United States of America v. Christopher Porter

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued February 26, 2026
Decided April 15, 2026
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
No. 24-3112
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
CHRISTOPHER PORTER,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States
District Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:21-cr-00087-1
Sharon Johnson Coleman,
Judge.
O R D E R
Christopher Porter robbed three banks in Chicago over the span of four months.
Federal charges followed, and the case proceeded to trial. A jury convicted Porter of
three counts of bank robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) and one count of
brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii).
Porter challenges these convictions on appeal. He contends that there was insufficient
evidence for the jury to convict him of the first two robberies and that the district court
erred by trying all three robberies in the same trial. We disagree and affirm.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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I
This case began with a series of similar robberies. In the afternoon of November
13, 2020, a Black man wearing a face mask and hat entered the Citibank branch at 9449
South Western Avenue. He pointed a gun at a teller, demanded she fill a bag with
money, and departed with about $2,202. Video surveillance footage from a nearby
parking lot showed the robber arrive and drive away in a silver Ford Explorer, which
investigators later linked to Christopher Porter.
The next robbery came just over a month later. On December 22, 2020, a Black
man wearing a face mask and hat entered the Chase Bank on 5134 North Clark Street.
He approached a teller, pointed his gun at the customer by her window, and demanded
that she fill a bag with money. As she and another teller complied, the man fidgeted
with his weapon, and something, likely a bullet, fell to the ground. The robber made off
with approximately $4,000. Investigative work once again linked the robber’s getaway
car to the silver Ford Explorer registered to Porter.
The final robbery occurred on February 4, 2021. A Black man in a face mask and
hat entered the Fifth Third Bank branch on 3957 West 26th Street, pointed his gun at the
teller and a customer, and demanded cash. In his haste to comply, the teller placed both
cash and whole coin trays into the bag. The robber left with about $5,181.
Before the third robbery, FBI investigators had attached a GPS tracking device to
Porter’s silver Ford Explorer. Shortly after arriving at the Fifth Third branch on
February 4, the FBI located the vehicle. Upon observing an individual matching Porter’s
description driving the Explorer, the FBI conducted a traffic stop and arrested Porter.
He had $4,824 in cash in his pocket and was wearing jeans with stitching that matched
those of the bank robber. A search of the Explorer later revealed more clothing
matching the robber and a coin tray from Fifth Third Bank.
In March 2021, a special grand jury returned a four-count indictment against
Porter. Three of the counts charged Porter with bank robbery under 18 U.S.C.
§ 2113(a)—one count each for the November, December, and February robberies. The
other count charged Porter with brandishing a firearm during the December robbery, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).
Before trial Porter moved to sever the November robbery from the other two
robbery counts. He contended that the government’s stronger evidence linking him to
the later incidents would spill over and infect the jury’s consideration of the first count.

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The district court denied this motion, so Porter went to trial on all three bank robberies
and the gun charge. The jury found him guilty on all counts.
Porter, both pro se and through counsel, submitted multiple post-trial motions
for acquittal under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29. He contended that the
government had provided insufficient evidence to identify him as the bank robber. The
district court disagreed and denied the motions. The court subsequently sentenced
Porter to a total of 240 months’ imprisonment.
II
On appeal Porter renews the portion of his Rule 29 motion arguing that there
was insufficient evidence for the jury to convict him of the November and December
bank robberies. He insists that the government did not offer enough evidence to
identify him as the bank robber in these incidents.
Porter faces an uphill battle. Under Rule 29(a), “the court on the defendant’s
motion must enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is
insufficient to sustain a conviction.” While we review the district court’s denial of a
Rule 29 motion without deference, our review is limited to the legal question of
whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, “any
rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a
reasonable doubt.” United States v. Jackson, 5 F.4th 676, 682 (7th Cir. 2021) (quoting
Musacchio v. United States, 577 U.S. 237, 243 (2016)). Indeed, “we overturn a district
court’s Rule 29 denial only if ‘no rational trier of fact could have found the defendant
guilty.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Doody, 600 F.3d 752, 754 (7th Cir. 2010)). We have
described this burden as “nearly insurmountable” for defendants. Id. (quoting United
States v. Garcia, 580 F.3d 528, 535 (7th Cir. 2009)).
Construing the trial evidence most favorably to the government, we have no
doubt that a rational jury could have concluded that Porter was the man who robbed
the Citibank branch on November 13, 2020 and the Chase branch on December 22, 2020.
For both robberies, the government offered evidence connecting Porter to the
getaway vehicle. Turning first to the November robbery, video surveillance footage
captured the offender departing the scene in a silver SUV with a distinctive decal in the
back window. Through a combination of National Vehicle Location Service reports and
records from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the government introduced
evidence matching the vehicle in question to a Ford Explorer registered to Porter.
As for the December robbery, reports from 911 callers and video surveillance
tracked the offender’s silver SUV southwards toward Indiana until, as the jury was able

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to infer, its driver paused to reattach a license plate to the vehicle. Shortly thereafter a
license-plate reader captured the silver Ford Explorer registered to Porter getting on the
Kennedy Expressway—all consistent with the getaway car’s direction of travel
following the robbery.
The jury also received evidence showing that Porter resembled the bank robber.
Video footage from both the November and December incidents showed the robber’s
physical stature and skin color. Additionally, for the December robbery, two Chase
Bank employees testified that the robber was a Black man over six feet tall. The jury was
free to compare these depictions and descriptions of the robber with the man before
them in the courtroom. See United States v. Jackson, 688 F.2d 1121, 1125–26 (7th Cir.
1982).
Finally, although Porter challenges this analysis, the government’s identification
evidence built on itself across the three robberies. Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2)
permits a party to offer evidence of other acts for the purpose of providing identity
through a modus operandi. In other words, when other criminal acts “establish[] a
unique pattern or signature” method of operation, they can be admissible to show the
same person carried out another crime fitting the pattern. United States v. Edwards, 26
F.4th 449, 454 (7th Cir. 2022).
Here, in all three robberies—occurring over the span of less than four months—
an armed Black man in a mask and hat entered a Chicago bank, demanded that a teller
stuff cash into a bag, and drove away in a silver Ford SUV. The jury could have
concluded that the same man committed all three bank robberies, and the government’s
evidence tying Porter to the February incident was strong. In sum, the strength of the
government’s identification evidence in the final robbery helped establish Porter’s
identity in the first two similar robberies.
In the final analysis, then, the record was far from “devoid of evidence” from
which a rational jury could identify Porter as committing the November and December
bank robberies. United States v. Stevenson, 680 F.3d 854, 857 (7th Cir. 2012).
III
Porter next insists that the district court erred by including the February robbery
in the same trial as the November and December robberies. Alternatively, he suggests
that the court should have tried the November robbery separately from the remaining
counts. Here, too, we disagree.
“A severance claim involves two distinct issues.” United States v. Coley, 137 F.4th
874, 882 (7th Cir. 2025). We first ask whether the joinder of multiple charges in a single

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trial was proper as a legal matter. See id. at 883. And then we assess whether the district
court nevertheless should have tried them separately to avoid prejudice. See id.
We can quickly dispense with Porter’s joinder contention. Federal Rule of
Criminal Procedure 8(a) “permits joinder of two or more offenses in a single indictment
if the offenses ‘are of the same or similar character, or are based on the same act or
transaction.’” United States v. Baldwin, 149 F.4th 959, 969 (7th Cir. 2025) (quoting Fed. R.
Crim. P. 8(a)). “[T]he fact that the charges are the same is a sufficient basis for uniting
them….” United States v. Jamal, 87 F.3d 913, 914 (7th Cir. 1996). Porter’s joinder
argument “comes to a screeching halt,” id., because all three robbery charges allege
violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a). And the non-robbery charge—brandishing a firearm—
arises from and is based on the December 2020 robbery.
Even when joinder is proper, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 14(a) allows a
district court to sever offenses if trying them together “appears to prejudice a defendant
or the government.” But Porter waived his Rule 14 arguments by failing to renew his
motion to sever at the close of evidence. See Baldwin, 149 F.4th at 969. Although we can
excuse such waiver where renewal would have been futile, see id. at 970, nothing in the
district court’s ruling on Porter’s pretrial motion clears this high bar.
IV
One final aspect of this appeal warrants attention.
Circuit Rule 30(b)(1) commands an appellant to “include in an appendix”
“[c]opies of any other opinions, orders, or oral rulings in the case that address the issues
sought to be raised.” A centerpiece of Porter’s appeal is the district court’s denial of his
pretrial motion to sever. But the district court’s Memorandum Opinion and Order,
which both announces its decision and explains its reasoning, see Dkt. 48, is missing
from Porter’s appendix. Compounding this omission, Porter’s attorney certified under
Circuit Rule 30(d) that his brief’s appendix complied with the requirements of Rule
30(b). This certification was false.
While we stop short of entering a show cause order, we admonish counsel for
this incorrect representation to the court. We fully expect this will not be repeated. We
also want to underscore for Porter that nothing about his counsel’s misrepresentation
prejudiced him. We were able to locate the omitted order and review it as part of
considering his arguments on appeal.
With these closing observations, we AFFIRM.

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