Source: http://openjurist.org/print/528623
Timestamp: 2016-02-13 21:39:44
Document Index: 298138481

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 841', '§ 841', '§ 846', '§ 841', '§ 841', '§ 841', '§ 841', '§ 841']

262 F3d 31 United States of America v. Kenneth J Eirby
Home > 262 F3d 31 United States of America v. Kenneth J Eirby
Before grappling with the appellant's contentions, we offer some background. Pre-Apprendi, this court had held that the drug-quantity delineations contained in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1) were not elements of the corresponding offense, but, rather, sentencing factors "relevant only for determining the penalty." United States v. Lindia, 82 F.3d 1154, 1160 (1st Cir. 1996). Under that holding, specific drug quantities did not have to be charged in the indictment and the drug weights necessary to implement section 841(b)(1)'s penalty scheme could be determined by the sentencing judge under a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. Id. at 1161. The Court's decision in Apprendi requires some rethinking of this approach. See United States v. Robinson, 241 F.3d 115, 123 (1st Cir. 2001) (explaining that Apprendi "shifted the tectonic plates insofar as criminal sentencing is concerned").
The core holding of Apprendi is that, apart from the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must both be charged in the indictment and submitted to a jury for a determination under the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490. Under this holding, a finding of drug quantity which increases a defendant's sentence beyond the otherwise applicable statutory maximum must be proved to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Westmoreland, 240 F.3d 618, 631-32 (7th Cir. 2001). To that extent, then, the notion that the quantity determinations demanded by section 841(b)(1) are merely sentencing factors is no longer completely true. See United States v. Duarte, 246 F.3d 56, 61 (1st Cir. 2001); United States v. Doggett, 230 F.3d 160, 164-65 (5th Cir. 2000).
Id. at 101 (citations omitted). This means that when a defendant is sentenced to less than the default statutory maximum for violating section 841(a) -- twenty years in prison, see 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C) -- Apprendi is irrelevant. See United States v. Terry, 240 F.3d 65, 74 (1st Cir. 2001). In such circumstances, judicial determination of drug quantity under a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard remains a viable option. See Caba, 241 F.3d at 101; United States v. Baltas, 236 F.3d 27, 41 (1st Cir. 2001).
Apprendi bears only a glancing relationship to the appellant's first argument. The count of conviction -- the text of which is annexed as an appendix to this opinion -- charged the appellant with participation in a drug-trafficking conspiracy in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. That statute, as pleaded here, looks to 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1) as the source of applicable penalties. Since the appellant actually received a sentence below the default statutory maximum (i.e., a sentence less than the 20-year maximum delineated in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C)), the sentence would withstand Apprendi scrutiny even if the count of conviction mentioned no drug weight at all. See, e.g., Caba, 241 F.3d at 101; Baltas, 236 F.3d at 41. That being so, it is surpassingly difficult to see how the inclusion of a wrong drug weight -- a mistaken reference to section 841(b)(1)(B) rather than section 841(b)(1)(A) -- would constitute reversible error under Apprendi. See United States v. Shepard, 235 F.3d 1295, 1296-97 (11th Cir. 2000) (finding Apprendi violation, but no prejudice, in similar circumstances, and therefore upholding the defendant's conviction and sentence).
The appellant, however, has a plausible non-Apprendi-based argument that gets at the same point. The grand jury chose to include a specific reference to section 841(b)(1)(B) in the count of conviction, and the appellant suggests that, given the grand jury's action, the court's decision to supplant section 841(b)(1)(B) with section 841(b)(1)(A) both usurped the grand jury's institutional prerogative and abridged his rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. This was a structural error, the appellant says, warranting relief even though "it is not certain that [he] would have received a different sentence if the district court had applied section 841(b)(1)(B)." Appellant's Brief at 10.
The latter conclusion is reinforced by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 7(c)(1), which requires that an indictment be "a plain, concise and definite written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged." (emphasis supplied). Pertinently, the rule goes on to state that whereas an indictment "shall state for each count the official or customary citation of the statute . . . which the defendant is alleged therein to have violated," nonetheless, "[e]rror in the citation or its omission shall not be ground for dismissal of the indictment . . . or for reversal of a conviction if the error or omission did not mislead the defendant to his prejudice." Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(c)(1). The question, then, is whether the mistaken reference to section 841(b)(1)(B) prejudiced the appellant.
The answer to this question plainly is in the negative. When the district court determined that section 841(b)(1)(B) was not the appropriate penalty provision for this case, the court promptly advised the appellant of that fact and offered him an opportunity to withdraw his guilty plea. After deliberation and consultation with counsel, the appellant declined. His decision to go forward was fully informed; he knew at that point that the court planned to employ the penalty provision of section 841(b)(1)(A). Because the court gave the appellant what amounted to amended notice, the indictment's mistaken reference to section 841(b)(1)(B) did not mislead him.3
The appellant's remaining Apprendi arguments need not detain us. His assertion that Apprendi required the district court to apply section 841(b)(1)(B) in this case founders because that statute provides for sentences of up to 40 years, and the district court actually sentenced the appellant to serve 66 months -- a figure well below the statute's maximum. Indeed, the sentence imposed is considerably less than the default statutory maximum of 20 years found in section 841(b)(1)(C) (which applies to detectable, but otherwise unquantified, amounts of cocaine base). Thus, no Apprendi violation inheres.4
To be sure, there may be instances in which we might consider requiring separate drug-quantity determinations. In United States v. Winston, 37 F.3d 235 (6th Cir. 1994), for example, the court was concerned with whether it could aggregate multiple drug counts when considering whether 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) demanded the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence. To cope with this peculiar problem, the court required disaggregation (and, hence, separate determinations). Id. at 241 n.10. But Winston -- the only case cited by the appellant on this point -- is clearly inapposite here: the appellant was convicted and sentenced on only a single count, and this case presents no comparable question of aggregation.
To the extent, if at all, that the court's pre-departure base -- 120 months -- may be germane here, that figure too is well below the default statutory maximum contained in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C). It is even further removed from the maximum penalty permissible under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B).
Source URL: http://openjurist.org/262/f3d/31/united-states-of-america-v-kenneth-j-eirby