United States of America v. Robdarius Williams

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 24-2683
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
R OBDARIUS WILLIAMS ,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
No. 1:22-cr-00063-JMS-MG-3 — Jane Magnus-Stinson, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 12, 2025 — DECIDED D ECEMBER 9, 2025
____________________
Before BRENNAN , Chief Judge, and S T. EVE and K IRSCH ,
Circuit Judges.
K IRSCH , Circuit Judge. Robdarius Williams robbed an
AT&T store, and one of his confederates pointed a rifle at a
store employee. A jury therefore convicted Williams of Hobbs
Act robbery and of aiding and abetting the brandishing of a
firearm. He challenges the latter conviction, arguing that there
wasn’t sufficient evidence to establish that he had advance

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2 No. 24-2683
knowledge that the rifle would be brandished. Because we
find that there was, we affirm.
I
In December 2021, as a part of an ongoing investigation,
law enforcement officers installed a GPS tracker on a car reg-
istered to Robdarius Williams’s mother. Later, officers con-
ducting surveillance saw Williams drive the car to the apart-
ment complex where Quintez Tucker, one of Williams’s co-
defendants, lived. Tucker and another man got out of the car
and entered the building. Williams stayed behind and stole a
license plate from a car in the parking lot. When Tucker and
the other man returned and got into Williams’s car, Tucker
was carrying a rifle.
Officers continued to watch as Williams drove to a gas sta-
tion, where they observed Darrelle Risper in Williams’s car.
Williams then drove to a park, where he met up with another
car and the stolen license plate was placed on Williams’s car.
The two cars proceeded to a shopping area containing several
businesses, including an AT&T store. Both cars circled the
shopping area, appearing to case the businesses. Williams
then drove into the AT&T parking lot and parked in front of
the store. Tucker and Risper exited Williams’s car and headed
towards the AT&T store. Risper carried the rifle under his
clothing, its outline visible and almost to the knee of his
sweatpants. Shortly after they got out of his car, Williams
drove to the back side of the store.
Upon entering the AT&T store, Risper pulled out the rifle
and pointed it at the manager, ordering him to give Risper
and Tucker cash from the register and to take them to the back
room where products were stored. While in the back room,

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No. 24-2683 3
the AT&T employee heard Tucker and Risper talking to
someone on speakerphone, who instructed them about the
kinds of devices to steal. The unknown individual also asked
the AT&T employee “about the back entrance … and if it con-
nected to Emerson Avenue.” At trial, the AT&T employee de-
scribed the individual as having a voice “deeper than the in-
dividuals that were in the store.” A detective involved in the
investigation testified that Williams has “a very distinct, low
tone, slow voice.”
Tucker and Risper left the store with cash and boxes of
merchandise and reentered Williams’s car; Williams left the
lot, turned onto Emerson Avenue, and drove away. Law en-
forcement subsequently arrested Williams, Tucker, and
Risper a couple of miles from the store.
Williams was charged with and convicted of Hobbs Act
robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951(a), 2 and aiding and
abetting the brandishing of a firearm in furtherance of a crime
of violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(ii), 2. The
brandishing charge carries a mandatory minimum consecu-
tive sentence of seven years. 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii). If Wil-
liams had been convicted of aiding and abetting simple pos-
session, rather than brandishing, the mandatory consecutive
minimum would have been five years. Id. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i).
The district court imposed a sentence of 30 months for the
Hobbs Act robbery charge and the mandatory minimum of 84
months for the brandishing charge, for a total sentence of 114

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4 No. 24-2683
months. Williams appealed without moving for a judgment
of acquittal.
II
On appeal, Williams challenges the sufficiency of the evi-
dence supporting his aiding and abetting conviction. When
considering such a challenge, we view the evidence in the
light most favorable to the prosecution and only overturn the
conviction if “no rational trier of fact could have found the
essential elements of the charged offense beyond a reasonable
doubt.” United States v. Page, 123 F.4th 851, 858 (7th Cir. 2024).
We’ve described the defendant’s burden under this standard
as “nearly insurmountable.” Id. (citation modified). And if the
defendant did not move for a judgment of acquittal before the
district court, the standard is even higher; we will only re-
verse if we find “a manifest miscarriage of justice under the
plain error standard of review.” United States v. Eller, 670 F.3d
762, 765 (7th Cir. 2012). Under this standard, we overturn the
jury’s verdict “only if the record is devoid of evidence point-
ing to guilt, or if the evidence on a key element of the offense
was so tenuous that a conviction would be shocking.” United
States v. Richardson, 60 F.4th 397, 398 (7th Cir. 2023) (citation
modified). Because Williams didn’t move for a judgment of
acquittal in district court, this higher standard applies.
Williams argues that the government put forth insufficient
evidence to establish that he intended to aid and abet the
brandishing of the rifle, and that therefore his conviction on
that charge cannot stand. To establish the requisite intent, the
government needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
Williams knew in advance that the others would brandish—
not merely carry—the rifle during the robbery. See United
States v. Armour, 840 F.3d 904, 911 (7th Cir. 2016) (citing

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No. 24-2683 5
Rosemond v. United States, 572 U.S. 65, 81–82 (2014)). Under the
plain error standard of review, the government’s evidence
was sufficient.
At trial, the government presented evidence that Williams
drove to Tucker’s apartment complex, where Tucker acquired
a rifle. Agents also testified that Risper awkwardly carried
that rifle into the AT&T store under his clothing, before re-
moving and brandishing it during the robbery. Finally, the
government presented evidence to support its theory that
Williams was the person instructing Tucker and Risper over
the phone while they were inside the store. The AT&T em-
ployee testified that someone on speakerphone with a
“deeper” voice instructed Tucker and Risper about which de-
vices to steal and asked about the back entrance and its access
to Emerson Avenue. Law enforcement officers testified that
Williams has a distinctly deep voice, that he reparked on the
rear side of the AT&T store, and that he drove away from the
store on Emerson.
Williams contends that the evidence presented at trial es-
tablished that he knew a firearm would be possessed, not that
it would be brandished. However, examining the evidence in
the light most favorable to the government, we cannot con-
clude that the evidence on advance knowledge was “so tenu-
ous” as to make Williams’s conviction of aiding and abetting
brandishing a firearm “shocking.” Richardson, 60 F.4th at 398
(citation modified). This case resembles Armour, where we
had “no doubt” that the evidence could “easily support” a
jury’s finding that the defendant aided and abetted the bran-
dishing of a firearm during a bank robbery. 840 F.3d at 911.
There, the defendant told a fellow robber to bring a firearm,
firearms were brandished during the bank robbery, and the

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6 No. 24-2683
defendant “led the enterprise” by planning the robbery and
directing its commission via radio from outside the bank. Id.
at 905–06, 911. Here, similarly, the government established
that Williams drove Tucker to retrieve a rifle, which was bran-
dished during the robbery, and introduced evidence suggest-
ing that Williams directed the robbery from his car. Williams
argues that, unlike in Armour, he was never definitively iden-
tified as the person on speakerphone, nor was there other ev-
idence suggesting that he was the leader of the robbery. But
our inquiry is only whether the government’s evidence was
so tenuous as to be shocking. See Richardson, 60 F.4th at 398.
It was not.
A FFIRMED

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