Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-07-04513/USCOURTS-ca3-07-04513-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Hiep Tran
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

* Honorable A. Wallace Tashima, Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for

the Ninth Circuit, sitting by designation.

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

 

No. 07-4513

 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

HIEP TRAN,

 Appellant

 

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. No. 2-07-cr-00410)

District Judge: Honorable John P. Fullam

 

Argued February 11, 2010

Before: SLOVITER, ROTH, and TASHIMA, Circuit Judges *

(Filed: May 24, 2010)

Toni N. Benedetti, Esq.(ARGUED)

A. Charles Peruto, Jr., Esq.

2101 Pine Street 

Philadelphia PA 19103

 Counsel for Appellant

Case: 07-4513 Document: 003110155863 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/24/2010
 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 1

3231. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C.

§ 3742(a).

2

Robert J. Livermore, Esq.(ARGUED)

Robert A. Zauzmer, Esq.

Office of the United States Attorney

615 Chestnut Street

Suite 1250

Philadelphia PA 19106

 Counsel for Appellee

OPINION OF THE COURT

 

TASHIMA, Circuit Judge

Appellant Hiep Tran appeals the mandatory-minimum 10-year sentence he

received following his conviction for conspiracy to manufacture 1,000 or more marijuana

plants. We will affirm.1

I.

Tran’s conviction and sentence resulted from a marijuana growing operation he

ran in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, in 2006 and 2007. Between late 2006 and early 2007, the

Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) learned of the operation and placed Tran

under surveillance. On June 25, 2007, DEA agents raided Tran’s growing facility. Inside

they discovered 888 live marijuana plants, as well as an additional 66 cuttings that had

not yet taken root.

Case: 07-4513 Document: 003110155863 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/24/2010
Cuttings are typically not considered plants until they have 2

formed their own roots. See, e.g., U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, cmt. n. 17

(2007).

3

Tran was charged in a five-count indictment and, after a bench trial, was convicted

of three counts of manufacturing and distributing marijuana. Only the most serious of

these convictions is at issue in this appeal: Conspiracy to manufacture 1,000 or more

marijuana plants, which carries a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence. 21 U.S.C. §§

841(b)(1)(A), 846.

Because the DEA raid recovered only 888 live plants and 66 cuttings, the

government relied on evidence of Tran’s past marijuana harvests to establish that the

conspiracy involved more than 1,000 plants. This evidence took the form of a phone call

between Tran and his girlfriend that the DEA had recorded while it had Tran under

surveillance. In the phone call, Tran explained to his girlfriend that he had just harvested

enough marijuana plants to produce 19 pounds of marijuana. DEA Special Agent

Richard Ellwanger testified that, based on the size of the seized plants, it would have

taken 10 plants to yield one pound of marijuana. Thus, Agent Ellwanger opined that Tran

had previously grown an additional 190 plants. The government’s evidence showed that

the conspiracy involved a total of at least 1,144 plants: 190 that had been grown and

harvested prior to the raid; 888 live plants seized in the raid; and 66 cuttings that Tran

intended to grow into plants in the future.2

Based upon this testimony, the District Court found that the conspiracy involved

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Tran’s counsel initially filed a brief under Anders v. 3

California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967), representing that he could identify

no non-frivolous issues to pursue on appeal. Because we were

dissatisfied with that brief, we ordered counsel to brief the issue we

now address in this opinion.

 Because Tran failed to object to his sentence before the 4

district court, our review is for plain error. United States v. Miller,

594 F.3d 172, 183 n.6 (3d Cir. 2010).

4

more than 1,000 plants. Although Tran’s Sentencing Guidelines range was 78-97

months, the District Court sentenced him to the mandatory-minimum sentence of 120

months’ imprisonment.

Tran now appeals, arguing that the District Court erred when it combined live

plants with harvested plants when determining the scope of the conspiracy.3

II.

We see no error in the District Court’s factual finding that the conspiracy involved

more than 1,000 marijuana plants. The marijuana that Tran admitted in his telephone 4

conversation to having grown and harvested before the DEA raid was circumstantial

evidence that the conspiracy involved more plants than the 888 discovered by DEA

agents. The District Court properly relied on this evidence, as well as the testimony of

Agent Ellwanger, to find that the marijuana-growing conspiracy involved at least an

additional 190 marijuana plants. See, e.g., United States v. Shields, 87 F.3d 1194, 1197

(11th Cir. 1996) (en banc) (“There is more than sufficient evidence that Shields’s relevant

conduct included cultivating and harvesting a first crop of marijuana plants in addition to

Case: 07-4513 Document: 003110155863 Page: 4 Date Filed: 05/24/2010
5

the growing crop found by government agents.”); United States v. Silvers, 84 F.3d 1317,

1327 (10th Cir. 1996) (“We have held countless times that if no drugs are actually seized,

the government can nevertheless prove the type and quantity of drugs attributable to the

defendant through other evidence . . . .”); see also United States v. Littrell, 439 F.3d 875,

880-81 (8th Cir. 2006) (considering evidence of past amounts of methamphetamine

manufactured, as well as large amounts of precursor chemicals found on the property, to

conclude that the charged conspiracy involved more than 500 grams of

methamphetamine, despite fact that only 244 grams were seized in the raid); United States

v. Fitch, 137 F.3d 277, 282-83 (5th Cir. 1998) (“[T]he fact that these 288 marijuana

plants had been harvested prior to their discovery did not affect their status as marijuana

‘plants’ involved in this offense for the purposes of applying the mandatory minimum

required by 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(vii).”).

Tran, however, contends that the District Court was prohibited from converting the

19 pounds of harvested marijuana into an estimated number of plants. He urges us to

adopt the Second Circuit’s reasoning, as set forth in United States v. Blume, 967 F.2d 45

(2d Cir. 1992). We do not, however, read Blume in the same manner as does Tran, and

conclude that it is inapplicable in the circumstances of this case.

Unlike this case, Blume did not involve the calculation of the number of marijuana

plants for purposes of establishing whether a defendant was subject to a statutorilymandated minimum sentence. Rather, the question before the Second Circuit was how to

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We, of course, express no opinion about the proper 5

method of calculating the amount of marijuana attributable to a

defendant under the Guidelines.

6

calculate the offense level under the Sentencing Guidelines when both the weight of

harvested marijuana and the number of plants were ascertainable. Id. at 49-50. The

district court had applied the one-kilogram-to-one-plant equivalency set forth in the thenapplicable Guidelines to conclude that the defendant was responsible for 11,000 pounds

of marijuana. Id. at 49. The Second Circuit, in contrast, concluded that the evidence

established that only 4,000 pounds should be attributed to the defendant. Id. at 50. It

then held that the district court’s determination that the defendant should be sentenced

based upon 11,000 pounds of marijuana was unsupported by the evidence. Id.

5

Here, in contrast, the question before the sentencing court was whether the

evidence established that the scope of the conspiracy involved more than 1,000 marijuana

plants. The District Court properly considered testimony regarding the scope of

defendant’s marijuana growing operation, as well as evidence of the size of his past

harvest. This evidence easily established that the conspiracy included more than 1,000

marijuana plants. Accordingly, no plain error occurred.

III.

Based on the foregoing, we will affirm Tran’s conviction and sentence. The

District Court’s judgment, however, does contain an error, which both sides agree is a

Case: 07-4513 Document: 003110155863 Page: 6 Date Filed: 05/24/2010
clerical error, which should be corrected pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure

36. We therefore remand this case and direct the District Court to correct the clerical

error by substituting “1,000” for “100” in the judgment.

7

Case: 07-4513 Document: 003110155863 Page: 7 Date Filed: 05/24/2010