Opinion ID: 2966329
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Individualized Drug-Quantity Determination

Text: Correy first contends that Judge Gelpí refused to follow this court's order to make an individualized drug-quantity finding by reviewing the record and assessing witness credibility upon remand. Correy says Judge Gelpí mistakenly concluded that he lacked authority to find Correy personally responsible for under five kilograms of cocaine based on this court's determination that the conspiracy-wide amount was five kilograms or more. As a result, Correy says, Judge Gelpí improperly declined to consider his claim that he was individually responsible for only 3.5 to 5 kilograms of cocaine. Sentences in drug-conspiracy cases depend heavily on the amount and type of drugs involved. United States v. CintrónEchautegui, 604 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2010) (citing United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1196-97 (1st Cir. 1993)). When sentencing a drug-conspiracy participant under the Guidelines, the sentencing judge must make an individualized finding concerning the quantity of drugs attributable to, or reasonably foreseeable by, the -8- offender.4 Id. (citing United States v. Colón-Solís, 354 F.3d 101, 103 (1st Cir. 2004)); see also United States v. RamírezNegrón, 751 F.3d 42, 47-48 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 135 S.Ct. 276 (2014). This is so even though we derive the applicable statutory maximum in a drug conspiracy case from a conspiracy-wide perspective.5 Colón-Solís, 354 F.3d at 103 (emphasis added); see also Ramírez-Negrón, 751 F.3d at 49 n.4. Absent an individualized finding, the drug quantity attributable to the conspiracy as a whole cannot automatically be shifted to the defendant for the purpose of calculating a Guidelines offense level. Colón-Solís, 354 F.3d at 103. 4 [F]actual findings made for purposes of applying the Guidelines, which influence the sentencing judge's discretion in imposing an advisory Guidelines sentence and do not result in imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence, do not violate the rule in Alleyne [v. United States, 133 S.Ct. 2151 (2013)]. United States v. Ramírez-Negrón, 751 F.3d 42, 48 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 135 S.Ct. 276 (2014). In Alleyne, which was decided during the pendency of Correy's appeal, the Supreme Court held that any fact that increases the applicable mandatory minimum must be found by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. 133 S.Ct. at 2162-63. 5 The applicable mandatory minimum, on the other hand, depends on the drug quantity attributable to the individual defendant. Ramírez-Negrón, 751 F.3d at 49 n.4 (citing Colón-Solís, 354 F.3d at 103). Unlike his co-defendant, see United States v. Pizarro, ___ F.3d ___, No. 12-1759, 2014 WL 6090601 (1st Cir. Nov. 14, 2014), Correy does not raise any Alleyne issues in this appeal, and we therefore address Correy's sentencing claims without regard to any possible effect of the Supreme Court's decision on his statutory sentencing range. On remand, the district court should consider the applicability of our Alleyne jurisprudence, including our decision in Pizarro, to Correy's circumstances. -9- In Correy and his co-defendants' first appeal, we found that the evidence overwhelmingly establishe[d] that the conspiracy involved at least five kilograms of cocaine, corresponding to a statutory maximum of life imprisonment. Casas, 425 F.3d at 65-66; see 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A). In their second appeal, we clarified that this discussion pertained only to the conspiracy-wide amount and indicated nothing about the drug quantities foreseeable to each individual, which must be used for purposes of determining each defendant's [base offense level] under the [G]uidelines. Correy, 570 F.3d at 377, 380. We proceeded to explain that the individualized drug-quantity determination is an entirely different inquiry from that of the conspiracy-wide determination and to reiterate that the individualized drug-quantity issue [cannot] be resolved without assessing credibility. Id. at 380-81. Nevertheless, at Correy's third sentencing, Judge Gelpí insisted that this court had partly tied his hands with respect to Correy's drug-quantity determination. When Correy argued that he was responsible for under five kilograms of cocaine, Judge Gelpí said: [I]n this particular case . . . the [c]ourt cannot go below the ten-year mandatory minimum as the Circuit noted. . . . [T]his particular defendant, as well as the others[,] are responsible for at least 5 kilos or more, which triggers the ten-year mandatory minimum. So I can't make a finding - and I'll hear from -10- counsel, but I don't see how I can make a finding below the mandatory minimum. In other words, Judge Gelpí thought (incorrectly under our case law, see supra note 5) that the conspiracy-wide amount of at least five kilograms represented the minimum amount attributable to Correy. He further concluded that, because a drug-quantity finding of anything between five and fifteen kilograms of cocaine would result in the same Guidelines range based on Correy's previous offenses, it would be a somewhat moot exercise to make credibility determinations and to state a more specific — and, he implied, likely higher — finding. When Judge Gelpí concluded that he could not find Correy responsible for less than five kilograms of cocaine, he misinterpreted our remand order in two important ways. First, when we said that Correy and his co-defendants were responsible for at least five kilograms of cocaine, we were discussing the conspiracywide, statutory-maximum-controlling amount, rather than the individualized, Guidelines-range-determining amount. See Correy, 570 F.3d at 377, 380. Second, not only did we not find Correy independently responsible for at least five kilograms of cocaine, we also did not direct the sentencing judge to find as such; in fact, we explicitly stated that our conspiracy-wide conclusions sa[id] nothing about the drug quantities foreseeable to each individual, and left the individualized assessment up to the sentencing judge. Id. at 380. -11- These misunderstandings led Judge Gelpí to forgo making the individualized drug-quantity finding, based on his review of the entire record and assessment of witness credibility, that this court demanded. See id. at 388, 402. As a result, he refused to consider Correy's record-based argument that he was responsible for under five kilograms of cocaine. Although Judge Gelpí's ultimate conclusion that Correy was responsible for five to fifteen kilograms of cocaine is plausible and perhaps, as Judge Gelpí suggested, even utterly generous under the preponderance of the evidence standard used at sentencing, this does not alter the fact that Judge Gelpí failed to perform the individualized, record-based analysis that this Court ordered him to undertake on remand. This failure to comply with our order justifies vacatur and remand, just as it did when we considered this case in 2005 and 2011. See, e.g., id. at 384; United States v. Vigneau, 337 F.3d 62, 67 (1st Cir. 2003) (One aspect of the law of the case doctrine is the 'mandate' rule, which requires a district court to follow the decisions of a higher court.); United States v. Ticchiarelli, 171 F.3d 24, 31 (1st Cir. 1999) (same). Accordingly, we vacate and remand Correy's case for resentencing for the third time, and — at the risk of sounding like a broken record — direct the sentencing judge to determine the drug quantity specifically attributable to Correy by thoroughly reviewing the record and assessing witness credibility. -12-