Reeves Sufficient Evidence to convict wife of cocaine trafficker

In U.S. v. Reeves, No. 12-13110 (Feb. 6, 2013), the Court affirmed cocaine trafficking convictions of three defendants. The Court rejected a sufficiency of the evidence challenge of the wife of one cocaine trafficker. The Court found that her phone conversation with her husband in which she was attempting to warn him about police activity on a highway, and her husband’s telling her, after he was arrested, to go back to their home and get “that shit out of there,” combined with a cooperating witness’ testimony that she was present when her husband told someone that four kilograms of cocaine had been robbed from their home, and the jury’s discretion to discredit her testimony when she took the stand, sufficed to support her conspiracy conviction. The Court also rejected the argument that a statement by the husband was not admissible under the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule, because it was made after he was arrested. The Court noted that the arrest of a co-conspirator does not necessarily end the conspiracy.