Opinion ID: 2709582
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Finding Walker and Gladney Liable for Deaths

Text: Caused by Co-Conspirators’ Distribution of Heroin Was Error We begin by considering whether the district court correctly imposed the statutory penalty on Walker and Gladney—two street-level distributors—who did not directly distribute drugs to the users who died or distribute drugs through intermediaries. At sentencing, Walker and Gladney argued that the mandatory minimum penalty did not apply to them because the government failed to prove that the drug users’ deaths were reasonably foreseeable to them. The district court Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 15 11-1024 & 11-1510 expressed misgivings about the manner in which § 841(b)(1)(A) could be applied, but believed its hand were tied, stating: [A]lthough [Gladney] perhaps did not in any one of these deaths personally deliver the heroin that ultimately was ingested by the decedents, the statute on its face makes it clear that anyone associated with the conspiracy and the conduct that underlies it during the relevant time period is strictly liable and accountable for sentencing purposes for death. But we cannot conclude that the application of the penalty to Walker and Gladney was supported by this record. The government maintains that when a victim dies from using drugs distributed by a conspiracy, all coconspirators are subject to the twenty-year mandatory minimum penalty under Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640 (1946). The Pinkerton doctrine holds that a member of a conspiracy can only be held liable for the reasonably foreseeable crimes committed by his accomplices in the course of the conspiracy. Id. at 647-48. The government argues that the Pinkerton doctrine was intended to hold defendants liable for the substantive offenses of their co-conspirators, not for the consequences of their co-conspirators’ actions. In this case, it is foreseeable that members of heroin distribution conspiracy will sell heroin. Users died from heroin sold by members of the conspiracy. Therefore, in the government’s view, 16 Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 11-1024 & 11-1510 every defendant must be held strictly liable for a death caused by any co-conspirator’s sale of drugs. But the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Swiney dealt with a factual scenario nearly identical to our case and rejected the strict liability approach for defendants like Walker and Gladney. Swiney highlighted an important distinction between a defendant’s criminal liability for acts committed by others in furtherance of the conspiracy and the sentencing consequences for a particular defendant. Under § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), sentencing liability is limited to “the scope of the specific conduct and objectives embraced by the defendant’s agreement.” As a result, the Sixth Circuit had “no difficulty in reconciling the mandatory minimum language of § 841(b)(1)(C) and § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B),” finding it “clear that the Sentencing Guidelines have modified the Pinkerton theory of liability so as to harmonize it with the Guidelines’ goal of sentencing a defendant according to the ‘seriousness of the actual conduct of the defendant and his accomplices.’ ” Swiney, 203 F.3d at 404-05 (quoting William W. Wilkins & John R. Steer, Relevant Conduct: The Cornerstone of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 41 S.C.L. Rev. 495, 502 (1990)). The government argues that death is always a fore- seeable result of illegal drug distribution, but the resulting sentencing scheme for co-conspirators under § 841(b)(1)(A) would have far-reaching implications. Consider the circumstances in United States v. McIntosh, 236 F.3d 968 (7th Cir. 2001), where a young girl died Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 17 11-1024 & 11-1510 from ingesting methamphetamine residue retained on a coffee filter. In that case, the defendant did not directly provide the victim with the drug, but the district court applied the mandatory minimum sentence under § 841(b)(1)(A) because the defendant originally produced the drug. Under the government’s approach here, not only would the individual who produced the methamphetamine receive the twenty-year minimum sentence, but every person connected with the conspiracy in any way—from the lowliest lookout on the corner to the boss—would all receive the same twentyyear penalty. Such a result is overly broad and not supported by the law in our view. A member of a multi-level drug network may be criminally liable for aiding the broader conspiracy, but a district court has to explain why the fatal heroin doses are among the drugs attributable to a defendant for relevant conduct purposes in sentencing. See Swiney, 203 F.3d at 404. This does not mean that a defendant has to foresee a particular drug transaction leading to a user’s death, but mere participation in the overall conspiracy is not sufficient for relevant conduct purposes. Notably, much of the circuit precedent on which the government relies explicitly distinguishes defendants like Walker and Gladney—whose sentences were enhanced based solely on the conduct of their coconspirators—from those who either directly distributed (or used an intermediary to distribute) drugs that killed users. In McIntosh, the Eighth Circuit specifically noted that it was not faced 18 Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 11-1024 & 11-1510 with a situation in which the government seeks to vicariously enhance a defendant’s sentence based solely on the actions of a co-conspirator or coconspirators . . . . We find Swiney’s reasoning applicable only in those cases in which a conspir- acy defendant played no direct part in manufac- turing the drug or in immediately distributing the drug that caused the death or serious bodily injury. If the government seeks to enhance a con- spiracy defendant’s sentence, as it did in Swiney, based solely on conduct of a co-conspirator, a foreseeability analysis may be required in determining whether Congress intended, under § 846, that the defendant be held accountable for the conduct of a coconspirator. 236 F.3d at 974 (emphasis added); see also United States v. Carbajal, 290 F.3d 277, 284 (5th Cir. 2002) (“The court in Swiney . . . addressed a situation in which the defendant played no direct role in distributing or manufacturing the drugs that allegedly caused the deaths.”). The circumstances of Walker and Gladney are equivalent to Swiney and we adopt the reasoning of the Sixth Circuit. Walker and Gladney do not dispute that they distributed drugs as members of the conspiracy. But the government offered no evidence that they had any connection to manufacturing or distributing the fatal doses of heroin that caused the five deaths, and the district court failed to explain why the fatal doses should count for relevant conduct. The government Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 19 11-1024 & 11-1510 contends that the district court implicitly found that the deaths fell within Walker’s and Gladney’s relevant conduct because the court stated that the two were “deeply” involved in the conspiracy. But the presentence report outlines different sentencing liability for these defendants vis-à-vis their superiors. As leaders, Johnson and Stewart were equally responsible for the total drugs distributed—between three and ten kilograms of heroin—but the quantities attributed to Walker and Gladney did not equal that amount. Walker was responsible for one to three kilograms of heroin, while Gladney distributed between 700 grams and 1 kilogram of heroin. Four of the five deaths occurred in Waukesha, but the district court made no findings about whether Walker and Gladney dealt drugs in that area or whether they should have reasonably foreseen their co-conspirators’ distribution.3 Furthermore, the record contains a diagram of the conspiracy from the initial request for a search warrant, which visually links the four Waukesha deaths to a distribution chain running from Johnson to Stewart, Lund, Bandkowski, and Lawler with no connection to Walker or Gladney. And Valerie Luszak, the one victim who died in Milwaukee, appears to have purchased heroin directly from Johnson. 3 Gladney’s defense counsel also objected to the admission of the autopsy report for Joshua Carroll since he died on December 30, 2007, and Gladney did not join the conspiracy until sometime in February 2008. 20 Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 11-1024 & 11-1510 To be clear, the twenty-year sentencing enhancement may apply even if Walker and Gladney did not per- sonally sell any of the fatal doses at any point in the distribution chain that ultimately reached the victims. Consider the following example: A gives drugs to B, B sells them to C, and C dies. D, a member of the overall drug conspiracy, may be subject to the twenty-year sentencing penalty even though she did not directly sell the fatal dose to C, but “the court must first determine the scope of the criminal activity the particular defendant agreed to jointly undertake” under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B) before the penalty is applied. Otherwise, we have no way to know whether a defendant is being sentenced on the basis of drugs that were distributed in furtherance of the conspiracy and that distribution was reasonably foreseeable, or whether a defendant is being sentenced strictly on the basis of his general participation in a conspiracy in which a drug user died. In reaching this conclusion, we also have no doubt that in setting a twenty-year mandatory minimum sentence, Congress sought to emphasize the inherent dangers associated with distributing controlled substances and to severely penalize sellers. But the question of whether defendants will be subject to this twentyyear minimum sentence depends upon whether their relevant conduct encompasses the drugs linked to an individual’s death. Because the district court did not explicitly make such a finding for Walker and Gladney, we vacate their sentences and remand for resentencing. Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 21 11-1024 & 11-1510