Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-09-03010/USCOURTS-caDC-09-03010-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Shawn Maurice Johnson
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 7, 2009 Decided May 21, 2010 

No. 09-3010 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

SHAWN MAURICE JOHNSON, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:08-cr-00305-PLF-1) 

John A. Briley Jr., appointed by the court, argued the 

cause and filed the brief for appellant. 

Courtney G. Saleski, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With her on the brief was Roy W. McLeese 

III, Assistant U.S. Attorney. 

Before: HENDERSON and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

USCA Case #09-3010 Document #1245890 Filed: 05/21/2010 Page 1 of 5
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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: In this appeal, we affirm the 

district court’s application of a Sentencing Guidelines 

enhancement for bribery of a public official in a “sensitive 

position” to a special police officer for the District of 

Columbia Public Schools. 

I. 

Appellant Shawn Maurice Johnson worked as a special 

police officer for the District’s public schools. Though his 

authority extended no farther than school grounds, Johnson 

wore a uniform, carried a firearm, and could make arrests. In 

the course of his employment, Johnson and his partner 

permitted an illegal parking scheme on school property in 

exchange for $1570 in bribes. Johnson eventually turned 

himself in to the police and pled guilty to one count of bribery 

of a public official. See 18 U.S.C. § 201 (2006). 

At sentencing, the district court, relying on commentary 

to the Sentencing Guidelines, determined that Johnson was a 

public official in a sensitive position, and applied the fourlevel enhancement called for by the guideline. See U.S.

SENTENCING GUIDELINES MANUAL § 2C1.1(b)(3) (2009) 

[hereinafter U.S.S.G.]. Without the four-level enhancement, 

Johnson’s sentencing range under the Guidelines would have 

been only 12 to 18 months. With the enhancement, the range 

was 24 to 30 months. The court issued a below-range 

sentence of 12 months and 1 day. Presuming that his sentence 

would have been even shorter under a range calculated 

without the enhancement, Johnson appealed. We have 

jurisdiction to consider his appeal under 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3742(a)(2). See United States v. Love, 593 F.3d 1, 5 n.2 

(D.C. Cir. 2010). 

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 Johnson argues that the district court should have 

disregarded the commentary and asks that we vacate his 

sentence and remand for the district court to resentence him 

using the guideline alone. See Appellant’s Br. at 7–9. We 

review de novo the district court’s reliance on the 

commentary to interpret the guideline. See United States v. 

Pugh, 158 F.3d 1308, 1311 (D.C. Cir. 1998). 

II. 

The relevant guideline requires a four-level enhancement 

if the offense involved a public official in a “sensitive 

position.” U.S.S.G. § 2C1.1(b)(3). The guideline commentary 

defines “sensitive position,” in relevant part, as one 

“characterized by a direct authority to make decisions for, or 

on behalf of, a government department, agency, or other 

government entity,” id. § 2C1.1 cmt. 4(a), and includes “law 

enforcement officer” in a list of illustrative examples, id. cmt. 

4(b). Commentary to a sentencing guideline is “authoritative” 

unless it violates the Constitution or a federal statute, or “is 

inconsistent with, or a plainly erroneous reading of, that 

guideline.” Stinson v. United States, 508 U.S. 36, 38 (1993). 

The commentary lacks authority only if it is “flat[ly] 

inconsisten[t]” with the guideline such that “following one 

will result in violating the dictates of the other.” Id. at 43; see

Pugh, 158 F.3d at 1311. 

We struggle to understand Johnson’s arguments, but, 

generously viewed, his position seems to be that the 

commentary’s use of a law enforcement officer as an example 

of a public official in a sensitive position is inconsistent with 

both the plain meaning of the guideline and the commentary’s 

definition of “sensitive position.” See Appellant’s Br. at 7–9; 

Oral Arg. Recording at 7:47–8:07. His assertion that the 

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example is inconsistent with the guideline is made entirely in 

the form of a conclusion. Regardless, it seems plain to us that 

there is nothing inconsistent about using a law enforcement 

officer as an example of a public official in a “sensitive 

position.” Whatever the precise scope of that term, whatever 

other positions might fall within its ambit, it certainly includes 

law enforcement officers, like Johnson, who are charged with 

the power to make arrests—a sensitive power if there ever 

was one. See Foley v. Connelie, 435 U.S. 291, 298 (1978) 

(“An arrest . . . is a serious matter for any person even when 

no prosecution follows or when an acquittal is 

obtained. . . . Even the routine traffic arrests . . . can intrude 

on the privacy of the individual.”).

Johnson spends most of his fire on the claim that “the 

chosen example of ‘law enforcement officer,’ simple and 

unadorned, cannot be reconciled with the Commission’s 

definition of a ‘sensitive position.’” Appellant’s Br. at 7; see 

id. at 8–9. Without telling us how the example and definition 

are contradictory, Johnson adds only that “the example of 

‘law enforcement officer,’ without any elaboration or 

qualification, purports to place appellant . . . on the same 

plane as the Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department.” Id.

at 8. For his argument to make sense, Johnson can only be 

arguing that not all law enforcement officers hold a sensitive 

position because some do not have “direct authority to make 

decisions for, or on behalf of, a government department.” 

U.S.S.G. § 2C1.1 cmt. 4(a). Whether that may be true in some 

hypothetical case, it is certainly not true in this case. Johnson 

does not dispute that he was a law enforcement officer who 

had the arrest power, which surely involves the power to 

make decisions on behalf of the government. In the absence 

of any actual inconsistency in the commentary, we need not 

consider the possible effect of such inconsistency. 

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The history of the commentary to § 2C1.1 likewise 

undermines Johnson’s argument. Prior to 2004, the 

commentary used “supervisory law enforcement officers” as 

examples of public officials who hold sensitive positions. 

U.S.S.G. § 2C1.1 cmt. 1 (2003) (emphasis added). As the 

Seventh Circuit described this previous standard, “[c]overed 

officials . . . typically supervise other employees, make public 

policy, stand in the shoes of a policymaker, or influence 

policymakers.” United States v. Reneslacis, 349 F.3d 412, 415 

(7th Cir. 2003) (citations omitted). Clearly, the Sentencing 

Commission knows how to describe a subset of law 

enforcement officers. But the Commission changed the 

commentary in 2004 by dropping the word “supervisory” 

from its reference to law enforcement officers and adding the 

current definition of sensitive position. See U.S.S.G. § 2C1.1 

cmt. 4 (2004). In light of these changes, we see no 

inconsistency between the commentary’s definition and its 

example. 

In this case at least, the commentary is authoritative, but 

we should not be understood to embrace the idea that any law 

enforcement officer, no matter his level of responsibility, can 

be deemed to hold a sensitive position. Because Johnson was 

a special police officer with the power to arrest, the district 

court did not err in using the commentary to apply the 

enhancement to him. 

III. 

The sentence is 

Affirmed. 

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