Opinion ID: 3203198
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Plainness of the Preponderance Standard

Text: My colleagues write that the Supreme Court might well hold that a sentencing court may not accord any significance to a record of multiple arrests and charges without convictions unless there is adequate proof of the conduct upon which the arrests or charges were predicated. Even as qualified, this observation -- anchored in the Supreme Court's nearly two-decades-old decision in United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997) (per curiam) -- effectively recognizes the long heritage of the principle that criminal charges may not play a role in sentencing without proof that the underlying conduct, in fact, occurred. Nonetheless, the majority depicts the district court's error as not plain in light of dicta in our court's caselaw. The majority is wrong in suggesting that the governing law was equivocal at the time of Cortés-Medina's sentencing. As described below, both Watts and our own precedent make clear that the focus must be on the defendant's actual conduct, not on mere colleagues note that the court could well have believed, even absent facts about the underlying conduct, that Cortés-Medina's pattern of arrests and the persistent lack of follow-up spoke directly to the character of the individual, the risk of recidivism, and the need to protect the public from future crimes. This implicit endorsement of the district court's now-discredited reasoning further reflects the majority's inattention to fairness in this case. - 24 - allegations of criminal activity unsupported by any facts. Indeed, this is commonsense. Even a series of arrests does not prove culpability if none of the charges bore fruit and the court has no information about what triggered the arrests. Sometimes, systemic flaws lead to arrests without justification. See United States v. Zapete-Garcia, 447 F.3d 57, 61 (1st Cir. 2006) (noting that arrest 'happens to the innocent as well as the guilty' (quoting Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 482 (1948)); see also, e.g., United States v. Gallardo-Ortiz, 666 F.3d 808, 815 (1st Cir. 2012) (We have cautioned against district courts relying on mere arrests as indicative of a defendant's character . . . since a criminal charge alone does not equate with criminal guilt of the charged conduct.). Hence, a court imposing incarceration for a later crime cannot simply presume that past charges resolved without conviction, even if there were many of them, are attributable to flawed or lax prosecutorial or judicial systems rather than the defendant's innocence. Nor was there any doubt at the time of Cortés-Medina's sentencing in December 2013 as to the standard of reliability applicable to the consideration of uncharged, dismissed or acquitted criminal activity. The need for proof by at least a preponderance of the evidence had been plainly articulated in both Supreme Court and First Circuit caselaw well before that date. - 25 -
In Watts, the Supreme Court rejected an argument that principles of due process foreclose reliance on acquitted conduct to calculate the Guidelines range, stating that a jury's verdict of acquittal does not prevent the sentencing court from considering conduct underlying the acquitted charge, so long as that conduct has been proved by a preponderance of the evidence. 519 U.S. at 157 (emphasis added). In so stating, the Court reaffirmed its prior holding that application of the preponderance standard at sentencing generally satisfies due process. Id. at 156 (citing McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 91-92 (1986)). Although the focus in Watts was on the use of acquitted conduct to set the Guidelines range, the Court did not suggest that a standard less demanding than preponderance-of-the-evidence applies to the use of acquitted conduct -- or any other unproven criminal activity -- in choosing a sentence within the range.12 To the contrary, multiple statements in the Watts opinions reflect an assumption that any facts used in sentencing -- pertaining to 12Notably, the issue debated by the majority and dissent in Watts was not whether a lesser standard should apply, but whether acquitted conduct should be a factor at all in calculating the Guidelines range. In his dissent, Justice Stevens conceded that the Guidelines permit the use of acquitted conduct in selecting the particular sentence within a range, but argued that acquitted conduct should be entirely excluded from consideration in setting the range. See 519 U.S. at 162, 166 (Stevens, J., dissenting). - 26 - allegations of past criminal conduct, or otherwise -- must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence or an even higher standard of reliability. First, the Court quotes commentary from Guidelines § 6A1.3 stating that it is 'appropriate' that facts relevant to sentencing be proved by a preponderance of the evidence, 519 U.S. at 156, and the majority goes on to make the observation quoted above linking the preponderance standard with the requirements of due process. Id.13 In addition, as quoted above, the Court framed its holding in Watts broadly, without any suggestion that the preponderance standard applies only for the purpose of selecting the Guidelines range: a sentencing court is permitted, in general, to consider conduct underlying the acquitted charge, so long as that conduct has been proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Id. at 157. 13 Section 6A1.3(a) of the Guidelines states, in part: In resolving any dispute concerning a factor important to the sentencing determination, the court may consider relevant information without regard to its admissibility under the rules of evidence applicable at trial, provided that the information has sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy. The commentary invoked by the Court states: The Commission believes that use of a preponderance of the evidence standard is appropriate to meet due process requirements and policy concerns in resolving disputes regarding application of the guidelines to the facts of a case. See 519 U.S. at 156 (citing § 6A1.3 cmt.). - 27 - Second, Justice Scalia points out that the preponderance of the evidence standard -- the measure of reliability the Court has endorsed for other sentencing facts -- is also consistent with due process for conduct underlying an acquittal. He asserts that neither the Sentencing Commission nor the courts may entirely exclude from the sentencing calculus information which would otherwise justify enhancement of sentence or upward departure, or impose some higher standard of probative worth than the Constitution and laws require, simply because that information pertains to acquitted conduct. See id. at 158 (Scalia, J., concurring).14 Third, and consistently, the Watts Court acknowledged the possibility that, in some circumstances, the more demanding clear-and-convincing evidence standard might be appropriate. Id. at 156-57. In a lengthy footnote citing cases reflecting a divergence of opinion among the Circuits, id. at 156, the Court quotes an Eighth Circuit case characterizing the Supreme Court's McMillan decision as approving the preponderance standard only 'for garden variety sentencing determinations,' id. at 156 n.2 (quoting United States v. Townley, 929 F.2d 365, 369 (8th Cir. 1991)). In other words, the Court in Watts considered the 14Although Justice Scalia does not refer expressly to the preponderance standard, he implicitly accepts the lead opinion's affirmation of McMillan and the Court's long-held view that preponderance of the evidence is the constitutional baseline. - 28 - possibility that, at times, an assessment more reliable than the preponderance standard might be applicable to sentencing facts. Neither the Court nor the circuits it quoted in Watts contemplated the possibility of proof less reliable than preponderance of the evidence. This view that Watts reaffirms preponderance of the evidence as the minimum standard of reliability is also reflected in academic literature. See, e.g., Claire McKusker Murray, Hard Cases Make Good Law: The Intellectual History of Prior Acquittal Sentencing, 84 St. John's L. Rev. 1415, 1468 (2010) (Under Watts, prior acquittal sentencing is permitted but not mandated, and a hard floor of reliability is established in the form of the requirement that prior acquitted conduct be proved to a preponderance of the evidence.). Watts was thus not merely a harbinger of a reliability requirement for considering, in the majority's words, a record of multiple arrests and charges without convictions. Maj. Op. Rather, Watts applied a well-established minimum standard in a context -- a jury verdict of acquittal -- where the competing argument was that such charges should not be considered at all.
The preponderance-of-the-evidence baseline for considering sentencing facts has also long been established in our circuit. Indeed, two decades ago, we applied the standard in this very context, i.e., to the choice of sentence within the Guidelines - 29 - range where the court sought to rely on unproven criminal conduct. See United States v. Lombard, 102 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 1996) ([T]he district court may . . . choose to give weight to the uncharged offenses in fixing the sentence within the statutory range if it finds by a preponderance of evidence that they occurred . . . .); see also United States v. Munyenyezi, 781 F.3d 532, 544 (1st Cir. 2015) ([A] judge can find facts for sentencing purposes by a preponderance of the evidence, so long as those facts do not affect either the statutory minimum or the statutory maximum . . . . (citations omitted)); United States v. Fermin, 771 F.3d 71, 82 (1st Cir. 2014) (While the jury must, of course, find facts beyond a reasonable doubt, a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard applies to the sentencing court's factual findings.); United States v. Gobbi, 471 F.3d 302, 314 (1st Cir. 2006) (stating that acquitted conduct, if proved by a preponderance of the evidence, still may form the basis for a sentencing enhancement). I recognize that, despite this well-established standard of reliability, we have not always used the words preponderance of the evidence when considering a district court's reliance on charges that did not lead to conviction. See, e.g., United States v. Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d 16, 21 (1st Cir. 2013); United States v. Lozada-Aponte, 689 F.3d 791, 792 (1st Cir. 2012); Zapete-Garcia, 447 F.3d at 61. Nonetheless, we have applied that standard even when we have not referred to it by name, routinely scrutinizing - 30 - the facts underlying the unproven criminal charges to ensure the necessary degree of reliability. See, e.g., United States v. Hinkley, 803 F.3d 85, 93 (1st Cir. 2015) (upholding court's reliance on reports of inappropriate sexual contact with minors where district court found that it was reasonable to rely on the experience of the detective who prepared the police reports and where certain details reported by [a victim] made the reports 'almost self-authenticating'); United States v. Díaz-Arroyo, 797 F.3d 125, 127, 130 n.3 (1st Cir. 2015) (noting prosecutor's explanation that charges for murder and attempted murder were dropped only after the sole surviving witness to the incident (a minor who was able positively to identify the defendant as the shooter) was threatened and fled the jurisdiction, and that defense counsel did not directly challenge the prosecutor's account of the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the charges); Flores-Machicote, 706 F.3d at 21 (noting that the district court went to considerable lengths to walk through the defendant's prior interactions with the law . . . [and] explained, in some detail, why [it] believed the outcome of these interactions underrepresented the seriousness of the defendant's past criminal conduct); Gallardo-Ortiz, 666 F.3d at 814-15 (noting that the district court took into account, inter alia, that numerous charges were dismissed on speedy trial grounds (i.e., not the merits), and rejecting defendant's contention that the court relied on the - 31 - dismissed charges when concluding that he displayed a violent character); United States v. Tabares, 951 F.2d 405, 411 (1st Cir. 1991) (noting that some charges were dismissed not because of any finding on the merits of the case, but because the defendant was deported, and that defendant did not deny the facts, as set forth in the presentence report, upon which these charges rested).
Given the precedent described above, this should be an easy case for concluding that a remand is necessary because, as the majority concedes, the Probation Office was unable to obtain any information about the conduct underlying the unproven or acquitted charges reported in Cortés-Medina's PSR. The district court thus had no evidence that those charges in fact reflected criminal behavior. At the sentencing hearing, after listing the charges and noting the absence of explanation for the dismissals, the court merely voiced its firm belie[f] that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Presumably, the court meant to offer a different metaphor -- where there's smoke, there's fire -- to say that the unproven charges had substance because CortésMedina had other, similar criminal convictions and also admitted participating in the drug conspiracy charged in this case. The majority concludes that this handling of CortésMedina's criminal history is not plain error because of what they admit is dicta in our precedent positing that a series of arrests - 32 - -- as distinguished from a single arrest -- 'might legitimately suggest a pattern of unlawful behavior even in the absence of any convictions.' See supra (citing Lozada-Aponte, 689 F.3d at 792 (quoting Zapete-Garcia, 447 F.3d at 61)). However, as the label dicta reflects, the cases they cite do not support the proposition that a court may rely on multiple unproven charges in circumstances where, as here, there is no proof of the defendant's underlying conduct. In the cited cases, the courts considered evidence of the conduct. See United States v. Ocasio-Cancel, 727 F.3d 85, 91-92 (1st Cir. 2013) (indicating that the defendant's PSR contained detail on the events giving rise to the dismissed charges and noting that the defendant did not object to any aspect of the discussion); Lozada-Aponte, 689 F.3d at 792 (referring to Lozada's frequent run-ins with law enforcement in Florida, Illinois, and Puerto Rico, some of which apparently involved firearms). 15 Moreover, we cannot allow incorrect, speculative dicta to override standards that are otherwise clearly articulated by the Supreme Court and our own precedent. Cortés-Medina's PSR contains an unelaborated list of his dismissed and acquitted charges, with notations stating that Court documents were requested but have not been received. The 15 In the third case, Zapete-Garcia, the panel rejected reliance on a single arrest that occurred more than a decade earlier, speculating that it might view a series of past arrests differently. 447 F.3d at 60-61. - 33 - PSR states that some of the charges were dismissed for lack of probable cause, while others are simply described as dismissed. The court thus had no basis -- let alone a preponderance of the evidence -- to find that the smoke represented by the unproven charges signified fire. When additional years of incarceration are in the balance, due process requires more than metaphors. The district court thus erred -- plainly -- by relying on those charges to sentence Cortés-Medina to a longer term of imprisonment than it otherwise would have imposed.