Decoud

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent from the majority’s approval of the District Court’s failure to hold an evidentiary hearing regarding whether racial bias infected the jury that sat in judgment of Appellants Israel and Trice. See maj. op. at 1018-20.

Appellants Israel and Trice are both African-American. The original jury impaneled in their case had only one African-American member, Juror No. 8. This same juror, after a day of deliberations, asked to be dismissed. She claimed she could not continue to deliberate, despite the fact that she had been actively participating in deliberations and sending out questions to the Judge up until that point, because her religious beliefs prevented her from sitting in judgment of another person. The District Court accepted Juror No. 8’s explanation and dismissed her. An alternate juror, who is not African-American, was then impaneled. The jury began deliberations anew, eventually finding each Appellant guilty of the charges against her.

After the Appellants were convicted, they moved for a new trial based on an affidavit submitted by their sister, Shondra White. According to the affidavit, a couple months after the trial, while in a local…

This case involves the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (“DEA”) investigation and the prosecution of a drug-trafficking organization in Riverside, California. Sedrick Decoud, Kendra Trice, and Audra Israel (collectively, “the appellants”) challenge their convictions and sentences for engaging in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine base and, in Decoud’s case, for being a felon in possession of a firearm. They raise a number of issues ranging from the government’s non-disclosure of its confi *1000 dential informant’s identity to the district court’s dismissal of a juror based on her claimed inability to discharge her duties in light of her religious views. We hold that under the various standards that govern our review, the appellants fail to show that the district court committed reversible error. The government concedes, however, that a limited remand is appropriate to give the district court the opportunity to correct the supervised-release term that it imposed as part of Israel’s sentence. Accordingly, we affirm the judgments entered by the district court and remand Israel’s sentence for further proceedings.

I

A. Conspiracy

The investigation beginning in April 2001 uncovered…

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, No. 04-50318 v. D.C. No. SEDRICK ROSHUN DECOUD, JR., a/k/a  CR-02-00063-VAP- Rab; Shaun Dee Merced; and 03 Shaun Vance, Defendant-Appellant. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,  No. 04-50374 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v.  CR-02-00063-VAP-

KENDRA TRICE,

Defendant-Appellant. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,  No. 04-50478 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v.  CR-02-00063-VAP-

AUDRA ISRAEL,

Defendant-Appellant.  OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Virginia A. Phillips, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 13, 2006—Pasadena, California

Filed August 2, 2006

8685 8686 UNITED STATES v. DECOUD Before: Betty B. Fletcher, Warren J. Ferguson, and Consuelo M. Callahan, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Callahan Dissent by Judge Ferguson…