United States of America v. Taiblan Harris

South Bend, Indiana criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with robbery.



Taibian Harris and Treveon Smith robbed a South Bend

cell phone store during a blizzard. Smith entered the store

while Harris remained in the car and acted as the getaway

driver. Unbeknownst to Harris and Smith, one of the phones

Smith took from the store was a bait phone which sent GPS

pings of their location to the police. The GPS pings led the po-

lice to a gas station, where an officer identified them as possi-

ble suspects in the robbery. Harris and Smith left the gas sta-

tion a short time later and drove for approximately nine

minutes before colliding with an oncoming police car. They

were apprehended as they attempted to flee from the collision

on foot.



Harris and Smith were indicted for robbery under 18

U.S.C. § 1951 and both pled guilty. This appeal only concerns

Harris's sentence. Harris's Presentence Investigation Report

recommended a two-level enhancement for recklessly creat-

ing a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to an-

other person while fleeing law enforcement. See U.S.S.G.

§ 3C1.2. Harris objected to the enhancement, arguing that

there was no reliable evidence he was driving recklessly and

that no police officer was ever in actual pursuit of him. To re-

but Harris's objection, the government called Smith as a wit-

ness at the sentencing hearing. Smith had not been sentenced

yet and hoped he would receive a lighter sentence for cooper-

ating against Harris.No. 24-1163 3



Smith described in vivid detail the "high-speed chase”

that Harris led the police on after they encountered a police

car at the gas station. He testified that Harris was driving fifty

or sixty miles per hour through snowy, icy streets, weaving in

and out of lanes, and ignoring stop signs and red lights de-

spite the hazardous driving conditions. In fact, Smith ex-

plained that they decided to commit the robbery because there

was a blizzard. They reasoned that the police would have a

difficult time catching them given the poor road conditions

and lack of visibility. They were right. Although the police car

they encountered at the gas station pulled out right after

them, Smith said that it was not able to get directly behind

them and eventually stopped its pursuit. Later, a second

marked police car got within one car's length of them with its

emergency lights activated but also stopped its pursuit after

Harris drove through a red light. It was not until a third police

car approached from the opposite direction and collided with

them that their vehicle came to a stop.



The district court credited Smith's testimony that Harris

was driving at excessive speeds and ignoring stop signs and

red lights, which was partly corroborated by police dashcam

footage. Although the district court expressed skepticism that

Harris was actually going fifty or sixty miles an hour, the

court recognized that it was natural for a passenger to overes-

timate the speed of the vehicle when he is watching someone

drive at unsafe speeds, particularly when there are poor driv-

ing conditions.



Based largely on Smith's testimony and the dashcam foot-

age, the district court overruled Harris's objection to the sen-

tencing enhancement. It found that Harris had recklessly fled

from police both in the moments immediately preceding the

collision and during the nine minutes he eluded police after

leaving the gas station.

Affirmed