Opinion ID: 543731
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Consideration of Uncharged and Unseized Quantities

Text: 20 Santiago's principal challenges to the sentencing court's consideration of the quantities of heroin involved in his past sales to Shattuck are that (a) it is impermissible to consider narcotics that were neither seized nor made the subject of a count of the indictment, and (b) the evidence of prior sales was insufficient. We reject these contentions. 21 The contention that it is impermissible to consider quantities of narcotics that were neither seized nor charged has recently been rejected by this Court. See United States v. Colon, 905 F.2d 580, 586-87 (2d Cir.1990); United States v. Schaper, 903 F.2d 891, 898 (2d Cir.1990). The Commentary to Sec. 1B1.3 of the Guidelines states that 22 in a drug distribution case, quantities and types of drugs not specified in the count of conviction are to be included in determining the offense level if they were part of the same course of conduct or part of a common scheme or plan as the count of conviction. 23 In Schaper, on an appeal by the government, we vacated a sentence entered after the district court had refused to take uncharged and unseized quantities of narcotics into account. We stated that 24 [q]uantities of narcotics neither charged in the indictment nor physically seized are relevant conduct for calculation of the base offense level if they were part of the same course of conduct as the counts leading to conviction. 25 903 F.2d at 898. Accordingly, Santiago's contention that as a matter of principle prior sales to Shattuck could not be considered is foreclosed. 26 The contention that the evidence was insufficient to establish that there were any prior sales has no greater merit. The government was required to establish those sales by a preponderance of the evidence, see United States v. Shoulberg, 895 F.2d 882, 886-87 (2d Cir.1990); United States v. Guerra, 888 F.2d 247, 251 (2d Cir.1989), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 1833, 108 L.Ed.2d 961 (1990), and we must accept the findings of fact of the district court unless they are clearly erroneous and ... give due deference to the district court's application of the guidelines to the facts. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3742(e) (1988); see United States v. Parker, 903 F.2d 91, 103 (2d Cir.1990); United States v. Shoulberg, 895 F.2d at 884. We will not overturn the court's application of the Guidelines to the facts before it unless we conclude that there has been an abuse of discretion. We see no clearly erroneous finding or abuse of discretion here. 27 The record included evidence that Shattuck had made some 12-18 trips to Vermont in the period February to August 1988 to deliver heroin to his customers; he said he had obtained heroin from Santiago on a dozen occasions. Telephone toll records supported Shattuck's statement. In addition, there was evidence of the postarrest admission by Santiago that he had sold heroin to Shattuck on five occasions, and of the postarrest statement by Priscilla that Santiago had made such sales on several occasions. Though Santiago testified that he had made no such sales and no such admission, the district court found, as it was entitled to do, that his testimony was not credible. Further, in assessing Santiago's postarrest acknowledgement of five prior sales, the court was entitled to infer that such an admission was likely to have understated the actual number of prior transactions. We conclude that the district court's finding that Santiago had in fact made a dozen prior sales to Shattuck was amply supported. 28 The more interesting question is whether the evidence was sufficient to permit the court to find that Santiago's prior sales and the April 7, 1989 sale were part of the same course of conduct. The period during which the prior sales occurred dated back to the six-month period prior to Shattuck's August 1988 arrest, i.e., 8-14 months prior to the April 7 sale. This is considerably longer than the periods involved in most of our prior cases construing the Guidelines, especially those focusing on offenses other than conspiracy. See, e.g., United States v. Guerrero, 863 F.2d 245, 249-50 (2d Cir.1988) (two narcotics sales one week apart properly considered same course of conduct); see also United States v. Coe, 891 F.2d 405, 409-10 (2d Cir.1989) (upward departure from Guidelines not appropriate because, inter alia, four robberies spanning two weeks may be considered same course of conduct under Sec. 1B1.3). Nonetheless, whether two or more transactions may be considered part of the same course of conduct is not determined by temporal proximity alone. 29 The phrase same course of conduct is not defined in the Guidelines. A normal reading, however, suggests that the sentencing court is to consider such factors as the nature of the defendant's acts, his role, and the number and frequency of repetitions of those acts, in determining whether they indicate a behavior pattern. As viewed by the Chairman and the General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission, which promulgated the Guidelines, the scope of this Guidelines concept may best be fathomed by noting that it is similar to, but broader than, the scope of Fed.R.Crim.P. 8(a), which permits the joinder of two or more charges against a given defendant in a single prosecution if the charges are of the same or similar character or are based on the same act or transaction or on two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan: 30 [t]he phrase same course of conduct, as used in subsection (a)(2) [of Sec. 1B1.3], does not have an exact counterpart in Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The phrase, however, at least encompasses that portion of Rule 8(a) permitting joinder of offenses that are of the same or similar character or that involve two or more acts or transactions connected together. The guideline term is broader than this analogous language, since it does not require a connection between the acts in the form of an overall criminal scheme. Rather, the guideline term contemplates that there be sufficient similarity and temporal proximity to reasonably suggest that repeated instances of criminal behavior constitute a pattern of criminal conduct. 31 Wilkins & Steer, Relevant Conduct: The Cornerstone of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 41 S.C.L. Rev. 495, 515-16 (1990) (emphasis in original; footnote omitted). 32 For purposes of analysis under Rule 8(a), no one characteristic is always sufficient to establish 'similarity' of offenses, 8 Moore's Federal Practice p 8.05, at 8-22 to 8-23 (2d ed. 1989), and each case depends largely on its own facts. We have held that Rule 8(a) did not prohibit the joinder of counts for two similar distributions of heroin simply because they occurred more than eight months apart. United States v. Adams, 434 F.2d 756, 760 (2d Cir.1970). Accord United States v. Sanders, 463 F.2d 1086, 1089 (8th Cir.1972) (narcotics sales eight months apart). Indeed, we have held that two thefts from the same warehouse, involving the same parties, were sufficiently similar to permit joinder although the thefts occurred two years apart. United States v. Werner, 620 F.2d 922, 926 (2d Cir.1980). 33 Viewing the scope of the Guidelines' same course of conduct as broader than that of Rule 8(a)'s joinder principles, we cannot conclude that the mere fact that the events were separated by some eight months means they are not part of the same course of conduct. Certainly in Guidelines cases involving charges of conspiracy during periods spanning many months, we have in no way indicated any doctrinal limitation as to the period during which the same course of conduct may have occurred. In United States v. Schaper, for example, in which we remanded for consideration of the defendant's past narcotics sales, narcotics records reflected transactions for two months prior to the substantive offense, and the indictment charged a conspiracy dating back 11 months. We did not suggest any inherent temporal limitation on the transactions to be considered but noted only that any amounts considered must have been part of the same course of conduct as the counts leading to conviction. See also United States v. Colon, 905 F.2d at 588 (not suggesting any doctrinal temporal limitation but reserving decision only as to whether consideration of sales spanning a two-year period was justified by record). 34 In the present case, the record supported the district court's determination that the prior sales were part of the same course of conduct as the April 7 sale. The fact that sales had been interrupted because of Shattuck's arrest, which obviously altered the behavior pattern of Shattuck, had no relevance to whether the April 7 delivery was part of the same course of conduct by Santiago. The evidence indicated plainly that Santiago, who suggested, inter alia, that the parties meet for the April 7 delivery in the same place they had met the time before, was prepared to continue selling precisely as he had done earlier. The fact that a period of some eight months had elapsed before a controlled buy could be arranged did not preclude a finding that Santiago's attempt to sell to Shattuck for the 13th time was part of the same course of conduct as his prior 12 sales. In all the circumstances, we find no error or abuse of discretion in the district court's consideration of the prior sales by Santiago to Shattuck in calculating the base offense level.