Criminal – Multiple defendants found guilty for roles in arranged murder

Where four defendants challenged their convictions on multiple counts, arising out of a failed drug transaction and subsequent murder, the court rejected each of their arguments and affirmed the convictions.

Background

Jaquate Simpson and Landis Jackson ran a lucrative drug ring. When a customer (Brandon Williams) failed to pay for a shipment of drugs, Simpson and Jackson offered Kalub Shipman $10,000 to kill someone close to Williams. Shipman and his cousin (Nelson Evans) traveled from North Carolina to Virginia and murdered
Williams’ aunt, Lillian Bond. Defendants were charged with a litany of offenses and a jury found them guilty on all counts.

Sufficiency

Jackson argues there was insufficient evidence that he “occupie[d] a position of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management” with respect to “five or more other persons.” The jury heard that Jackson was Simpson’s “right-hand man,” that he personally oversaw more than five sub-dealers and that he eventually took over for Simpson as the organization’s leader. That evidence is sufficient to support the jury’s verdict.

Jackson also asserts the jury heard insufficient evidence to convict him for selling cocaine to Williams in April 2016, contending that particular transaction was all Simpson’s doing. But the jury found Jackson guilty of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise with Simpson to distribute cocaine, which necessarily means the two were coconspirators. If the April 2016 sale to Williams was a “reasonably foreseeable” act “in furtherance of” Jackson and Simpson’s drug conspiracy, then Jackson is liable for the sale as a conspirator.

And, as Jackson concedes, witnesses testified that Simpson’s organization had previously sold cocaine to Williams’ organization and that Jackson played a role in those transactions. That is enough evidence to permit the jury to infer coconspirator liability for the April 2016 sale.

Shipman argues there was insufficient evidence he was engaged in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine when he murdered Lillian Bond because he neither knowingly joined the drug conspiracy nor personally trafficked drugs. But a defendant “may be convicted of conspiracy with little or no knowledge of the entire breadth of the criminal enterprise,” so long as he “joins the conspiracy with an understanding of the unlawful nature thereof and willfully joins in the plan on one occasion.”

Jackson, Shipman, and Evans cite a variety of reasons why the evidence was insufficient to convict them for murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire. This court is not persuaded by any of the various sufficiency challenges.

Double jeopardy

All four defendants argue that convicting and sentencing them for both murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire violated the Double Jeopardy Clause. But murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire are different constitutional offenses because each requires proof of a fact the other does not.

Suppress

Simpson argues the district court should have suppressed location data from a GPS tracker placed on a rental car he drove because the warrant authorizing it was based on stale information from an unreliable informant. The court concludes the warrant application supported the informant’s credibility by describing the person’s long history of providing accurate information to law enforcement.

Simpson next mounts a specific challenge to the pen register evidence, asserting that the court order authorizing it did not describe its “geographic limits” as required by federal and state statutes. This court joins at least five other circuits in holding that statutory suppression is not an available remedy for a pen register statute violation when, as here, the statutes do not provide for suppression.

Shipman argues the district court should have suppressed cell-site location information that officers obtained without a warrant. But the search was conducted before the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United
States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), so “the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies” here.

Simpson argues the initial applications authorizing wiretaps on his phones failed to show that “normal investigative procedures ha[d] been tried and ha[d] failed or reasonably appear[ed] to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous.” The court disagrees.

Although the orders were only to tap Simpson’s phones, Jackson contends the government had to establish probable cause as to him—not just Simpson—because Jackson was a named “target.” But the statutes at issue require probable cause to believe that “an individual is committing, has committed, or is about to commit” a criminal offense and that “particular communications concerning that offense will be obtained through such interception.” Jackson does not dispute that officers had probable cause to believe Simpson was conspiring to traffic narcotics and using these phone lines to do so.

Jury instructions

Jackson asserts the district court erred by declining to give two jury instructions he requested. Under the applicable abuse of discretion standard, this court concludes the district court committed no reversible error.

Shipman

Shipman asserts the district court should have: (i) excluded on Confrontation Clause grounds statements that Evans made to law enforcement officers; (ii) severed his and Evans’ trials because their defenses were mutually antagonistic and (iii) dismissed one of his convictions as duplicitous. None of those arguments has merit.

Affirmed.

United States v. Evans, Case Nos. 24-4037, 24-4051, 24-4073, 24-4103, Jan. 21, 2026. 4th Cir. (Heytens), from EDVA at Richmond (Gibney Jr.). Gerald Thomas Zerkin, Heather Lynn Carlton, William Jeffrey Dinkin and Elizabeth Anne Franklin-Best for Appellants. Daniel J. Honold for Appellee. VLW 026-2-027. 23 pp.