewise told officers that Bruce manufactured and sold crack
cocaine. According to Taylor, she bought crack cocaine from Bruce up to three
times per day, five days per week for two to three years before June 2014. In
addition, Bruce told Taylor to contact Alexander Roberts if Taylor needed crack
cocaine but Bruce was unavailable. In July 2014, police observed Robertson at
Bruce’s mother’s home conducting what appeared to be a drug transaction with
Bruce, who mentioned that he needed to “cook.”
Finally, the CI told officers that Bruce controlled the majority of the drug
sales in the Georgia cities of Midway, Richmond Hill, and Hinesville. According
to the CI, Bruce regularly bought large quantities of cocaine from Miami, Atlanta,
and Brunswick, Georgia, and converted the cocaine into crack cocaine.
II.
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A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Bruce and several co-
defendants with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and crack
cocaine and to manufacture crack cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1),
841(b)(1)(C), and 846, in addition to other offenses. According to the indictment,
the conspiracy began “at a time unknown to the Grand Jury but at a time between
in or about March 2015, and in or about November 2015,” and it took place “in
Liberty County . . . and elsewhere.” Bruce pled guilty to the conspiracy offense
under a written plea agreement.
Before sentencing, a probation officer prepared Bruce’s presentence
investigation report (“PSR”), which calculated his sentencing guideline range.
Bruce’s base offense level of 30 was derived from the quantity of drugs involved
in his offense. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(a)(5), (c)(5). With a four-level leadership
enhancement and a three-level reduction for acceptance of responsibility, Bruce’s
total offense level was 31. With a criminal history category of IV, Bruce’s
guideline range was 151 to 188 months of imprisonment.
The PSR attributed to Bruce 474.5 grams of cocaine and 590.8 grams of
crack cocaine. The amount of cocaine was based on what was found in Bruce’s
possession or during the search of Green’s home. The amount of crack cocaine
was derived from the following sources: (a) 45.8 grams for the crack cocaine either
sold to the CI or found in Green’s home; (b) “25 grams of crack for the crack he
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sold Anthony Andrews”; and (c) “520 grams of crack (1 gram of crack per day, 5
days per week for 2 years) for the crack he sold Leigh Taylor.” 1 The quantities of
cocaine and crack cocaine were then converted into their marijuana equivalents,
yielding a total equivalent amount of 2,204.6 kilograms of marijuana. See
U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, cmt. n.8(B).
Bruce objected to the inclusion of any drug amounts derived from the
interviews of Mention, Andrews, or Taylor. Bruce asserted that these sales were
not part of the charged conspiracy and were too remote in time to be included as
relevant conduct. He also suggested that the information obtained from these
individuals was “flimsy,” “baseless,” and “manufactured.”
In an addendum to the PSR, the probation officer responded that the
amounts from Andrews and Taylor were included because the quantities of drugs
seized did not “adequately reflect Bruce’s significant involvement in the
manufacturing and distribution of crack.” The probation officer included the sales
involving Andrews and Taylor as relevant conduct because they both bought crack
cocaine from Bruce around the time of the investigation, and the evidence showed
that Bruce had been a major manufacturer and dealer of crack cocaine for years.
1
The PSR did not attribute to Bruce any of the crack cocaine involving Mention, who
stated he bought crack cocaine from Bruce on at least one-hundred separate occasions, nor did
the PSR convert the drug proceeds found on Bruce at the time of his arrest into an equivalent
quantity of cocaine.
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At sentencing, Bruce’s counsel clarified that Bruce’s objections were legal
ones, not “factual objections at all.” That is, Bruce’s objections were about “how
you calculate relevant conduct, the scope, duration[,] and size of a conspiracy and
what would play into that.” However, Bruce’s counsel did not elaborate any
further on his objections at sentencing.
The district court, after adopting the PSR’s findings of fact, agreed with the
probation officer that the challenged conduct qualified as “relevant conduct” which
could be used to estimate the quantity of drugs involved. The court also found that
the total drug quantity represented a very conservative estimate of the drugs
involved in the offense. As a result, the court adopted the guideline calculations in
the PSR, setting the guideline range at 151 to 188 months of imprisonment. The
court sentenced Bruce to 170 months of imprisonment.
III.
The district court’s determination of drug quantity for sentencing is
reviewed for clear error. United States v. Reeves, 742 F.3d 487, 506 (11th Cir.
2014). We also review the application of the relevant-conduct guideline for clear
error. United States v. Siegelman, 786 F.3d 1322, 1332 (11th Cir. 2015), cert.
denied, 136 S. Ct. 798 (2016). We broadly interpret the provisions of the relevant-
conduct guideline. United States v. Behr, 93 F.3d 764, 765 (11th Cir. 1996).
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Sentencing courts must consider all “relevant conduct,” as defined in
§ 1B1.3, when calculating a defendant’s guideline range. Siegelman, 786 F.3d at
1332. “Because the limits of sentencing accountability are not coextensive with
the scope of criminal liability,” relevant conduct may include both uncharged and
acquitted conduct that is proven at sentencing by a preponderance of the evidence.
Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Conduct is “relevant” under § 1B1.3, and
therefore may be attributed to the defendant for purposes of sentencing, if it “was
‘part of the same course of conduct or common scheme or plan’ as the offense of
conviction.” United States v. Gomez, 164 F.3d 1354, 1356 (11th Cir. 1999)
(quoting U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(2)).
Offenses are part of the “same course of conduct” if they are “sufficiently
connected or related to each other as to warrant the conclusion that they are part of
a single episode, spree, or ongoing series of offenses.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3, cmt.
n.5(B)(ii). To make that determination, we evaluate “the degree of similarity of
the offenses, the regularity (repetitions) of the offenses, and the time interval
between the offenses.” Fuentes, 107 F.3d at 1525 (internal quotation marks
omitted). In doing so, we consider “whether there are distinctive similarities
between the offense of conviction and the remote conduct that signal that they are
part of a single course of conduct rather than isolated, unrelated events that happen
only to be similar in kind.” United States v. Maxwell, 34 F.3d 1006, 1011 (11th
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Cir. 1994) (quoting another source). We will reverse only if we find that the
district court clearly erred by relying at sentencing on “conduct which exists in
discrete, identifiable units apart from the offense of conviction.” Id. (internal
quotation marks omitted).
Here, the district court did not clearly err by including as relevant conduct
Bruce’s prior sales of crack cocaine to Andrews and Taylor. First, we reject
Bruce’s challenge to the credibility of Andrew’s and Taylor’s statements to
investigating officers. At sentencing, Bruce expressly withdrew any factual
challenge to these statements, clarifying that his objections were solely about “how
you calculate relevant conduct, the scope, duration[,] and size of a conspiracy and
what would play into that.” As a result, the district court did not err in treating the
factual statements in the PSR as undisputed for purposes of sentencing, and the
court properly relied on these facts at sentencing, even in the absence of supporting
evidence. See United States v. Lopez-Garcia, 565 F.3d 1306, 1323 (11th Cir.
2009) (stating that the failure to object to allegations of fact in the PSR admits
those facts for sentencing purposes).2
Second, the district court did not clearly err in determining that the drug
sales to Andrews and Taylor arose out of the same course of conduct as the offense
2
In passing, Bruce asserts his rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution. However, this argument has not been adequately briefed on appeal, so we
decline to consider it. See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681–82 (11th
Cir. 2014).
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of conviction. Bruce was convicted of conspiring to manufacture crack cocaine
and to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and crack cocaine. This conspiracy
involved regularly manufacturing crack cocaine and selling small quantities to
users at various locations in and around Liberty County, including the home of his
cousin, Willie Nelson Bruce. Other co-conspirators, both charged and uncharged,
including Alexander Roberts, Gregory Harrington, and Willie Nelson Bruce,
assisted Bruce in selling the crack cocaine.
The prior drug sales to Andrews and Taylor fit squarely within this same
course of conduct. Both Andrews and Taylor identified Bruce as a manufacturer
and distributor of crack cocaine, and both individuals described regular purchases
of small quantities of crack cocaine from Bruce over a period of time. Moreover,
the sales to Andrews and Taylor shared other similarities with the charged conduct.
For instance, Andrews bought crack cocaine at Willie Nelson Bruce’s home, where
the CI also bought crack cocaine from Bruce during the course of the investigation.
In addition, Bruce told Taylor to contact Roberts, a participant in the conspiracy,
when Taylor needed crack cocaine and Bruce was not available.
The only factor that arguably weighs in Bruce’s favor is temporal proximity.
For instance, the indictment alleged that the conspiracy began “at a time between
in or about March 2015, and in or about November 2015,” but the uncharged
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conduct includes drug sales to Taylor for a two-year period beginning in 2012.3
Nevertheless, Taylor described continuous purchases of crack cocaine from Bruce
during that two-year period, which extended up until around June 2014, when the
investigation into Bruce’s very similar charged conduct began. Similarly,
Andrews described repeated purchases of crack cocaine from Bruce up until some
point in the fall of 2014. In light of the repetitive nature of these similar prior
sales, any lack of temporal proximity does not strongly suggest that they “were
unrelated events that happen only to be similar in kind.” See Maxwell, 34 F.3d at
1011; U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3 cmt. 5(B)(ii) (“When one of the above factors is absent, a
stronger presence of at least one of the other factors is required.”); cf. United States
v. Cedano-Rojas, 999 F.2d 1175, 1180–81 (7th Cir. 1993) (finding a sufficient
connection between prior drug transactions and the conduct of conviction despite a
two-year gap between the offenses).
Bruce compares the facts of his case to the facts of Maxwell and Gomez, but
both cases are distinguishable. In Maxwell, we held that uncharged conduct
involving a cocaine distribution scheme was not relevant conduct for the counts of
conviction, which involved a dilaudid distribution scheme. 34 F.3d at 1011.
3
To the extent Bruce argues that the uncharged conduct cannot be included as relevant
conduct under § 1B1.3 simply because it falls outside of the time period of the charged
conspiracy, he is mistaken. See Gomez, 164 F.3d at 1357 (“[W]e have previously held—and
continue to hold—that uncharged criminal activity outside of a charged conspiracy may be
included in sentencing if the uncharged activity is sufficiently related to the conspiracy for which
the defendant was convicted.”).
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Because the two schemes did not involve any of the same parties and were
temporally remote, we concluded that the two schemes appeared to be isolated, and
we declined to find that they constituted “a single course of conduct simply
because they both involve drug distribution.” Id.
In Gomez, this Court concluded that the district court clearly erred by relying
on drug sales that were not part of the same course of conduct as the conspiracy
charged in the indictment. 164 F.3d at 1356. We found that “[t]he course of
conduct on which the indictment and the trial focused was the distribution of
cocaine through the Sparkling City Car Wash operation, out of which the
conspiracy operated and from which the relevant ‘intent to distribute’ applied.” Id.
at 1356 (emphasis in original). So, “only sales that are related to the Sparkling
City Car Wash operation” qualified as relevant conduct. Id. Accordingly, we held
that the district court erred by considering cocaine sales to a person who “was in no
way connected to the Sparkling City Car Wash operation.” Id. at 1356–57.
Here, in contrast to both Maxwell and Gomez, the uncharged conduct in this
case is not “conceptually distinct” from the charged conspiracy. See Gomez, 164
F.3d at 1357. Unlike Maxwell, the uncharged conduct in this case shared
similarities with the charged conspiracy, such as similar locations and similar
participants, and also involved distribution of the same controlled substance as the
charged conspiracy. And, unlike Gomez, the charged conspiracy in this case was
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not limited to a particular location to which the uncharged conduct had no
connection. Accordingly, Bruce’s reliance on Maxwell and Gomez is unavailing.
Because the uncharged drug sales to Andrews and Taylor were substantially
related to the conspiracy for which Bruce was convicted, the district court did not
clearly err by treating these prior drug sales as relevant conduct when calculating
his guideline range. See Siegelman, 786 F.3d at 1332; Maxwell, 34 F.3d at 1011.
Accordingly, we affirm Bruce’s sentence.
AFFIRMED.
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