United States v. Darrick Denard Bell

── United States v. Darrick Denard Bell ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Date: May 07, 2026 Category: General RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 26a0135p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT ┐ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, │ Plaintiff-Appellee, │ > No. 24-1657 │ v. │ │ DARRICK DERNARD BELL, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit. No. 2:17-cr-20183-1—Mark A. Goldsmith, District Judge. Argued: April 30, 2026 Decided and Filed: May 7, 2026 Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; CLAY and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. _________________ COUNSEL ARGUED: James W. Amberg, AMBERG & AMBERG, PLLC, Royal Oak, Michigan, for Appellant. Benjamin C. Coats, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: James W. Amberg, AMBERG & AMBERG, PLLC, Royal Oak, Michigan, for Appellant. Benjamin C. Coats, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee. _________________ OPINION _________________ SUTTON, Chief Judge. Darrick Bell transformed a Detroit motel into the base for a drug dealing enterprise. A jury convicted Bell of three related counts of drug distribution, and the district court sentenced him to a below-guidelines sentence of 336 months. We affirm.  No. 24-1657 United States v. Bell Page 2 I. A woman seeking treatment for a heroin overdose at a Detroit emergency room in 2016 told doctors that she was “in trouble” because “bad things [were] happening” to her. R.914 at 149. She lived in a room at the Victory Inn motel. A man named Darrick Bell supplied her with drugs and fronted her money to purchase them. To pay back her drug debts, Bell arranged for her to prostitute herself at the Victory Inn. The men she brought to the motel could then buy drugs from Bell while there. The cycle, she said, grew worse as she became more dependent on drugs supplied by Bell and his associates to feed her addiction and relied on money from the prostitution he facilitated to pay for the supply. A police investigation prompted officers to search the Victory Inn. They uncovered evidence of a large criminal enterprise. They found several prostitutes who looked “dishevelled” (sic) along with syringes and scales in one motel room, R.923 at 132; fentanyl, heroin residue, several cell phones, and four more “dishevelled” women in another room, R.924 at 10; and 92 grams of cocaine, 17 grams of heroin, cash, and cell phones in yet a third room. Nearly every room at the Victory Inn hosted women trapped in a cycle of money for drugs and prostitution for money. Police homed in on Bell as the ringleader. They learned that Bell rented rooms at the motel for 10 to 20 women at a time and along with several associates he used money, drugs, and violence to coerce them. He was “able to control everything that[ was] going on” because he “ma[de] all the money from the prostitution and [he] s[old] the drugs to a