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United States v. Jones

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Argued: April 10, 2007

Before: LEVAL, CABRANES, and RAGGI, Circuit Judges.

Defendant Keith Jones appeals from a judgment of conviction entered on October 27, 2005, in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York (David G. Larimer, Judge), after a jury trial at which Jones was found guilty of unlawfully possessing more than five grams of a substance containing cocaine base (commonly known as “crack” cocaine) in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 844(a). Presently serving the 121-month prison term imposed in this case, Jones challenges his conviction on two grounds. First, he contends that the trial evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to establish his possession of crack cocaine. Second, he asserts that his sentence is unreasonable because the district court (a) miscalculated his Sentencing Guidelines range by including in his relevant drug quantity an amount of crack cocaine derived from the currency seized at the time of Jones’s arrest, which was found to represent the proceeds of a crack sale; and (b) gave controlling effect to the Guidelines 100:1 ratio for assessing the relative seriousness of crimes involving powder cocaine as compared to crack cocaine, resulting in a prison term in his case that is greater than necessary to achieve the sentencing objectives of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). For the reasons stated in this opinion, we reject Jones’s challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence and affirm the district court judgment insofar as it convicts him for cocaine possession. We also reject Jones’s challenge to the district court’s finding of drug quantity. Nevertheless, because the sentencing record is ambiguous as to whether the district court’s understanding of its discretion to impose a non-Guidelines sentence was as now clarified in Kimbrough v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 558 (2007) and Gall v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 586 (2007), we vacate the sentence component of the judgment and remand the case to the district court for the limited purpose of resentencing consistent with Kimbrough and Gall.

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