Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-09-03053/USCOURTS-caDC-09-03053-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Darrell A. Goodwin
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 7, 2010 Decided February 5, 2010 

No. 09-3053 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

DARRELL A. GOODWIN, ALSO KNOWN AS GOODY, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:99-cr-00122-TFH-1) 

Beverly G. Dyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A. 

J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender. 

Patricia A. Heffernan, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued 

the cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Elizabeth 

A. Trosman and Roy W. McLeese III, Assistant U.S. 

Attorneys. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, TATEL, Circuit Judge, 

and EDWARDS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

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TATEL, Circuit Judge: Following affirmance of his 

conviction for possession with intent to distribute cocaine, 

appellant filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion alleging, among 

other things, that defense counsel rendered ineffective 

assistance by failing to offer expert testimony in support of 

his request for a “reverse sting” departure pursuant to 

U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, Application Note 14. The district court 

denied the motion. Finding no prejudice, and rejecting 

appellant’s other arguments, we affirm. 

I. 

Prior to his arrest for purchasing cocaine from 

undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, 

appellant Darrel Goodwin had on several occasions sold DEA 

Agent Kenneth Abrams small quantities of heroin. During 

one such transaction, Goodwin told Abrams that he wanted to 

buy some cocaine, but was unhappy with the current price of 

the drug. Abrams responded that he had a source that could 

provide a single kilogram of cocaine for about $24,000. He 

then introduced Goodwin to Special Agent Robert Valentine, 

who posed as a dealer and offered to sell Abrams and 

Goodwin five kilos for $100,000—a bulk discount of sorts. 

Abrams gave Valentine a fake down payment, and Goodwin 

said he could put up $37,000. 

A few days later, Goodwin and Abrams met with 

Valentine at a hotel. Although able to come up with only 

about $20,000, Goodwin said that he still wanted to buy three 

kilos of cocaine. Accordingly, Valentine agreed to sell him 

one kilo for about $20,000 cash, and to front him the second 

in exchange for $1,500 worth of heroin on the understanding 

that Goodwin would pay off the balance with proceeds from 

street sales of the cocaine. Goodwin planned on returning for 

the third kilo the next day, but DEA agents arrested him as he 

left the hotel room with the two kilos. 

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Goodwin pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the 

District of Columbia to possession with intent to distribute 

500 grams or more of cocaine. See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 

841(b)(1)(B)(ii). Because he qualified as a career offender 

under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, the federal Sentencing Guidelines 

range for his offense came to 188–235 months’ imprisonment. 

Pointing out that Goodwin had been arrested in a “reverse 

sting”—an operation in which undercover agents sell drugs to 

the defendant—defense counsel asked the court to grant a 

downward departure on the ground that the DEA agents 

induced Goodwin to purchase more cocaine than he otherwise 

would have by selling it to him at a price “substantially below 

the market value.” U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, Application Note 14. 

Although counsel failed to call an expert witness in support of 

this argument, Abrams testified for the government that the 

market price for a single kilo of cocaine was $27,000 in New 

York or Miami and that the price would typically be higher in 

Washington, D.C. The district court denied Goodwin’s 

reverse sting departure request and imposed a sentence of 188 

months—the bottom end of the Guidelines range. 

Goodwin appealed to this court, again complaining that 

the price for the first kilo—$20,000—was artificially low and 

that the credit terms for the second kilo were overly generous. 

Finding that Goodwin had failed to prove that these terms 

were substantially more favorable than the market would 

bear, we affirmed the district court’s rejection of a reverse 

sting departure. United States v. Goodwin, 317 F.3d 293, 

297–99 (D.C. Cir. 2003). 

Alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, Goodwin 

moved to vacate or set aside his sentence pursuant to 28 

U.S.C. § 2255. Specifically, Goodwin argued that defense 

counsel performed deficiently in failing to call an expert to 

support his request for a reverse sting departure. In support, 

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Goodwin introduced an affidavit from a former police officer 

who stated that the market price for a kilo of cocaine in 

Washington, D.C., would have ranged from $27,000 to 

$35,000, and that a buyer with a strong relationship with the 

source could have purchased two or three kilos for about 

$24,000 each. The district court, believing that defense 

counsel could have deemed such testimony cumulative in 

light of Agent Adams’s testimony regarding cocaine prices, 

concluded that counsel had not provided deficient assistance. 

United States v. Goodwin, 607 F. Supp. 2d 47, 54–55 (D.D.C. 

2009). The court also rejected Goodwin’s theory that counsel 

should have argued that Goodwin’s traumatic medical 

history—he suffered severe burns over 60 percent of his body 

in a 1986 house fire—rendered him eligible for downward 

departures under U.S.S.G. §§ 5K2.11 (lesser harms) and 

5H1.4 (extraordinary physical impairment). Id. at 50–51, 52–

53. 

Pursuant to a certificate of appealability (COA) granted 

by the district court, Goodwin now appeals. See 28 U.S.C. § 

2253(c)(1) (requiring a COA to appeal a final order in a 

section 2255 proceeding). 

II. 

 To prevail on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim 

a defendant must “show both that ‘counsel’s representation 

fell below an objective standard of reasonableness,’ and that 

there is a ‘reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s 

unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have 

been different.’” Smith v. Spisak, 130 S.Ct. 676, 685 (2010) 

(quoting Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 688, 694 

(1984)) (citations omitted). “[T]here is no reason for a court 

deciding an ineffective assistance claim to approach the 

inquiry in the same order or even to address both components 

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of the inquiry if the defendant makes an insufficient showing 

on one.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 697. 

Whether defense counsel rendered ineffective assistance 

presents a mixed question of law and fact. Id. at 698. 

Sometimes we review such questions de novo and sometimes 

for abuse of discretion. But “not having been confronted with 

a case in which the standard made a difference” in an 

ineffective assistance of counsel claim, “we have thus far 

expressly declined to fix the appropriate standard.” United 

States v. Toms, 396 F.3d 427, 433 (D.C. Cir. 2005). Here too 

we have no need to settle the issue because Goodwin’s 

ineffective assistance claim fails “even under the more 

searching de novo standard.” Id. 

We begin with the reverse sting departure. Guidelines 

Application Note 14 states: 

If, in a reverse sting (an operation in which a 

government agent sells or negotiates to sell a 

controlled substance to a defendant), the court finds 

that the government agent set a price for the 

controlled substance that was substantially below the 

market value of the controlled substance, thereby 

leading to the defendant’s purchase of a significantly 

greater quantity of the controlled substance than his 

available resources would have allowed him to 

purchase except for the artificially low price set by 

the government agent, a downward departure may be 

warranted. 

U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, Application Note 14. Goodwin argues that 

by failing to support the request for a reverse sting departure 

with expert testimony, defense counsel rendered 

constitutionally deficient assistance—particularly given our 

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recognition in his direct appeal that the district court rejected 

the request as “unsupported by the evidence.” Goodwin, 317 

F.3d at 295. The government responds that the reverse sting 

departure is inapplicable because Goodwin was sentenced not 

based on drug quantity but rather as a career offender. We 

agree with the government. 

Goodwin pleaded guilty to possession with intent to 

distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine, thus subjecting him 

to a statutory maximum term of forty years. See 21 U.S.C. § 

841(b)(1)(B). Under the Guidelines’ career offender 

provision, the offense level for a career criminal facing a 

statutory maximum of forty years is 34. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1(b). 

Because 34 is “greater than the offense level otherwise 

applicable,” id., i.e., the offense level calculated based on 

drug quantity pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, the district court 

sentenced Goodwin under the career offender table. For this 

reason, the government argues, whether or not the DEA 

agents induced Goodwin to purchase more than 500 grams of 

cocaine is irrelevant because any drug quantity beyond 500 

grams played no role in determining his Guidelines range. 

 

Goodwin questions neither the district court’s calculation 

of his career offense level nor the government’s assertion that 

he possessed sufficient cash to purchase the 500 grams of 

cocaine that set that level. Instead, he argues that the 

government erroneously assumes that Note 14 only authorizes 

a court to recalculate drug quantity. According to Goodwin, 

the sentencing court must apply a reverse sting departure, like 

other departures, after the offense level is set. Thus the court 

can depart under Note 14 even where, as here, the marginal 

increase in drug quantity allegedly induced by price 

manipulation had no impact on offense level. We have no 

need to decide whether Note 14 authorizes recalculations, 

departures, or both, for we conclude that Goodwin has failed 

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to show prejudice, i.e., a reasonable probability that the 

district court would have granted a departure even if defense 

counsel had provided evidence of drug prices. 

Guidelines section 2D1.1 increases a defendant’s base 

offense level as the amount of drugs involved increases. This 

linkage serves the purpose of imposing punishment 

proportionate to the defendant’s culpability. In a reverse sting 

operation, however, where the government controls the price 

and quantity of drugs sold, this sentencing scheme enables 

law enforcement agents to “structure sting operations in such 

a way as to maximize the sentences imposed on defendants.” 

United States v. Staufer, 38 F.3d 1103, 1107 (9th Cir. 1994). 

Manipulation of this sort effectively decouples drug quantity 

from culpability, thereby undermining one purpose of the 

quantity-based sentencing ranges set forth in the Guidelines. 

Note 14 represents the Sentencing Commission’s recognition 

of this problem and of “the unfairness and arbitrariness of 

allowing drug enforcement agents to put unwarranted 

pressure on a defendant in order to increase his or her 

sentence without regard for his predisposition, his capacity to 

commit the crime on his own, and the extent of his 

culpability.” Id. 

A reverse sting departure pursuant to Note 14 is therefore 

most appropriate where the government, in setting overly 

generous price terms, induces a defendant to purchase more 

drugs than he otherwise could afford and that difference in 

drug quantity affects the defendant’s sentence. But where, as 

here, drug quantity bears no relation to the defendant’s 

offense level (beyond setting the floor of 500 grams), the 

sentencing court has little reason to grant a departure to 

correct any artificial inflation in drug quantity resulting from 

alleged price manipulation. 

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At oral argument, Goodwin’s counsel suggested that if 

presented with expert testimony, the district court might 

nonetheless have chosen to grant a reverse sting departure in 

order to “send a message to the government that these stings 

need to be fair.” Oral Arg. at 4:22. As Judge Gertner has 

explained, however, Note 14 of the Guidelines “focuses less 

on the motives of the government, and more on the 

defendant’s predisposition.” United States v. Lora, 129 F. 

Supp. 2d 77, 90 (D. Mass. 2001) (discussing then-Note 15); 

see also United States v. Searcy, 233 F.3d 1096, 1101 (8th 

Cir. 2000) (“[T]he Sentencing Guidelines focus the 

sentencing entrapment analysis on the defendant’s 

predisposition. The Sentencing Guidelines never mention 

outrageous government conduct.”). And, in other sentencing 

manipulation cases, we have taken to heart the Supreme 

Court’s “warn[ing] against using an entrapment defense to 

control law enforcement practices of which a court might 

disapprove.” United States v. Walls, 70 F.3d 1323, 1329 

(D.C. Cir. 1995) (rejecting contention that undercover agents’ 

insistence that cocaine be delivered in crack form constitutes 

sentencing entrapment and emphasizing that the primary 

element in an entrapment defense is the defendant’s 

predisposition) (citing United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 

435 (1973)); see also United States v. Hinds, 329 F.3d 184, 

188 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (same). 

This is not to say that defendants sentenced as career 

offenders are precluded, as a matter of law, from obtaining the 

benefit of a reverse sting departure. To the contrary, under 

different circumstances the quantity of drugs a defendant was 

induced to purchase could affect the defendant’s position on 

the career offender table. Although we do not foreclose the 

possibility that a sentencing court may also, in some 

circumstances, have cause to grant a reverse sting departure 

even where drug quantity had no effect on offense level, 

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Goodwin alleges ineffective assistance of counsel, meaning 

that to prevail here he must show a “reasonable probability” 

that expert testimony as to drug market conditions “would 

have made a significant difference.” Smith, 130 S.Ct. at 685 

(internal quotation marks omitted). Goodwin was ready, 

willing, and able to purchase at fair market value the 500 

grams of cocaine that ultimately determined his sentence as a 

career offender. He has given us no reason to think that the 

district court would nonetheless have granted a departure 

solely to punish the government for bad behavior. 

III. 

 We can easily dispose of Goodwin’s remaining 

arguments. 

He contends that counsel should have sought a downward 

departure under the Guidelines’ “lesser harms” provision, 

which authorizes a reduced sentence where a defendant 

commits a crime “in order to avoid a perceived greater harm.” 

U.S.S.G. § 5K2.11. According to Goodwin, “[c]ounsel could 

have presented evidence to support [his] claim that he 

suffered from excruciating pain and sold drugs to support an 

addiction to heroin, which developed after he was extensively 

treated with opioids” as a result of his severe burns. 

Appellant’s Br. 19–20. The district court expressly 

acknowledged the possibility that Goodwin’s pain drove him 

to addiction, but nonetheless concluded that his long history 

of drug dealing outweighed that mitigating factor. See

Goodwin, 607 F. Supp. 2d at 51. Given this, Goodwin has 

failed to show a reasonable probability that the district court, 

having effectively rejected the predicate of Goodwin’s lesser 

harms argument, would have departed had counsel formally 

invoked section 5K2.11. 

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Next, Goodwin asserts that counsel provided ineffective 

assistance in failing to argue that the pain stemming from 

Goodwin’s burn injuries constitutes an “extraordinary 

physical impairment” warranting departure under U.S.S.G. § 

5H1.4. That Guideline, however, makes clear that physical 

condition is “not ordinarily relevant in determining whether a 

departure may be warranted,” id., and we have emphasized 

that section 5H1.4 “requires not just infirm[ity]” but 

“extraordinary physical impairment,” United States v. 

Brooke, 308 F.3d 17, 21 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (emphasis added). 

Because Goodwin has shown neither that his impairment is 

“present to an exceptional degree,” Koon v. United States, 518 

U.S. 81, 96 (1996), nor that his infirmity is such that “home 

detention may be as efficient as, and less costly than, 

imprisonment,” U.S.S.G. § 5H1.4, we see no prejudice arising 

from counsel’s failure to pursue a section 5H1.4 departure. 

Cf. United States v. Smith, 27 F.3d 649, 652 (D.C. Cir. 1994) 

(explaining that the Sentencing Commission identified 

extreme disability as one offender characteristic that may, in 

some cases, “make it possible to achieve the goals of a prison 

sentence . . . with an alternative confinement”). 

Goodwin claims that counsel should have sought a 

departure under section 4A1.3(b) (over-representation of 

seriousness of criminal history) and argued that his case falls 

outside the Guidelines’ “heartland,” Koon, 518 U.S. at 96. 

But Goodwin never sought a COA on these issues, nor did the 

district court grant one. Because a COA is a “jurisdictional 

prerequisite” to appellate review, Miller-El v. Cockerell, 537 

U.S. 322, 336 (2003), neither argument is properly before us. 

 

According to Goodwin, even if his reverse sting and 

medical history claims “failed to establish prejudice alone, the 

cumulative weight of both demonstrate[d] a reasonable 

probability of a more favorable outcome.” Appellant’s Br. 

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29; see U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0. As noted above, however, a 

reverse sting departure is inapplicable in these circumstances, 

and Goodwin’s medical history claims are without merit. 

That leaves no combination of factors “present to a substantial 

degree” that could render this case an “exceptional one,” 

particularly given the Commission’s belief “that such cases 

should occur extremely rarely.” U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0(c) & 

Application Note 3(C). 

 

 Finally, Goodwin insists that he should be resentenced 

under United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), which 

the Supreme Court issued while his section 2255 motion was 

pending in the district court. That argument, however, is 

foreclosed by In re Fashina, 486 F.3d 1300, 1303–04 (2007), 

which held that Booker announced a non-watershed 

procedural rather than substantive rule and is therefore not 

retroactively applicable in collateral proceedings. 

IV. 

 For the foregoing reasons, we affirm. 

So ordered. 

 

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