United States v. Graham: the Dub Street Blood Family

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Reginald Graham, Antonio Glass, Jerimaine Bryant, Mario Rodriguez, Torivis Reginald Ingram, Michael Walker, Levi Bryant, Curtis Bryant, Daniel Jones, and Samuel Hayes appeal their convictions and sentences for committing numerous crimes in connection with their membership in a Miami-based gang – the Dub Street Blood Family or DSBF.

For nearly two decades, the gang operated in and tyrannized a community through its drug operations. When narcotics did not prove fruitful enough, its members turned to armed robberies. And when members stepped out of line or rivals encroached on the gang’s territory, its members did not hesitate to kill.

Dub Street Blood Family had no formal affiliation with the infamous Bloods street gang of Los Angeles but its members considered themselves to be East Coast Bloods.

The law enforcement investigation into the DSBF began in earnest in the early 2010s.

The DSBF had a chain of command.

At the top of the chain was a chief executive of sorts.

Below him were “Top Smackers” or “Top Shottas,” high-ranking deputies who were in charge of the daily drug operations.

Then came the “L.T.s.” – lieutenants who were second in command during drug transactions and typically collected the money and held the drugs and firearms. Although this chain of command became more fluid over time, there was always a designated leader.

The DSBF had an initiation ritual, rules, handshakes, and hand signs. The initiation involved a 31-second display of loyalty, usually consisting of fighting a member or committing an act of violence against outsiders. The 31-second initiation was co-opted from the “Blood code.” Once initiated, members had to follow at least two rules: no stealing from the DSBF and no talking to the police. If a rule was broken, an enforcer, like Mr. Rodriguez, would oversee a 31-second punishment.

Only members could perform the DSBF handshake; outsiders who tried using it “could get beat up.”

The DSBF’s hand signs were intended to symbolize a capital B, a lowercase B, and “East side,” for “East coast” Bloods.

The DSBF was not shy about demonstrating its presence to the outside world. The area around the South Gwen Cherry complex had graffiti tags of the DSBF. And the gang’s members tattooed DSBF on their bodies.

As self-proclaimed “East coast” Bloods, the DSBF’s members preferred to wear red.

Members frequently boasted of the DSBF on Facebook and disparaged a rival gang, the 13th Avenue Gang. In a message that proved prescient, a friend of the DSBF warned Mr. Graham: “Don’t put that DGMT shit on you all Facebook status. Feds watching that shit yeah.”

Through 2017, the DSBF primarily sold crack cocaine and marijuana, but its members regularly worked together to commit other crimes such as armed robberies. The group’s members were no strangers to violence. Members touted firearms and used them – killing rival gang members and “outsiders” such as Pooh Johnson, Richard Hallman, and Terrell Washington. They sometimes even shot their own members for violating the DSBF’s rules.

The DSBF’s criminal activities fell under three broad categories: (1) drugs; (2) armed robberies; and (3) homicides.

The DSBF controlled the sale of drugs – primarily crack cocaine and marijuana – in the South Gwen Cherry complex. Narcotics were the group’s financial engine, and many of the decisions were driven by this reality. Only DSBF members could sell at South Gwen Cherry, and they did so “every day” in shifts. Outsiders like Donzell Jones had to obtain permission to sell drugs there. Ms. Houser testified that starting in 2015 she began supplying the DSBF – through Mr. Glass, Quincy Bryant, Mr. Graham, and Mr. Walker – with the drugs the gang sold at South Gwen Cherry. She also said that Jerimaine Bryant supplied drugs to the DSBF.

Mr. Coakley testified that when it came to selling drugs, “everyone had a position.” At the bottom of the rung were “watch outs,” members who would alert the group if they saw rivals or police in the area. Members could graduate from a “watch out” to a “bomb man,” a position which required them to hold the drugs. They also had a “gunman,” which, as one would expect, was a member who had a firearm to protect the group.

Mr. Grimes described how a typical narcotics transaction would be conducted. The DSBF would have at least a watch out and a bomb man. The drugs would be in a nondescript bag (“the bomb”) like a trash bag or a chip bag. When a customer requested drugs, the bomb man would take the cash and walk over to set “the bomb.” He would then go back to the customer to deliver the drugs. Sgt. Kelly similarly described the drug transactions from her team’s-controlled purchases.

During Mr. Grimes’ time with the DSBF, sometime in late 2010, Mr. Glass was the L.T. who ran the daily drug operations. Mr. Glass would collect the money, assign shifts, and provide the drugs and guns.

In addition, Mr. Grimes gave the jury insight into the finances of the DSBF’s narcotics operations. A “rock” of crack cocaine sold for $5, and his commission was 20%. On a good day, Mr. Grimes would pocket $500, and on a bad day $250. He estimated that, on average, the DSBF sold 21 grams of crack cocaine daily. Like all markets, however, the drug sales would sometimes be up and other times be down. Starting in 2016, sales were down. The DSBF’s drug operation dried up significantly; supply was unreliable, and the buyers stopped coming. So, like any other market actor, the DSBF decided to diversify its operations to tap other income streams. That meant turning to robberies.

Armed Robberies. The jury learned of the DSBF’s armed robberies mostly through Mr. Grimes, who in response to defense counsel’s questioning stated, “I’m a robber.” Mr. Grimes testified that he was arrested for four robberies but had committed over 25 robberies; at some point he stopped counting. Mr. Grimes’ first robbery with the gang dated to his initiation into the DSBF in 2010, when he and Mr. Glass (and others who are not defendants here) attempted to rob a drug dealer. During that attempted robbery, Mr. Grimes fired a gun provided to him by Mr. Rodriguez to show that they “ain’t to be played with and we going to shoot.”

Following his first robbery in 2010, Mr. Grimes consistently committed armed robberies with the DSBF (“mainly every day”). He identified Mr. Hayes as one of the gang members who frequently joined him in those endeavors. The firearms for the robberies were provided by Messrs. Rodriguez and Glass.

Mr. Coakley testified to his participation in four armed robberies in the fall of 2016 with other DSBF members – Mr. Hayes, Mr. Glass, Mr. Graham, and Curtis Bryant. The government introduced security footage from each of the victimized establishments and Mr. Coakley walked the jury through each robbery.

On September 17, 2016, Mr. Coakley, Mr. Glass, Mr. Graham, and Curtis Bryant robbed a Metro PCS store near South Gwen Cherry at gun point. Less than a week later, Messrs. Coakley and Hayes robbed the same store. In October of 2016, Messrs. Coakley, Hayes, and Glass robbed a nearby convenience store. That same month, Messrs. Coakley and Hayes again robbed the Metro PCS store. In all four robberies, the members held up the store clerk at gun point. And sometimes they held customers hostage. After each robbery, the members involved would split the proceeds evenly.

The jury heard testimony about the DSBF’s killing of Mr. Johnson, Mr. Hallman, and Mr. Washington. All three men were murdered for crossing the gang. Mr. Glass killed Mr. Johnson in 2010 for robbing from the DSBF; Mr. Grimes, Mr. Coakley, and Ms. Houser all testified about that murder. Curtis Bryant killed Mr. Hallman in 2015 after he shot a younger DSBF member; Mr. Coakley and Ms. Houser testified about that murder. Several DSBF members, including Mr. Glass and Curtis Bryant, killed Mr. Washington in 2016; Mr. Coakley, Ms. Houser, and Detective Roderick Passmore testified about that murder.

The DSBF’s violence did not stop with outsiders. For example, Mr. Glass shot Mr. Grimes in a drive-by shooting for violating the DSBF’s rules; he had robbed a customer and that was bad for business.

The narcotics, the robberies, and the murders all shared one thing in common – firearms. Guns were used to sell drugs, to rob, and to kill. The DSBF’s members frequently posted pictures on social media with their guns – sometimes pointing them directly at the camera. Mr. Coakley testified that he had seen Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Glass supply weapons, including handguns and semi-automatic rifles, to DSBF members at South Gwen Cherry.

In sum, we find no reversible error in the district court’s decision to allow Sgt. Kelly and Agent Perez to testify about the defendants’ association with the Bloods and the meaning of certain terms and gang-related code words.

Mr. Hayes raises another plain-error challenge to the testimony of Sgt. Kelly and Agent Perez. He argues that they offered impermissible expert conclusions on the ultimate issue of whether there was a RICO enterprise by referring to the defendants collectively as a “gang” or an “organization.”

Count 1 of the indictment charged the defendants with being members of a RICO conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d). The defendants, according to the government, were part of the DSBF, a criminal gang (an enterprise) which traﬃcked in narcotics and committed other crimes (like robbery and murder) from 2000 through 2017 out of the South Gwen Cherry complex.

In its case in chief, the government presented the expert testimony of FBI Special Agent Christopher Mayo. As relevant here, he testiﬁed that (1) “an open air drug market” is a place where drug transactions take place outdoors; (2) in South Florida most gangs are community-based, operate by themselves in a geographic area, and are made up of members who grew up in a certain area; (3) “typically” there aren’t “nationally-based gangs”; (4) drug organizations usually sell narcotics at retail from a location, or “trap;” (5) drug organizations have individuals performing diﬀerent functions (e.g., suppliers, lieutenants, sellers, lookouts, etc.); (6) drug organizations also have workers who handle weapons (like ﬁrearms) and are in charge of security “in case they’re robbed by rival gang members or other drug traﬃckers;” (7) drug organizations utilize people who will conduct robberies (e.g., of other drug organizations) or commit homicides; (8) cocaine is a powder and is traﬃcked from Ecuador through go-fast vessels in the Eastern Paciﬁc and Caribbean, into Mexico and/or the United States; (9) cocaine is cooked with baking soda and water to form cocaine base in a rock-like form; (10) marijuana is grown in South Florida in grow houses and is also imported from Mexico and places like Colorado; and (11) the slang term “dub” refers to 20, as in a “20 piece of cocaine or $20 worth of marijuana.”

Agent Mayo was not asked about the Bloods, or about whether the defendants were in a gang that considered itself a Bloods gang. Other government witnesses, however, testiﬁed extensively about how the DSBF identiﬁed itself and considered itself as a Bloods gang.

Sgt. Kelly provided testimony about the Bloods and its connection to the DSBF. She testiﬁed that “the DSBF identiﬁes themselves as the Bloods.” She also explained that a defendant wearing a red bandana was “an indication for Bloods” and showed gang members “identifying themselves as Bloods members.” In her experience, the Bloods wear red “most of the time,” but “not all the time.”

In relatively lengthy exchange with the government, Sgt. Kelly also testiﬁed that (1) in South Florida the number one factor to determine gang membership are the “red bandanas;” (2) the two main gang criteria she looks for are “the colors, the red, [and] the hand signs they are throwing;” and (3) other criteria are “how they [the members] call themselves as a group,” and whether a person identiﬁes as a member – “Q: What do you think about someone who claims that they’re a Blood? A: If they say that, it’s because they’re Bloods and we usually document it as Bloods members.” (“Q: What is the signiﬁcance of the red bandana? A: That’s signiﬁcance that they are actually Blood, that they are part of a gang, that they’re identifying themselves as Blood members.”).

Signiﬁcantly, Sgt. Kelly also testiﬁed about the “connection” between the DSBF and the national Bloods gang. In her opinion, the DSBF was “a subset” of the Bloods.

Like Sgt. Kelly, Agent Perez testiﬁed about the aﬃliation of the DSBF with the Bloods. He explained that the members of the defendants’ gang “all subscribe to the Blood gang.” He also said that certain words and phrases used by the defendants (and their spellings) were references to the Bloods or their code. For example, he told the jury that “based on [his] training and experience” the use of the word “blatt” in some of the defendants’ social media posts was “associated with the gang of the Bloods.”

The government’s evidence about the Bloods gang and its connection to the DSBF was not limited to the testimony of law enforcement oﬃcials. Two cooperating witnesses – Messrs. Grimes and Coakley – also testiﬁed that the defendants’ gang was aﬃliated with the Bloods. Mr. Grimes told the jury that the DSBF was a “Blood gang” which used an initiation ritual (a 31-second beatdown) that “came from Blood like Blood code,” and explained that the members considered themselves East-side Bloods because they were on the east coast. Mr. Coakley conﬁrmed the DSBF’s aﬃliation with the Bloods gang. In addition, there was testimony by other government witnesses about the defendants’ social media posts, which frequently referenced the defendants’ Bloods membership.

Dr. de la Cruz holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a minor in Deviant Behavior, as well as a master’s degree in Social Work. He was a gang member in California in the 1970s and wrote his dissertation about gang members from Stockton who were aligned with the “Norteños.” He also interacted with members of the Bloods during his own incarceration and during his stint as the director of a program dealing with parolees who had a high-risk of recidivism. He has been qualiﬁed to testify as an expert on gang-related matters over 60 times in state and federal courts, and he has served as an expert consultant in over 500 other cases. The defendants wanted to call him as a gang expert to explain that the defendants were not members of the Bloods or of a gang and therefore did not constitute a criminal enterprise.

Dr. de la Cruz provided the following opinions after reviewing some of the trial testimony and exhibits: (1) gangs, including the Bloods and the Crips, generally have rules; (2) gangs have leaders and gang members commit crimes for the beneﬁt of the organization; (3) proﬁts are managed by a treasurer; (4) most gangs do not allow members to use drugs, and sometimes punish drug use with death; (5) gangs do not allow members to assault or kill other members without permission; and (6) the defendants were not a gang or criminal enterprise because (a) they were a “bunch of yahoos running around . . . breaking the law with no sense of direction, with no leadership direction,” (b) they used drugs, which was inconsistent with the behavior of those in criminal enterprises, (c) they did not get together for meetings to discuss the organization’s business, (d) they were “shooting each other indiscriminately,” and (e) they did not kill rivals. He also opined that the defendants were “not Bloods” because they wore blue instead of red, they attacked each other, and they talked to the police. In sum, the defendants did “not meet one of the elements of a criminal enterprise.”

During cross-examination in the proﬀer session, Dr. de la Cruz acknowledged that he was talking about the Bloods in general. He maintained that all of the Bloods gangs were connected under the “People Nation” or “Folk Nation” umbrella, but he had not interviewed any members of the Bloods outside of California or New York/Pennsylvania.

The government presented considerable testimony from a number of witnesses – including Sgt. Kelly, Agent Perez, and former DSBF members – about the DSBF being a Bloods gang or a Bloods-aﬃliated gang and the defendants using Bloods nicknames, terms, and signs. If the government thought that Bloods-related evidence was irrelevant, it would not have presented this evidence for the jury to consider.

Dr. de la Cruz opined in part that the defendants were not a gang because (1) they were a “bunch of yahoos running around . . . breaking the law with no sense of direction, with no leadership direction,” (2) they used drugs, which was inconsistent with the behavior of those in criminal enterprises, (3) they did not get together for meetings to discuss the organization’s business, (4) they were “shooting each other indiscriminately,” and (5) they did not kill rivals.

The government may think that Dr. de la Cruz’s testimony was not credible or persuasive, but ultimate acceptance by the jury is not the standard for admissibility under Rule 702.

The evidence allowed the jury to find a RICO enterprise. An “enterprise” includes an association-in-fact, defined as having “a purpose, relationships among those associated with the enterprise, and longevity sufficient to permit these associations to pursue the enterprise’s purpose.”

Our sister circuits have held that a criminal gang like the DSBF, whose purpose is to make money by selling drugs, perpetrating robberies, and/or committing murders, can and does constitute a RICO enterprise.

We find their decisions persuasive and follow them (See, e.g., Harris, 695 F.3d at 1136; United States v. Cornell, 780 F.3d 616, 621–23 (4th Cir. 2015); United States v. Brown, 973 F.3d 667, 682–83 (7th Cir. 2020); United States v. Applins, 637 F.3d 59, 77–78 (2d Cir. 2011); United States v. Jones, 873 F.3d 482, 489–91 (5th Cir. 2017); United States v. Rodríguez-Torres, 939 F.3d 16, 24–27 (1st Cir. 2019)).

United States v. Graham, No. 19-10332 (11th Cir. 2024). Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida D.С.