United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit No. 12-2472 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

ERIC MICHAEL CHEEK, Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 11-CR-10040 — James E. Shadid, Chief Judge.

ARGUED OCTOBER 31, 2013 — DECIDED JANUARY 22, 2014

Before BAUER, MANION, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges. MANION, Circuit Judge. Eric Cheek distributed illegal drugs for most of his adult life. Prior to this case, he was convicted of twelve offenses, including nine felony drug offenses. Following an extensive investigation, law enforcement officers arrested Cheek in 2011 for drug distribution activities. A jury convicted Cheek of four felonies, and the district court sentenced Cheek to 576 months’ imprisonment. Cheek appeals both his convic- tions and sentence. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm. 2 No. 12-2472

I. Background From 2002–2003, Eric Cheek regularly sold marijuana and crack cocaine to a drug dealer, Corey Eason, and Eason’s girlfriend, Tabitha Harris. While Cheek was in prison in 2004, one of his associates, Antonio Seymon, supplied Eason and Harris with drugs. After he was released, Cheek again sup- plied Eason and Harris with marijuana and crack cocaine. He also supplied two other drug dealers, Langston Pates and Andra Pace, with marijuana. He was subsequently incarcer- ated again in 2008, and before his release in 2010, Cheek informed Eason, Brandon Williams (who had been in the same prison as Cheek in 2008), and Seymon that he would continue selling drugs upon his release. In August 2010, law enforce- ment persuaded Eason to cooperate in the investigation of Cheek. Eason performed controlled buys of illegal drugs from Cheek and secretly recorded his interactions with Cheek. With court authorization, law enforcement also intercepted more than 20,000 phone conversations and text conversations from telephones used by Cheek and his associates. The investigation uncovered continued drug operations until Seymon was arrested on March 23, 2011. Cheek subsequently was arrested on April 5, 2011. A grand jury indicted Cheek and three co-defendants, Tabitha Harris, Brandon Williams, and Antonio Seymon, for various drug offenses. Cheek was charged with conspiring to possess and distribute more than 280 grams of crack cocaine and more than 100 kilograms of marijuana from 2001 to 2011; intending to distribute more than 28 grams of crack cocaine on August 9, 2010; intending to distribute marijuana on March 23, 2011; and using a telephone on February 11 and 23, 2011, to No. 12-2472 3 facilitate the drug conspiracy. All three co-defendants pleaded guilty. Cheek did not. Prior to Cheek’s trial, the government filed an information pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 851 expressing its intent to seek an enhanced sentence for Cheek based on seven prior felony drug convictions. In a separate pretrial filing, the government identified several potential expert witnesses. Most of these experts were forensic chemists who were not called at trial because their opinions were presented at trial by stipulation. However, one of the proposed experts (who did not testify at trial) was a Drug Enforcement Agency supervisor who was prepared to testify generally about the use of code words by drug dealers. A few weeks before trial, Cheek sent a hand-written letter to Harris’s teenage daughter in response to a letter he had received from the daughter. Cheek’s letter stated in pertinent part: I remember when I met your little butt too. Yes I am your uncle and you would probably be out there if I wasn’t hard on you at times. I