Opinion ID: 677382
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Enhancement for Aggravating Role, U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1

Text: 30 Mr. Young also submits that the district court erred in enhancing his sentence for an aggravating role in his possession with intent to distribute conviction. See U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b). We already have held, however, that the district court's sentence must be vacated and remanded for resentencing. Because the effect of a vacation is to nullify the previously imposed sentence, the district court on remand will be writing on a clean slate. Atkinson, 979 F.2d at 1223. As a result, we have not always addressed a defendant's additional arguments concerning alleged errors in the sentence process. See id. Nonetheless, in this case the district court is unlikely to revisit its sentence for Mr. Young's substantive offense and its corresponding finding that his role in the offense required a three-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b). We therefore shall, for the sake of judicial economy, address Mr. Young's argument on the issue of the district court's enhancement for an aggravating role. A district court's determination on this issue is subject to reversal only for clear error. United States v. Vargas, 16 F.3d 155, 160 (7th Cir.1994); United States v. Cantero, 995 F.2d 1407, 1413 (7th Cir.1993). 31 The district court found that an enhancement for Mr. Young's role in the offense as a manager or supervisor was proper for three reasons. First, he received a large share of the fruits of the crime. He earned between $60,000 and $70,000 over the course of several weeks, and contributed no capital to the criminal enterprise. Second, he recruited accomplices to purchase the marijuana. Sent. Tr. 132. Finally, Mr. Young had a decision-making position in the operation stemming from Atkinson's and Montgomery's trust in allowing Mr. Young to recruit persons to purchase the marijuana. 32 In contending that the district court clearly erred in finding his role in the offense to be that of a manager or supervisor, Mr. Young relies heavily on the testimony of Atkinson, the government's sole witness at the resentencing hearing. Atkinson testified that Mr. Young was not included in many of the inner workings of the operation, that Atkinson and Montgomery set the price for the marijuana Mr. Young brokered, and, most importantly, that Mr. Young had no decision-making authority in the operation. Atkinson, Mr. Young emphasizes, stated that Mr. Young's only task in the operation was to provide Atkinson and Montgomery with potential buyers of the marijuana. Moreover, as Mr. Young points out, Atkinson testified that Mr. Young did not have final approval of potential buyers; Atkinson and Montgomery did. Thus, Mr. Young essentially contends that Atkinson's testimony demonstrates that he was no more than a middleman distributor. As such, Mr. Young argues, he was not a manager or supervisor subject to a three-level increase under U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b). See United States v. Brown, 944 F.2d 1377, 1382 (7th Cir.1991) (concluding that middleman status alone cannot support a finding that a defendant was a supervisor, manager or leader of a criminal activity). 33 Under U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b), a defendant who acted as a manager or supervisor in a criminal operation involving five or more participants is subject to a three-level enhancement. The Guidelines do not define the terms manager and supervisor. But the commentary to U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b) sets forth a list of factors a court should consider in distinguishing a leadership and organizational role from one of mere management or supervision. There are seven such factors: (1) the exercise of decision-making authority; (2) the nature of the participation in the commission of the offense; (3) the recruitment of accomplices; (4) the claimed right to a larger share of the fruits of the crime; (5) the degree of participation in planning or organizing the offense; (6) the nature and scope of the illegal activity; and (7) the degree of control and authority exercised over others. U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1, comment. (n. 3); United States v. Skinner, 986 F.2d 1091, 1096 (7th Cir.1993). Like others circuits, see Skinner, 986 F.2d at 1096 n. 1 (collecting cases), this circuit has used these factors for more than simply distinguishing an organizational and leadership role from one of management or supervision. In fact, we have employed them to determine whether a defendant qualifies as a supervisor at all. Brown, 944 F.2d at 1380 n. 1; see also United States v. Bell, 28 F.3d 615, 617 (7th Cir.1994) (using the factors in distinguishing 'organizers and leaders' from 'rank and file criminals' ); United States v. Ramos, 932 F.2d 611, 618 n. 11 (7th Cir.1991) (utilizing the commentary factors in distinguishing between those defendants who should be classified within section 3B1.1(c) and those who should not). We therefore shall use the commentary's factors in reviewing the district court's enhancement determination. 34 At first blush, it appears that Mr. Young is not off-target in comparing the role he played in the marijuana operation to the role the defendant occupied in Brown. In that case, we concluded that, in light of the factors listed in the commentary to U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1, the district court had improperly enhanced the defendant's sentence under U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1 on the basis of his middleman drug distributor status. Id., 944 F.2d at 1381. We expressly emphasized, however, that the district court in that case had erred in relying solely on the defendant's middleman status. Id. at 1382. We made clear that [m]iddlemen are not, of course, immune from application of Sec. 3B1.1. Id. at 1381. We noted that, if the government had shown the presence of some of the factors in the commentary to U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1, such as a larger cut of the profits or recruitment of accomplices, the result may well have been different. Id. 35 In this case, the government did show the presence of these factors. Mr. Young received a large share of the criminal proceeds, yet he contributed no financial capital. Such a setup reflects the fact that the human capital he contributed was highly valued, which is often indicative of a management or supervisory position. He also recruited buyers, in New York, Florida, and elsewhere, through whom the operation could distribute its marijuana nationwide. As we stated in Young I, 997 F.2d at 1213, a good deal of evidence of record supports the conclusion that Mr. Young was quite a bit more than a middleman. Although the record lends little support to show that Mr. Young exercised control over others, it is clear that control over others is not the sine qua non of a finding that a person is manager or supervisor. Id. 36 More important, however, we stressed in Brown that the defendant's role in that case--a third-tier distributor--failed to demonstrate that the defendant was more culpable than others for the wrongdoing--the central concern of Sec. 3B1.1. Brown, 944 F.2d at 1382; see also id. at 1381 (The central concern of Sec. 3B1.1 is relative responsibility.). We iterated this concern for relative culpability in Skinner, 986 F.2d at 1097, in which we stated that the proper focus of an inquiry into a U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1 enhancement was on the relative responsibility for an offense and not exclusively on one of the application note factors. See also Vargas, 16 F.3d at 160. In this case, eleven persons were indicted on the basis of participating in the criminal operation at issue. The government concedes that Atkinson and Montgomery were the clear leaders and organizers, but contends that Mr. Young's relative responsibility is significantly higher than that of any person in the operation other than Atkinson and Montgomery. Mr. Young does not contest this assertion and, from our reading of the facts surrounding the criminal organization, he likely cannot. Unlike many of the other participants, see, e.g., Haynes, 969 F.2d at 571 (stating that Haynes worked at the farm and helped transplant seedlings, guard the farm, tend the fields, and harvest and process the mature plants), Mr. Young's participation in the operation was critical to its success; the operation simply could not have flourished without his distribution contacts. Mr. Young was, in short, more responsible than his codefendants for the commission of the offense. Skinner, 986 F.2d at 1097. 37 We thus must conclude that the district court did not commit clear error in enhancing Mr. Young's offense level by three for his role in the offense pursuant to U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1(b). We note that, as a matter of original impression, the enhancement in this case would be a very close call. The district court identified the presence of only three of the seven factors set out in the commentary to U.S.S.G. Sec. 3B1.1, and it failed to discuss in detail Mr. Young's responsibility in relation to the other participants in the criminal organization. Nonetheless, under the applicable deferential standard of review, we must affirm the three-level increase in the offense level.