## Facts

- Deshawn Sims was charged with four drug-trafficking counts arising from a February 1997 controlled buy and March 1997 searches and seizures in Detroit.
- On February 25, 1997, a confidential informant, directed by DEA agents, conducted a controlled purchase of one kilogram of cocaine from Sims (Count I).
- DEA agents recorded a telephone call arranging the transaction; the government offered the recording to show the male voice was Sims’s.
- On March 11, 1997, agents executed a search warrant at a Hawthorne Street house; a drug-detecting dog alerted to a car in the driveway, which was impounded and searched, yielding one kilogram of cocaine (Count II).
- Agents also executed a search warrant at an Atkinson Street house; Sonya Thomas removed a backpack from the house, placed it into a car, and was stopped as she backed out of the driveway.
- The backpack contained about two kilograms of cocaine and about 350 grams of cocaine base (Counts III–IV).
- Thomas stated Sims called her and instructed her to remove drugs from a stove in the Atkinson Street house and put them in the backpack.
- To authenticate the recorded call, DEA Agent Daniel Krause testified he heard Sims speak during post-arrest processing, found Sims’s voice distinctive, and opined the recorded voice was Sims’s.

## Issues

1. Whether the recorded call was adequately authenticated as Sims’s voice under Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(5).
2. Whether asserted evidentiary or related errors required setting aside the jury’s guilty verdicts on Counts I–IV.

## Decision

- The court denied Sims’s post-trial motions and left all four convictions in place.
- The court held the government met Rule 901’s authentication threshold for the recording through Agent Krause’s voice-identification testimony and the surrounding circumstances of the controlled buy.
- The court rejected the argument that Krause’s familiarity with Sims’s voice was insufficient because it arose after the recorded call.
- The court found no prejudice warranting reversal, noting substantial independent evidence supporting the convictions, including the drugs seized in the searches and Thomas’s account that she acted at Sims’s direction.

## Legal Principles

- Authentication under Fed. R. Evid. 901 is a condition precedent to admissibility satisfied by evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims.
- Under Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(5), a voice may be identified by opinion based on hearing the voice at any time, so long as the circumstances connect the voice to the alleged speaker.
- The timing and extent of a witness’s exposure to a voice generally affect weight and credibility for the jury, not admissibility, once the Rule 901 threshold is met.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Sims’s convictions, ruling that the government properly authenticated a recorded telephone call through an agent’s lay voice identification under Rule 901(b)(5) and that the record contained sufficient additional evidence to sustain the jury’s verdicts.


United States v. Sims, 113 F. Supp. 2d 1130 (E.D. Mich. 2000)