Background
After assaulting the mother of four of his children, Jamal Gardner drove to one of his properties in Columbia, Tennessee. When an officer followed Gardner’s truck into the driveway and initiated a traffic stop, a man emerged with an AR-15-type rifle and opened fire. An hours-long shootout followed. Officers later found Gardner’s truck, firearms bearing his DNA, and bloodstains containing his DNA at the property. Gardner fled to Michigan, where he told a cousin that he had shot at Tennessee police, and surrendered several days later.
A jury convicted Gardner of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court instructed the jury that it could infer missing cruiser-dashcam footage was favorable to Gardner if the government had negligently, recklessly, or intentionally failed to preserve it. The jury also found that Gardner’s three prior Tennessee cocaine offenses occurred on different occasions. Treating those convictions as serious drug offenses under the Armed Career Criminal Act, the district court applied ACCA’s 15-year mandatory minimum and imposed a within-Guidelines sentence of 360 months.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Circuit affirmed. Gardner had not raised a due-process claim concerning the missing dashcam footage in the district court, and his appellate briefing did not address the heightened standard for considering that newly raised claim. The court nevertheless considered the merits and held that Gardner failed to establish a due-process violation under the standard governing potentially exculpatory evidence.
Gardner offered no evidence that police acted in bad faith by intentionally suppressing or destroying the footage. At most, the record supported negligence, which could justify the adverse-inference instruction Gardner received but could not establish a constitutional violation. The court also concluded, by incorporating its reasoning from United States v. Starling, that Gardner’s convictions under Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-17-417(c)(1) qualified as serious drug offenses under ACCA. Differences between the older statutory versions applicable to some of Gardner’s convictions and the version examined in Starling did not materially alter the analysis.
Key Takeaways
- Failure to preserve potentially exculpatory evidence violates due process only when the defendant proves bad faith, apparent exculpatory value before destruction, and the lack of reasonably available comparable evidence.
- Negligence or gross negligence in preserving evidence does not satisfy the bad-faith requirement, although it may support a spoliation remedy such as an adverse-inference instruction.
- Tennessee cocaine convictions under Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-17-417(c)(1) qualify as serious drug offenses for purposes of ACCA.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the demanding burden defendants face when asserting a due-process violation based on lost or destroyed evidence. Even when the government’s failure warrants a trial-level sanction, a constitutional claim requires evidence of official animus or a conscious effort to suppress exculpatory material.
The ruling also confirms, through the court’s companion decision in Starling, that qualifying Tennessee cocaine convictions may trigger ACCA’s enhanced penalties, including its 15-year mandatory minimum.