finding sufficient evidence to convict on a felon-in-possession charge, observing that “[a]s in all criminal trials, the jury did not have to draw these inferences. But it reasonably could have reached these conclusions—and when that is the case we must respect the jury’s inferences over our own.... our mandate is to affirm when the jury’s choice was a rational one.”
How later courts described this case
- finding sufficient evidence to convict on a felon-in-possession charge, observing that “[a]s in all criminal trials, the jury did not have to draw these inferences. But it reasonably could have reached these conclusions—and when that is the case we must respect the jury’s inferences over our own.... our mandate is to affirm when the jury’s choice was a rational one.”
- concluding that witness’s statements and hand gestures indicating the type of gun defendant possessed sufficed to establish possession where police, soon after, recovered a gun consistent with that description from under the passenger seat on which defendant was seated, even though defendant was not the owner of the car and the gun had no useable prints
- finding USCA11 Case: 22-14116 Document: 89-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2025 Page: 14 of 29 14 Opinion of the Court 22-14116 that the unprompted nature of the statement and the victim’s “dis- tress” both “suggest[ed] that the statement was nontestimonial”
- explaining that a statement is testimonial where circumstances “objectively indicate” that the “primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CLAY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Judge Griffin’s opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in its entirety except with respect to section II of the opinion, which holds that the potential impeachment evidence with respect to the private investigator was properly excluded. With respect to the district court’s refusal to admit the private investigator’s statement that Tamica Gordon told him she had never seen Joseph Arnold with a gun on the day in question, I join section IV of Judge Moore’s dissenting opinion. I would therefore reverse and remand for a new trial as would Judges Griffin and Moore.