By: Derek Hawkins//August 30, 2016//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Scott Weldon v. United States of America
Case No.: 15-1994
Officials: BAUER, POSNER, and SYKES, Circuit Judges
Focus: Motion to vacate – Ineffective Assistance of Counsel
Appellant entitled to evidentiary hearing to determine if but for attorney error, the government would negotiate a deal with less prison time.
“Suppose you have lunch with a friend, order two hamburgers, and when your hamburgers are ready you pick them up at the food counter and bring them back to the table and he eats one and you eat the other. It would be very odd to describe what you had done as “distributing” the food to him. It is similarly odd to describe what either Weldon or Fields did as distribution. They had agreed to get high together, they shared the expense, they all went together to the drug dealer, and they shared the drug that they bought from him. It’s true that only Weldon transferred the money for the drug to the dealer, but it was the pooled money that he was handing over, although his contribution to the pool had been slight. It’s true that having paid he carried the drug back to Roth’s car. But it would have been absurd for all three to have gone up to the dealer and each pay him separately, and even more absurd for them to have carried the minute package, containing less than half a gram of powder, together to the car and from the car to Roth’s residence. And remember that a jury rejected the argument that Fields’ injecting Roth with the heroin (which metabolized to morphine after it was injected) was the distribution of the heroin‐morphine to Roth.”
Vacated and Remanded