Moore

AMENDED MEMORANDUM *

DeAnthony Moore (“Moore”) appeals his conviction after a jury trial for one count of cocaine distribution, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841 (a), and his 168-month sentence. Jurisdiction is proper under 18 U.S.C. § 3742 (a) and 28 U.S.C. § 1291 .

Moore contends that the district court erred by: (1) improperly limiting his closing argument regarding the meaning of a potentially incriminating taped conversation between Moore and a government informant; (2) admitting a tape recording into evidence without an adequate foundation of its reliability; (3) denying Moore’s motion for a mistrial after a government witness testified that Moore had just been released from the “pen”; and (4) improperly sentencing Moore to account for an undischarged concurrent state sentence.

We affirm Moore’s conviction. First, the district court did not abuse its discretion to limit closing argument by precluding defense counsel from presenting a misleading or confusing interpretation of the December 10, 1998 conversation as applying to the November 19, 1998 transaction. Based on the defendant’s pretrial objection, the government had been precluded from introducing evidence of a…