UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ALANDOUS BRIGGS
No. 18-1415
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Argued November 27, 2018 — Decided March 27, 2019
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 18-1415
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
ALANDOUS BRIGGS,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
No. 1:17-cr-00139-TWP-TAB-1 — Tanya Walton Pratt, Judge.
ARGUED NOVEMBER 27, 2018 — DECIDED MARCH 27, 2019
Before BAUER, HAMILTON, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.
I.
In December 2016, Indiana state parole officers conducted a parole visit at Alandous Briggs’s home. Aftеr consenting to a search, he admitted that there was marijuana (299 grams), cocaine (.45 grams), and firearms (3 loaded handguns) in the master bedroom. On a shelf next to the marijuana, the officers also found a digital scale. The officers arrested Briggs and seized his cell phone—whiсh turned out to contain pictures and texts confirming that the guns were his.
Briggs was charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firеarm. Although the parties did not come to a plea agreement, Briggs petitioned to enter a plea of guilty and requested a presentence investigation report. The probation office’s initial report concluded that Briggs had committed a felony drug offense in connection with the firearm possession, which warranted a four-level enhancement under
The district court conducted a combined plea and sentencing hearing. After
Briggs appeals that sentenсing decision. His sole argument on appeal is that the district court erred by finding that his possession of firearms was connected to anоther felony.
II.
As an initial matter, the government claims that the district court found that the enhancement applied based on both felony drug possession and felony drug trafficking. We disagree. The district court discussed both felonies at sentencing, but it ultimately concluded that only felony drug possession triggered the enhancement. It explained that although “there’s an inference that the defendant may have been involved in some drug distribution, … at minim[um], he was possessing drugs.” (emphasis added). We take this to mean that the district court wasn’t deciding whether the enhancement applied because of the suspected drug trafficking, resting its decision instead only on felony possession, which Briggs admitted. Thus, the question that wе face on appeal is whether the district court erred in concluding that the enhancement applied in connection with Briggs’s fеlony possession of cocaine.1
To enhance a defendant’s sentence for possessing a firearm in connection with аnother felony, the firearm must have been connected to the second crime. See
The problem here is that the district never made any findings about how Briggs’s felony cocaine possession was connected to his firearms. It simply assumed that because thе firearms were probably connected to drug trafficking (because of the combination of the cocaine, marijuana, and digitаl scale), they were probably connected to his mere possession of the cocaine. But that logic doesn’t hold up. Analyzing whеther firearms are connected to drug trafficking is different from analyzing whether they are connected to possessing a small quantity of drugs. See id. (explaining that the existence of a dilution agent, for example, was “consistent with being a dealer and not simply a casual user of the drug”); United States v. Smith, 535 F.3d 883, 885–86 (8th Cir. 2008) (noting the differences between drug trafficking and drug possession as it relates to the
Perhaps the district court here thought that the guns emboldened Briggs’s possession of cocaine. See, e.g., United States v. Jenkins, 566 F.3d 160, 163 (4th Cir. 2009) (applying the enhancement to a defendant who brought cocaine and a gun onto a public street because the “environment suggest[ed] that there was a heightened need for protection and that the firearm emboldened [him]”). Or maybe it thought that because Briggs had both cocaine and marijuana in the house, he simply wanted to protect all of the drugs that he had there. But the problem is that we don’t know what the district court thought. Put differently, “[w]e have essentially no fact findings at all by the district court relevant to this issue.” United States v. Clinton, 825 F.3d 809, 813 (7th Cir. 2016) (emphasis added). The district cоurt mostly discussed the drug scale and the amount of marijuana found in Briggs’s home—but neither of those facts bears directly on Briggs’s cocaine pоssession. Instead, they go to whether he might have been dealing drugs. And the court’s vague suggestion that the guns might have been there “to protect sоmething”—apparently made in the context of drug trafficking—wouldn’t be enough to connect the guns to felony possession of cocаine even if that had been what the court was referring to.
In short, the mere fact that guns and drugs are found near each other doesn’t establish a nexus between them. See LePage, 477 F.3d at 489. A court must say more to connect the two. Thus, the district court clearly erred in applying the
The sentence is VACATED and the case REMANDED for resentencing consistent with this opinion.