Opinion ID: 735405
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Enhancement for Bodily Injury to Victim

Text: 19 Under another specific offense enhancement provision governing robbery offenses, the sentencing court is required to increase the offense level according to the seriousness of the injury if any victim sustained bodily injury. U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(3). Specifically, the sentencing court must increase the defendant's base offense level by two if any victim sustained bodily injury, id. § 2B3.1(b)(3)(A), by four if any victim sustained serious bodily injury, id. § 2B3.1(b)(3)(B), and by six if any victim sustained permanent or life-threatening bodily injury, id. § 2B3.1(b)(3)(C). 20 The parties do not dispute that a bystander at the scene of the crime sustained a serious bodily injury within the meaning of subsection 2B3.1(b)(3)(B) when a stray bullet struck her during the exchange of fire between the conspirators and the guards. See id. § 1B1.1 comment. (n.1(j)) ( 'Serious bodily injury' means injury involving extreme physical pain ... or requiring medical intervention such as surgery, hospitalization, or physical rehabilitation.). The parties also do not dispute that bystanders constitute victims within the meaning of this specific offense enhancement. See United States v. Muhammad, 948 F.2d 1449, 1456 (6th Cir.1991) ([T]he language 'any victim' in § 2B3.1(b)(3) was meant to include any employee, bystander, customer, or police officer who gets assaulted during the bank robbery or during an attempted get-away.). The only issue, therefore, is whether this enhancement applies when the bullet that caused the victim's injury did not come from the weapon of either Serrano or Santiago, but from one of the guards. This legal question is subject to de novo review, see United States v. Hernandez-Santiago, 92 F.3d 97, 100 (2d Cir.1996), and we conclude that the District Court erred in ruling that, as a matter of law, the bodily injury enhancement of subsection 2B3.1(b)(3) cannot be applied to increase a defendant's sentence under such circumstances. 21 The District Court relied expressly on United States v. Gordon, 64 F.3d 281 (7th Cir.1995), in which the Seventh Circuit held that an enhancement based on subsection 2B3.1(b)(2)(A) for discharging a firearm could be imposed only if the person who discharged the weapon was the defendant or one of his co-conspirators. In that case, the defendant, while attempting to rob a bank, used a metal pipe as a fake gun. When a security guard grabbed the defendant from behind, pointed his firearm at him, and told him not to move or he would be shot, the defendant continued to struggle with the guard, and the guard discharged his weapon at the defendant. The sentencing court reasoned that subsection 2B3.1(b)(2)(A) was applicable and increased the defendant's base offense level by seven because the guard's firearm was discharged as a proximate result of the defendant's conduct of struggling with the guard. Id. at 283. The Seventh Circuit reversed, rejecting the Government's theory that the enhancement could be applied because the defendant had induced ... or willfully caused the guard to discharge his gun, see U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(A), and reasoning instead that this subsection requires the defendant to have an actual intent or desire that [his] actions create the specific result. Gordon, 64 F.3d at 283. Under this specific intent interpretation of subsection 1B1.3(a)(1)(A), the defendant's conduct could fall within this subsection only in a very narrow set of circumstances, where the defendant had the intent to cause a guard or other non-participant to discharge a firearm. Id. Since the defendant would have to be suicidal to intend that a guard discharge [his] firearm during a robbery, and because [s]ection 2B3.1 is not meant to punish attempted suicides, the Seventh Circuit rejected the district court's application of the discharge enhancement. Id. at 283-84. 22 Although we question Gordon 's specific intent reading of subsection 1B1.3(a)(1)(A), see, e.g., United States v. Williams, 51 F.3d 1004, 1011 (11th Cir.1995) (discharge enhancement applicable because defendant  'induced' [the victim] to fire his weapon by approaching victim with his own firearm already drawn) (citing U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(A)), we reject the District Court's reliance on Gordon for a different reason. The Seventh Circuit neglected to consider another subsection of the relevant conduct provisions of section 1B1.3 in conjunction with the subsection relied upon by the Government in that case: 23 (a) [S]pecific offense characteristics ... shall be determined on the basis of the following: 24 (3) all harm that resulted from the acts and omissions specified in subsections (a)(1) and (a)(2) above, and all harm that was the object of such acts and omissions.... 25 U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(3) (emphasis added). A commentary to this subsection states that the term harm includes bodily injury, monetary loss, property damage and any resulting harm. Id. comment. (n.4). 26 Included within the subsection (a)(1) cross-referenced in subsection 1B1.3(a)(3) are the following provisions: 27 (a) [S]pecific offense characteristics ... shall be determined on the basis of the following: 28 (1) (A) all acts and omissions committed, aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, or willfully caused by the defendant; and 29 (B) in the case of a jointly undertaken criminal activity ..., all reasonably foreseeable acts and omissions of others in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity. 30 U.S.S.G. §§ 1B1.3(a)(1)(A), (B). In Gordon, the relevant subsection to be considered in conjunction with subsection 1B1.3(a)(3) was subsection 1B1.3(a)(1)(A) because the defendant acted alone, while in the present case the subsection that must be considered together with subsection 1B1.3(a)(3) is subsection 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), since Molina acted in concert with several co-conspirators. 31 The plain language of subsections 1B1.3(a)(3) and 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), read together, indicates that the bodily injury enhancement of subsection 2B3.1(b)(3) must be applied to Molina even if the harm to the victim was the immediate result of a bullet fired from the weapon of a guard. Since we have already concluded that it was reasonably foreseeable to Molina that Serrano and Santiago would discharge their weapons during the commission of the robbery to further the aims of the conspiracy, if the injury to the victim can properly be characterized as a harm that resulted from the co-conspirators' acts of discharging their weapons at the armed guards, then the bodily injury enhancement must be applied to Molina's sentence. The only remaining question, therefore, is whether the victim's injury resulted from Serrano's and Santiago's discharge of their firearms. 32 Case law interpreting the resulted from language of subsection 1B1.3(a)(3) is surprisingly sparse. 2 However, courts have considered similar language found in section 5K2.1, which permits the sentencing court to increase the defendant's sentence above the authorized guideline range [i]f death resulted. In Williams, for instance, the Eleventh Circuit upheld the sentencing court's upward departure based on this section where the victim was killed by a bullet from a co-victim's weapon when the co-victim attempted to fend-off the defendant's armed attempt to carjack the victims' vehicle. 51 F.3d at 1006, 1012. Noting that when determining whether a death 'resulted' from the offense for purposes of section 5K2.1, a factual finding 'that death was intentionally or knowingly risked ' is sufficient, id. at 1012 (emphasis added) (citations omitted), the Court in Williams concluded that the departure was warranted because [i]n approaching the truck with a weapon, [the defendant] knowingly risked the lives of its occupants; he ' put into motion a chain of events that contained an inevitable tragic result. '  Id. (emphasis added) (citation omitted). Other cases have similarly interpreted the resulted [from] language of section 5K2.1. See, e.g., United States v. White, 979 F.2d 539, 544-45 (7th Cir.1992) (where victim, sixteen-year-old prostitute, was murdered by customer, upward departure proper for defendant convicted of interstate transportation of minor for purpose of prostitution, because defendant's convicted conduct put into motion a chain of events that contained an inevitable tragic result and because victim's death was foreseeable outcome of defendant's actions) (quotations omitted); United States v. Rivalta, 892 F.2d 223, 232 (2d Cir.1989) (sentencing court must find that death was  'intended or knowingly risked'  by the defendant's conduct to justify upward departure under subsection 5K2.1) (citation omitted); United States v. Salazar-Villarreal, 872 F.2d 121, 123 (5th Cir.1989) (upward departure proper for defendant convicted of transporting illegal aliens within the United States because defendant's reckless and injurious flight to avoid capture foreseeably resulted in accidental death of aliens hiding in defendant's vehicle); see also United States v. Walls, 80 F.3d 238, 241-42 (7th Cir.1996) (upholding upward departure under subsection 2K2.1(c) (applicable when death results from possession of weapon during commission of another offense) [r]egardless of whether [the defendant] fired the fatal shot because his conduct of leading group of armed men to third party's house in order to threaten him was intentional or reckless and bystander's death was a foreseeable risk of [the defendant's] conduct). 33 Analogously, since it is evident that Serrano and Santiago knowingly risked bodily injury to victims when they discharged their weapons in an attempt to rob an armored car protected by armed guards on a busy street during the middle of the day, the injury to the bystander is properly characterized under subsection 1B1.3(a)(3) as a harm that resulted from the co-conspirators' discharge of their weapons. Because Molina is liable for the co-conspirators' discharge of their weapons under subsection 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), and for all harm resulting from those acts under subsection 1B1.3(a)(3), the District Court must apply the four-level subsection 2B3.1(b)(3)(B) enhancement to Molina's sentence since Serrano's and Santiago's discharge of their firearms put into motion a chain of events that contained the inevitable tragic result of the bullet being lodged in the bystander's foot. See United States v. Fitzwater, 896 F.2d 1009, 1012 (6th Cir.1990) (upholding bodily injury enhancement where the bank teller/victim hit her head and hip on her teller's drawer in the course of lying down on the floor during the robbery, despite fact that defendant was outside the bank in a getaway car when the victim sustained her injury, because it was reasonably foreseeable [to the defendant] that participation in concerted criminal conduct to rob a bank might result in the infliction of such an injury to a bank teller). 34 Finally, we note that nothing in the text or substance of subsection 2B3.1(b)(3) precludes its application when the victim is injured by a bullet from a guard's weapon. Unlike the firearm employment enhancements in subsection 2B3.1(b)(2), for instance, which, as both parties in Gordon conceded, would become senseless if a robbery defendant [were given] an upward adjustment each time a guard or some bystander brandished or otherwise used a firearm, Gordon, 64 F.3d at 283, it is entirely sensible to conclude that an enhancement under subsection 2B3.1(b)(3) is appropriate whenever a victim suffers bodily injury as a direct and foreseeable result of the defendant's or his co-conspirators' criminal conduct. Although it would be unusual to punish a defendant more severely when a bystander or law enforcement officer decides to display, brandish, or discharge a firearm, punishing a defendant more severely for foreseeable harms flowing from criminal conduct that intentionally or knowingly risked those harms--for instance, in the felony-murder context--is not an unusual aspect of Anglo-American criminal jurisprudence.