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7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: United States of America v. Joseph Faulkner and Otis Sykes
Case No.: 16-2860; 16-3525
Officials: EASTERBROOK and BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and STADTMUELLER, District Judge.
Focus: Sentencing Guidelines and Sufficiency of Evidence
Joseph Faulkner and Otis Sykes were convicted of conspiring to sell heroin at a place called the Keystone, an open-air drug market on Chicago‘s west side. Faulkner was a leader of the gang which ran the market and Sykes was a low-level street dealer. In this consolidated appeal, Faulkner challenges numerous aspects of his conviction, while Sykes takes issue with his sentence. Neither presents arguments which merit reversal of the district court. Accordingly, we affirm the appellants‘ convictions and sentences. We have jurisdiction over these appeals pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1291 and 18 U.S.C. 3742(a).
Faulkner first challenges his convictions on Counts One, Two, and Three. [W]e review a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, as Faulkner presents here, to determine only whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt,...