United States v. Jimenez-Marquez

── United States v. Jimenez-Marquez ── Case No.: 24-2145 Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Date: April 03, 2026 Category: General Appellate Case: 24-2145 Document: 39-1 Date Filed: 04/03/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS April 3, 2026 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 24-2145 OCTAVIO JIMENEZ-MARQUEZ, a/k/a Octavio Jimenez, Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico (D.C. No. 1:23-CR-00032-WJ-1) _________________________________ Gregory M. Acton, Acton Law Office, PC, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Defendant- Appellant. Louis C. Mattei, Assistant United States Attorney (Ryan Ellison, United States Attorney, with him on the brief), Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiff-Appellee. _________________________________ Before HARTZ, TYMKOVICH, and McHUGH, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ HARTZ, Circuit Judge. _________________________________  Appellate Case: 24-2145 Document: 39-1 Date Filed: 04/03/2026 Page: 2 Defendant Octavio Jimenez-Marquez was convicted of several offenses in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico. The only conviction at issue in this appeal is for violating 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) by possessing firearms in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. 1 He makes two interrelated arguments: (1) that there was insufficient evidence to convict him, and (2) that the “in furtherance of” language in § 924(c) was unconstitutionally vague as applied to him. We are not persuaded. Under our caselaw there was more than enough evidence to find that Defendant possessed the firearms in furtherance of his underlying drug offense. And the challenged language in § 924(c) is not unconstitutionally vague. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. I. BACKGROUND Defendant was arrested in February 2022 after Albuquerque Police Department officers observed him stepping out of the driver’s seat of a truck that had been reported stolen. There were two other passengers in the truck at the time; one was detained but the other fled on foot. The officers searched the truck. Beneath the driver’s seat they found an unopened vacuum-sealed bundle of methamphetamine weighing 445 grams, as well as an unloaded revolver, which turned out to have been stolen. In the passenger seat they found an assault rifle with ammunition loaded into an attached magazine, which Defendant was also convicted of possession with intent to distribute 1 methamphetamine under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A), being an alien in possession of a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), and escape under 18 U.S.C. § 751(a). 2  Appellate Case: 24-2145 Document: 39-1 Date Filed: 04/03/2026 Page: 3 Defendant later admitted he had moved from the back seat. And in the back-seat area they found a Ziploc bag containing 84 grams of methamphetamine. At trial the government introduced expert testimony that Defendant’s firearms functioned as designed, that the amount of methamphetamine he possessed was consistent with distribution and worth up to $10,800,