United States v. Baze

Per Curiam. The defendant, Ralph Baze, was convicted on three counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). He was sentenced to 120 months on each count, the second and third to run concurrently, for a total of 240 months. On direct appeal to this court, the defendant contends: (1) that the three counts were multiplicitous, in that he possessed all three weapons simultaneously and acquired two of them at the same time; (2) that the prosecution made reference during opening statement to a "manhunt" for defendant Baze and improperly alluded to outside information which, the prosecutor insinuated, would be highly prejudicial to the defendant; (3) that the prosecution failed to include on its pretrial exhibit list a photograph later introduced at trial; (4) that the jury should have been charged on justification as a defense, because the defendants possession of at least one of the weapons arose out of a "family feud" situation; (5) that because of two pending state murder charges against him, involving the weapons that were the subject of the three-count indictment in this case, he was faced with a Solomons choice as to whether to testify at sentencing in this case and risk self-incrimination as to the pending murder charges, which effectively violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination; and (6) that his sentence was improperly enhanced on the basis of these outstanding state murder charges. For the reasons given below, we conclude that conviction on both count 2 and count 3 was improper, and we therefore reverse as to count 3. However, we find no error with regard to the defendants conviction and sentence on the other two counts, and we therefore affirm the district courts judgment on counts 1 and 2.