Opinion ID: 2709582
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Stewart Is Liable for Distribution of Heroin

Text: Through Intermediaries We next consider whether the district court correctly applied the twenty-year penalty to Stewart, a leader of the conspiracy. The government offered extensive evidence that Stewart was working at the top of the organization, in partnership with its leader, Lonnie Johnson. Stewart was the principal contact and supplier for the conspiracy’s distributors as well as many of its customers. Several of the government’s confidential informants identified him as one of the heads of the organization. Although the district court made no finding that Stewart directly sold the fatal doses of heroin that killed the victims, the government offered extensive evidence supporting the district court’s finding that Stewart was the ultimate source of drugs that killed users. Goetzke and Knuth overdosed on drugs sold by Lund, who had obtained them from his regular supplier: Stewart. Stewart also gave another distributor, Bandkowski, the drugs that caused Carroll’s death. Lawler was the last link in the chain that killed Topczewski, having resold to him a smaller quantity of heroin she had purchased from Bandkowski. At Stewart’s sentencing, the court told the defendant, “Now, I appreciate you may not have been standing over Mr. Knuth when he took that final dose, but that is not what the law requires. The law simply tracks who provided the substance . . . .” The district court correctly applied the sentencing enhancement to Stewart for victims who died using 22 Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 11-1024 & 11-1510 heroin he had provided through intermediaries. As explained above, many of our sister circuits have considered cases involving defendants higher in the chain of distribution than the co-conspirators who gave fatal doses directly to victims. All these cases have held defendants liable for subsequent death caused by drugs resold through an intermediary. See United States v. De La Cruz, 514 F.3d. at 125-26 (defendant led con- spiracy, dispensing drugs through intermediaries); McIntosh, 236 F.3d at 970 (defendant provided drugs to intermediary who later gave them to decedent without defendant’s knowledge or authorization); Robinson, 167 F.3d at 826-27 (same). This conclusion is no accident but the result of the legislative design of § 846. As the Second Circuit observed in United States v. Martinez, 987 F.2d 920, 925 (2d Cir. 1993): The legislative history of 21 U.S.C. § 846 reveals that the intent of Congress in enacting that sec- tion was to ensure that a defendant who is charged with only conspiracy not be in a better position for sentencing than one who is charged solely with possession of the same amount of narcotics. Id. Under the same rationale, a kingpin who finances and controls a drug distribution operation cannot escape liability for the “death resulting” penalty simply because he never personally sold to customers. In this case, it is clear that Stewart’s actions and conduct led to the victims’ deaths. He supplied his distributors and relied upon them to resell to end users. It was Nos. 10-2173, 10-2176, 10-2355, 23 11-1024 & 11-1510 certainly understood that recipients of drugs Stewart provided would resell, share, or otherwise offer the drugs to unknown or unauthorized users. See Robinson, 167 F.3d at 831 (“It was reasonably foreseeable to [the defendant] that [the intermediary] would deliver the drugs to someone else . . . .”). Like our sister circuits, we acknowledge that our analysis might differ if a defendant’s participation in the chain of distribution is especially removed from a victim’s resulting death, as in the cases of Walker and Gladney. In such cases, “a court might conclude that it would not be consistent with congressional intent to apply the mandatory 20-year minimum sentence.” Id. at 831-32. But Stewart’s case does not require us to weigh these concerns. The victims’ deaths were directly caused by Stewart’s criminal conduct; indeed, they were part of the ordinary course of business for the conspiracy he led. Therefore Stewart is liable for the deaths and we affirm the district court’s application of the penalty to his sentence.