United States of America v. Alandous Briggs

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 18-1415
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
A LANDOUS 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.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 27, 2018 — DECIDED M ARCH 27, 2019
____________________
Before BAUER , HAMILTON , and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.
BARRETT, Circuit Judge. Alandous Briggs pleaded guilty to
being a felon in possession of a firearm after officers found
drugs and firearms at his home during a parole visit. At
sentencing, the district court applied a four-level
enhancement for possessing a firearm in connection with
felony possession of drugs. But because the district court
made essentially no factual findings connecting Briggs’s

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2 No. 18-1415
firearms to his felony drug possession, we reverse and
remand for resentencing.
I.
In December 2016, Indiana state parole officers conducted
a parole visit at Alandous Briggs’s home. After 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—which 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 firearm. 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 U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) (specifying an
enhancement for those who “used or possessed any
firearm … in connection with another felony offense”). Briggs
filed an objection to this enhancement, arguing that his
firearm possession was unrelated to the drugs found in his
home.
The district court conducted a combined plea and
sentencing hearing. After accepting his plea, the district court
turned to Briggs’s sentencing objection. The government
claimed that the enhancement applied based on two separate
felonies: felony drug possession and felony drug trafficking.
Briggs again maintained that his firearms were unrelated to

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No. 18-1415 3
the drugs. But the district court held that the enhancement
applied and sentenced Briggs to 84 months.
Briggs appeals that sentencing decision. His sole
argument on appeal is that the district court erred by finding
that his possession of firearms was connected to another
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
we face on appeal is whether the district court erred in
concluding that the enhancement applied in connection with
Briggs’s felony possession of cocaine.1
To enhance a defendant’s sentence for possessing a
firearm in connection with another felony, the firearm must
1 Although the district court was not clear on this point, only Briggs’s
cocaine possession constitutes a felony. See I ND . CODE § 35-48-4-6. His
marijuana possession did not constitute a felony because he did not have
a prior drug conviction. See id. § 35-48-4-11. So only the cocaine possession
could have triggered the enhancement.

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4 No. 18-1415
have been connected to the second crime. See U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1
& cmt. n. 14(A) (stating that “in connection with” means that
the firearm “facilitated, or had the potential of facilitating,
another felony offense”). We have noted before that “[m]ere
contemporaneous possession while another felony is being
committed is not necessarily sufficient, and possessing a gun
while engaged in the casual use of drugs might not give rise
to the inference that the gun was possessed in connection with
the drugs.” United States v. LePage, 477 F.3d 485, 489 (7th Cir.
2007).
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 the
firearms were probably connected to drug trafficking
(because of the combination of the cocaine, marijuana, and
digital scale), they were probably connected to his mere
possession of the cocaine. But that logic doesn’t hold up.
Analyzing whether 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 § 2K2.1(b)(6) enhancement). In
fact, the guidelines themselves distinguish between drug
trafficking and other offenses like drug possession. See
§ 2K2.1 cmt. n. 14(B) (specifying that the enhancement applies
to a “drug trafficking offense” when drug-manufacturing
materials are found in proximity to firearms).

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No. 18-1415 5
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 court 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 possession.
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 something”—apparently made in
the context of drug trafficking—wouldn’t be enough to
connect the guns to felony possession of cocaine 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
§ 2K2.1(b)(6) enhancement because its findings do not
support a conclusion that Briggs’s firearms were connected to
his possession of less than half a gram of cocaine. See Clinton,
825 F.3d at 814 (“We do not hold that the enhancement is
inapplicable as a matter of law, but the fact findings in this
record do not support the enhancement.”).

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6 No. 18-1415
The sentence is VACATED and the case REMANDED for
resentencing consistent with this opinion.

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