Opinion ID: 176991
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Any Error Regarding Number of Robberies Was Harmless

Text: The district court applied the robbery guideline, U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1, to eight arrests. Although Shamah contends that some of these incidents were thefts, and not robberies, the district court stated that the arrests themselves were sufficient to constitute, particularly under a preponderance standard, evidence of robbery rather than theft. The district court went on to state that it was ruling for the government on that as did the jury on the specific incidents that they were directed to rule on. Shamah challenges the district court's application of the robbery guideline to each of the eight incidents because the jury did not find that each incident was a robbery, and he does not believe that each incident was a robbery. Shamah is correct that the jury did not definitively find that all of the eight arrests were robberies. The jury only needed to find that Shamah and Doroniuk conspired to commit two underlying predicate acts of robbery in order to convict Shamah on the RICO conspiracy charge. And, a couple of the arrests may have been thefts and not robberies because of the time and distance between the force and the taking of property. For example, Benton did not have any money taken from his person. It was only after he was arrested and taken back to the station that his money was withheld from inventory. But to the extent that one or two of the eight arrests were improperly deemed robberies by the district court, such error is harmless. The district court only needed to find that more than five of the incidents were robberies to justify a five-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 3D1.4. And the record supports this finding.