Opinion ID: 195454
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: formulating the relevant conduct inquiry

Text: 13 It is beyond serious question that the losses stemming from the 31 transactions closed by appellant constitute relevant conduct under U.S.S.G. Sec. 1B1.3(a)(1). 3 Less obvious is whether the remaining transactions, approximately 60 in number, closed by coconspirators, may be attributed to him. This appeal centers around appellant's insistence that the court below misinterpreted the test governing what the Third Circuit aptly has called accomplice attribution, see United States v. Collado, 975 F.2d 985, 990 (3d Cir.1992), by taking too permissive a view of the test's foreseeability prong. 14
15 The accomplice attribution test is restated in the case law with great frequency, but rarely in quite the same form or with quite the same emphasis. Thus, our perlustration must start with the guideline itself. 16 In its current iteration, 4 the applicable guideline states that relevant conduct includes all reasonably foreseeable acts and omissions of others in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity, that occurred during the commission of the offense of conviction, in preparation for that offense, or in the course of attempting to avoid detection or responsibility for that offense. U.S.S.G. Sec. 1B1.3(a)(1)(B) (Nov.1993). Reading the 1988 version of section 1B1.3(a)(1) in light of subsequent clarifying amendments to both the guideline and its commentary, we understand the Sentencing Commission to have mandated a two-part inquiry for accomplice attribution in the relevant conduct milieu. First, the sentencing court must determine what acts and omissions of others were in furtherance of the defendant's jointly undertaken criminal activity. This task requires the court to ascertain what activity fell within the scope of the specific conduct and objectives embraced by the defendant's agreement (whether explicit or tacit). Second, the court must determine to what extent others' acts and omissions that were in furtherance of jointly undertaken criminal activity likely would have been foreseeable by a reasonable person in defendant's shoes at the time of his or her agreement. 5 17 We think it is important to emphasize that the vantage point for the foreseeability judgment is the time of the defendant's agreement--not necessarily the time he personally undertook the performance of criminal activity, or the time of his entry into the conspiracy. Siting the vantage point in this way has at least two salient implications. For one thing, a court examining relevant conduct may attribute to a defendant acts committed by his accomplices prior to the commission of his own acts, so long as they occur subsequent to his agreement. For another thing, because a single defendant may make multiple agreements or expand an existing agreement, a defendant sometimes may be chargeable with losses arising out of conduct that he could not have foreseen at the time he entered the conspiracy, so long as such conduct was foreseeable at the time that he signaled his agreement to the expanded scope of jointly undertaken criminal activity embracing such conduct. 18 In this case, the inquiry may be truncated. There has never been any suggestion that the 60-something transactions closed by appellant's coconspirators were outside the scope of appellant's agreement, or, put another way, that those transactions were other than in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity. Consequently, this appeal turns exclusively on the issue of foreseeability. 19
20 At the disposition hearing, defense counsel argued that appellant could not have foreseen the conduct of others. The lower court treated this argument as calling into question an application of the guidelines. The court then proceeded to find, based on the trial evidence and the jury verdict, that: 21 Mr. Lacroix was involved in this conspiracy from the beginning. He was aware of the nature and extent of the development that was involved, the development that Alpha was involved in. He was aware of the cost of the homes. He was aware of the profit that was being received, and he was also receiving salaries from Alpha, $173,000 in '87, $187,000 in '88, $25,000 in '89. 22 So in the opinion of the Court he was well aware of the magnitude of what was happening here, and ... under all of the circumstances in which he was involved, the foreseeability in this situation is really inherent in the nature of the conspiracy that was involved here, which was a marketing conspiracy.