USA v. Corey Dion Griffin

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-11577
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
COREY DION GRIFFIN,
a.k.a. Bump 40
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Alabama
D.C. Docket No. 4:11-cr-00323-LSC-HNJ-1
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2 Opinion of the Court 23-11577
____________________
Before JILL PRYOR , BRANCH, and M ARCUS , Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Corey Griffin appeals the revocation of his supervised re-
lease for violating conditions of release by engaging in drug traf-
ficking of methamphetamine. On appeal, Griffin argues that the
government failed to meet its burden of proof and relied on hear-
say evidence that did not contain the minimal indicia of reliability
necessary to be admissible. After thorough review, we affirm.
We review a district court’s revocation of supervised release
for abuse of discretion. United States v. Frazier, 26 F.3d 110, 112
(11th Cir. 1994). “A district court abuses its discretion if it applies
an incorrect legal standard, follows improper procedures in making
the determination, or makes findings of fact that are clearly erro-
neous.” United States v. Harris, 989 F.3d 908, 911 (11th Cir. 2021)
(quotations omitted). “When review is only for abuse of discre-
tion, it means that the district court had a range of choice and that
we cannot reverse just because we might have come to a different
conclusion had it been our call to make.” Id. at 912 (quotations
omitted).
A district court may revoke a term of supervised release and
impose a term of imprisonment if the court “finds by a preponder-
ance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of su-
pervised release.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). A preponderance of the
evidence “simply requires the trier of fact to believe that the
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23-11577 Opinion of the Court 3
existence of a fact is more probable than its nonexistence.” United
States v. Trainor, 376 F.3d 1325, 1331 (11th Cir. 2004) (quotations
omitted).
“The Sixth Amendment applies only to criminal prosecu-
tions, which does not include” supervised release revocations.
United States v. Reese, 775 F.3d 1327, 1329 (11th Cir. 2015) (quota-
tions omitted). “Although the Federal Rules of Evidence do not
apply in supervised release revocation hearings, the admissibility of
hearsay is not automatic,” and minimal due process requirements
still apply to defendants involved in revocation proceedings. Fra-
zier, 26 F.3d at 114. A district court must balance the right to con-
frontation against the government’s grounds for denying it and
must ensure the hearsay statement is reliable. Id. However, a dis-
trict court’s failure to conduct a balancing test under Frazier in the
face of a hearsay objection is harmless where the properly admitted
evidence supports the district court’s decision to revoke. Id.
Here, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding
by a preponderance of the evidence that Griffin violated the condi-
tions of his supervised release for a second time. The relevant
events of this case began in 2012, when Griffin pleaded guilty to
conspiracy to distribute and possession with the intent to distribute
cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(a)(1), and
(b)(1)(B). Griffin was sentenced to 131 months’ imprisonment fol-
lowed by 60 months of supervised release. In April 2019, the dis-
trict court revoked Griffin’s supervised release for engaging in new
criminal conduct and sentenced him to 36 months in prison
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4 Opinion of the Court 23-11577
followed by 60 months of supervised release. After Griffin began
his second term of supervised release, on February 7, 2023, a pro-
bation officer moved to revoke Griffin’s supervised release once
again. The single alleged violation was that Griffin was ordered
not to commit any new offenses but committed a new offense of
trafficking methamphetamine, in violation of Ala. Code § 13A-12-
231(11), on February 6, 2023.
At the revocation hearing, the government sought to prove
that on February 6, Griffin had arrived at a suburban area in Ala-
bama called “the Hill” in order to receive a package of metham-
phetamine that was in possession of Randy Shane Wright. Griffin
claims that the only evidence of this charge against him was
Wright’s hearsay statement -- “there he is, there he is, that’s who
you want, that’s him” -- which Wright made to law enforcement
about Griffin, who was in another car that had just arrived, imme-
diately after Wright was pulled over. Wright was found with a
package containing methamphetamine addressed to his girl-
friend/wife. Griffin says that the district court improperly consid-
ered Wright’s statement without appropriately balancing Griffin’s
right to confrontation against the government’s grounds for admit-
ting the statement. Without anything more, Griffin argues, the dis-
trict court abused its discretion in finding, by a preponderance of
the evidence, that he had violated the conditions of his supervised
release by engaging in drug trafficking on February 6.
However, the government offered these key facts in support
of its charge at the revocation hearing, none of which are hearsay:
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23-11577 Opinion of the Court 5
(1) Griffin arrived on the scene nearly simultaneously with Wright,
who had driven there with the package; (2) Griffin had exchanged
texts with Wright that morning in which Wright had asked if Grif-
fin was still on “the Hill”; (3) the package from Wright was similar
in size, shape, weight, origin and destination to another package,
both of which, dubbed “sister packages,” had been intercepted and
were to found to contain methamphetamine; (4) one of the sister
packages was addressed to Griffin’s grandmother’s house; (5) U.S.
Postal Inspector John Bailey testified that Griffin had sent an earlier
package containing almost $13,000 to California; and (6) Inspector
Bailey testified that he found messages on Griffin’s Facebook ac-
count that were consistent with the sale and delivery of drugs, in-
cluding information about how and where to meet with clients, the
location of law enforcement, and a statement that he had been
“messing around with cream,” a term that Inspector Bailey noted
is street slang for methamphetamine.
All together, this properly-admitted, non-hearsay evidence
is more than sufficient to support the district court’s finding by a
preponderance of the evidence that Griffin violated his supervised
release on February 6, 2023 by engaging in drug trafficking. As a
result, any error committed by the district court in failing to weigh
Griffin’s due process rights against the government’s interest in in-
troducing the hearsay statements is harmless. See Frazier, 26 F.3d
at 114. Accordingly, we affirm.
AFFIRMED.
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