Source: https://openjurist.org/298/f3d/182/united-states-v-b-zats
Timestamp: 2019-02-22 02:59:41
Document Index: 791711727

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3742', '§ 4', '§ 3742', '§ 3', '§ 1', '§ 3', '§ 1', '§ 3', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 3']

298 F3d 182 United States v. B Zats | OpenJurist
298 F. 3d 182 - United States v. B Zats
298 F3d 182 United States v. B Zats
298 F.3d 182
Steven B. ZATS, Appellant.
No. 00-2757.
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) December 6, 2001.
We exercise plenary review over the District Court's legal interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines. United States v. Monostra, 125 F.3d 183, 188 (3d Cir. 1997). However, "factual findings concerning the vulnerable victim adjustment are reversible only for clear error." United States v. Iannone, 184 F.3d 214, 220 (3d Cir.1999).
We have generally assumed that our standard of review for the application of the Guidelines to facts is plenary, see, e.g., United States v. Jarvis, 258 F.3d 235, 241 (3d Cir.2001), but the Supreme Court's recent decision in Buford v. United States, 532 U.S. 59, 121 S.Ct. 1276, 149 L.Ed.2d 197 (2001), prompts us to modify this position. According to 18 U.S.C. § 3742, the courts of appeals "shall give due deference to the district court's application of the guidelines to the facts." Buford involved a bank robber who received a career offender enhancement to her sentence under § 4B1.1 of the Guidelines because the District Court decided to treat her five prior convictions as separate crimes rather than consolidate them into a single conviction. Buford, 532 U.S. at 61-62, 121 S.Ct. 1276. The Seventh Circuit agreed that the prior convictions were separate under a clear error standard of review, United States v. Buford, 201 F.3d 937, 940-42 (7th Cir. 2000), and the Supreme Court affirmed. Buford, 532 U.S. at 60, 121 S.Ct. 1276. Based on its reading of § 3742, the Supreme Court held that appellate courts should review "deferentially" trial court determinations about whether previous criminal cases were consolidated under the Guidelines. Buford, 532 U.S. at 64, 121 S.Ct. 1276. Buford did not define deferential review, but we conclude, as the Seventh Circuit did, see 201 F.3d at 941, that it means clear error review in this context. Although guided by legal principles, sentencing judges conduct a factual inquiry when determining whether a victim is particularly vulnerable. The alternative understanding of deferential would be abuse of discretion, but that standard does not fit as well here. The question is not whether the District Court abused its discretion in choosing among different courses of action. Instead, it is whether the Court perceived the facts correctly.
The reasons for applying deferential review in Buford apply here as well. As in Buford, the question of whether a victim is particularly vulnerable is one in which "factual nuance may closely guide the legal decision, with legal results depending heavily upon an understanding of the significance of case-specific details." 532 U.S. at 65, 121 S.Ct. 1276. Thus, while we exercise plenary review over the legal question of who can be a victim for purposes of the vulnerable victim enhancement, we review deferentially (i.e., for clear error) the District Court's determination that Zats' victims were particularly vulnerable.
We affirm Zats' sentence because he satisfies the standard in U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(1) and the accompanying application note.3 Section 3A1.1(b)(1) states: "If the defendant knew or should have known that a victim of the offense was a vulnerable victim, increase by 2 levels."
U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a). In United States v. Cruz, 106 F.3d 1134 (3d Cir.1997), we found that "neither § 3A1.1(b) nor the application note explicitly requires that we read `victim' narrowly and that, under § 1B1.3, we may look at all the conduct underlying the offense of conviction." Id. at 1137 (emphasis added). We then applied the enhancement where the defendant sexually assaulted a twelve-year-old victim in the process of stealing a car and later pled guilty only to carjacking. Id. Likewise, in Monostra, we said that "the drafters of the Sentencing Guidelines did not intend to limit the application of § 3A1.1(b) to situations in which the vulnerable person was the victim of the offense of conviction. Rather, trial courts may look to all the conduct underlying an offense, using § 1B1.3 as a guide." 125 F.3d at 189. We held that the enhancement could apply where the defendant bilked a small business in the course of defrauding a bank. Id. In addition, other courts of appeals have applied the enhancement where doctors exploited patients in order to submit fraudulent medical insurance claims. See, e.g., United States v. Bachynsky, 949 F.2d 722, 735-36 (5th Cir.1991); United States v. Echevarria, 33 F.3d 175, 180-81 (2d Cir.1994).
However, we will not adopt this reading. The Sentencing Commission could not have intended to define "victim" for sentencing purposes more narrowly than for the offense of conviction itself, and we will not read a text to produce absurd results plainly inconsistent with the drafters' intentions. See Public Citizen v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 491 U.S. 440, 452-55, 109 S.Ct. 2558, 105 L.Ed.2d 377 (1989). At the same time, it cannot be that the Commission meant to say "or" instead of "and." That would render the "offense of conviction" clause redundant because "relevant conduct" already includes the offense of conviction. We conclude that the drafters obviously intended to define "victim" to mean anyone hurt by conduct for which the defendant is accountable under § 1B1.3. That reading is consistent with our precedents and with common sense. Therefore, victim status is not limited to those hurt by the offense of conviction, but also includes those hurt by relevant conduct outside that offense.
1. Particular vulnerability
The first requirement under Iannone for imposing a vulnerable victim enhancement is that the victim be "particularly susceptible or vulnerable to the criminal conduct." 184 F.3d at 220. Zats' victims, many of whom were poor, sick, facing personal emergencies, or all three, qualify. Victims can be vulnerable for the reasons listed in the application note — age, physical or mental condition — or simply because one is "otherwise particularly susceptible to the criminal conduct." U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1, cmt. n. 2. Financial vulnerability is one way a victim can be "otherwise particularly susceptible." See United States v. Arguedas, 86 F.3d 1054, 1058 (11th Cir.1996); United States v. Borst, 62 F.3d 43, 46-47 (2d Cir.1995).
The Second Circuit has stated that "[t]he correct test [for vulnerability] calls for an examination of the individual victims' ability to avoid the crime rather than their vulnerability relative to other potential victims of the same crime." United States v. McCall, 174 F.3d 47, 51 (2d Cir. 1998). We agree with this standard. The issue in our case is whether an individual debtor's circumstances made Zats' improper debt collection methods particularly likely to succeed against him or her, not merely whether the debtor is more vulnerable than most debtors. There are some crimes to which almost no victims are particularly vulnerable. For example, few bank tellers are particularly vulnerable to bank robbery. There are other crimes, however, such as fraudulently marketing cancer remedies to cancer patients, to which many (if not most) victims may be particularly vulnerable. See id.
The second requirement is that "the defendant knew or should have known of this susceptibility or vulnerability." Iannone, 184 F.3d at 220. Zats satisfies this requirement. He misleadingly argues that he did not target anyone because they were poor. Assuming that is true, although the evidence in the record shows otherwise, it is irrelevant. The Guidelines do not require that the defendant actually target his victims or otherwise seek them out because of their vulnerability. To the contrary, the Guidelines' commentary was amended in November 1995 to clarify that there is no targeting requirement. See Cruz, 106 F.3d at 1138; United States v. Paneras, 222 F.3d 406, 413 (7th Cir.2000).4 What matters is not whether Zats wanted to exploit vulnerable victims, but whether he knew or should have known that he was doing so.5
Moreover, the language "knew or should have known" means that negligence is a sufficient level of culpability for a § 3A1.1 enhancement. "A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct." Model Penal Code § 2.02(2)(d). Unlike recklessness, which requires conscious disregard of a substantial risk of serious harm, negligence requires no actual awareness of the risk. See United States v. Trinidad-Aquino, 259 F.3d 1140, 1146 (9th Cir.2001); Model Penal Code § 2.02(2)(c), (d). Zats was at least negligent as to whether his victims were vulnerable. The record leaves no doubt that he should have been aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that many debtors paid him because they desperately needed access to their accounts and could not wait for legal help. He obviously knew that most had fallen behind on paying their medical bills, suggesting that they were both poor and sick. Moreover, Zats designed his methods to exploit their vulnerabilities. His extortionary tactics would be less likely to succeed against a debtor who had enough cash to sustain himself temporarily, who could rely on his family or friends, or who had a rudimentary knowledge of his legal rights.
Zats' brief suggests that he cannot receive a vulnerable victim enhancement unless he knew in advance about the particular vulnerabilities of the debtor from whom he was trying to collect. There is no such requirement. Nothing in the Guidelines requires that an offender have prior knowledge of his victim's vulnerabilities. The applicable guideline requires only that he "knew or should have known." U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(1). That knowledge or notice could arise during the course of an ongoing offense such as fraud. Indeed, Zats' own brief cites an Eleventh Circuit case stating that "even if [the defendant] did not initially know of [the victim's] vulnerability, he warrants a § 3A1.1 enhancement because he learned of the vulnerability during the course of the ... fraud and thereafter continued to perpetrate the fraud." Arguedas, 86 F.3d at 1058.6
Finally, the Government need not prove that every, or even most, of Zats' victims were vulnerable or that he knew or should have known of the vulnerabilities in every case. The language of the guideline requires only that "a victim of the offense was a vulnerable victim." U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(1) (emphasis added); see also United States v. Smith, 133 F.3d 737, 749 (10th Cir.1997) ("A single vulnerable victim is sufficient to support application of the enhancement."). The examples we have mentioned much exceed this low threshold.
In fact, we have held that, even under the pre-amendment commentary, § 3A1.1 did not contain a targeting requirementSee Cruz, 106 F.3d at 1139.
The "knew or should have known requirement" is the reason that the application note says that the enhancement "would not apply in a case in which the defendant sold fraudulent securities by mail to the general public and one of victims happened to be senile." U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1, cmt. n. 2. The missing element in that case is that the defendant had no reason to know such a victim existed; that he did nottarget a senile victim is irrelevant.
Moreover, Zats' argument that he did not have advance knowledge once again ignores the "should have known" language of § 3A1.1(b)(1). Zats should have known many of the debtors were particularly vulnerablebefore communicating with them.