Opinion ID: 4350411
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Attributable Drug Quantity

Text: By ﬁnding that both appellants were responsible for arranging the sale of ﬁve kilograms of cocaine instead of one, the district court increased their sentencing guideline ranges from 37–46 months in prison to 70–87 months (after a downward adjustment of three levels for accepting responsibility). See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(c)(8), (5). Appellants argue that the district court erred in attributing ﬁve kilograms to them because they both accepted responsibility for only one kilogram in their plea agreements, Soria-Ocampo’s presentence investigation report concluded he was unaware of any negotiations for a larger sale, and no reliable evidence supported a larger quantity. We review the district court’s sentencing guideline ﬁnding of the attributable drug quantity under § 2D1.1 for clear error. United States v. Austin, 806 F.3d 425, 430 (7th Cir. 2015). When reviewing for clear error, “we will reverse only if after reviewing the entire record, we are left with the ﬁrm and deﬁnite conviction that a mistake has been made.” United States v. Ranjel, 872 F.3d 815, 818 (7th Cir. 2017), quoting United States v. Marty, 450 F.3d 689–90 (7th Cir. 2006). The district court did not commit clear error when it determined that Soria-Ocampo and Campuzano-Benitez were both responsible for ﬁve kilograms of cocaine. In calculating the applicable range under the Sentencing Guidelines for a drug crime, “the government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence the quantity of drugs attributable to a defendant.” Austin, 806 F.3d at 430. A defendant can be held responsible for “all reasonably foreseeable Nos. 18-1236 & 18-1315 7 acts and omissions of others in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity,” including drug quantities. Id. at 430–31, quoting United States v. Soto-Piedra, 525 F.3d 527, 531 (7th Cir. 2008). To determine the foreseeable amount of drugs involved in a conspiracy, the district court must conduct a three-part analysis. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3 cmt. n.3; Soto-Piedra, 525 F.3d at 531–32. First, the court must determine the scope of the criminal activity the co-conspirators agreed to undertake. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(B)(i). The scope of the criminal activity can include “the scope of the speciﬁc conduct and objectives embraced by the defendant’s agreement,” and when determining the scope, “the court may consider any explicit agreement or implicit agreement fairly inferred from the conduct of the defendant and others.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3 cmt. 3(B). Next, the court must consider whether the conduct of the co-conspirators was both in furtherance of the agreed criminal activity and was reasonably foreseeable to the particular defendant. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(B)(ii), (iii); United States v. Hollins, 498 F.3d 622, 630 (7th Cir. 2007) (reasonable foreseeability “refers to the scope of the agreement that [a defendant] entered into when he joined the conspiracy, not merely the drugs he may have known about,” and government need not prove “that the defendant is involved in or even [had] direct knowledge of a particular transaction”), quoting United States v. Flores, 5 F.3d 1070, 1083 (7th Cir. 1993). When making these determinations, the district court may rely on whatever evidence has “suﬃcient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy.” United States v. Pulley, 601 F.3d 660, 665 (7th Cir. 2010). The district court properly identiﬁed and applied this analysis to determine the quantity of cocaine attributable to 8 Nos. 18-1236 & 18-1315 the appellants. First, in a written opinion explaining its drugquantity ﬁnding, the district court determined the “speciﬁc conduct and conspiratorial objectives embraced by both [appellants] consisted of serving as brokers for a single wholesale cocaine transaction between mid-level suppliers . . . and representatives . . . of purported wholesale buyers within the greater Chicago area.” United States v. Soria-Ocampo, 2018 WL 527926, at  (N.D. Ill. Jan. 24, 2018). The court reached this conclusion because it was undisputed that the conspiracy involved a relatively small group over a short period of time. The court found that the transaction was not limited to a single kilogram of cocaine because, when the appellants “agreed to join this endeavor, the parties had not yet decided upon an exact amount of drugs for the deal,” and there was “no convincing evidence in the record that somehow the scope of the jointly undertaken criminal activity was ever restricted to no more than one kilogram.” Id. Next, the district court did not err in determining that the attempted sale of ﬁve kilograms of cocaine was in furtherance of the appellants’ joint criminal activity. Appellants did not dispute their roles as brokers of the transaction, so the court reasonably found that this attempted sale “constituted the desired result of the joint criminal activity at issue.” Id. at . Finally, the district court did not clearly err in concluding the agreement for ﬁve kilograms was reasonably foreseeable to the defendants. The court found that a deal for ﬁve kilograms of cocaine was “the natural and intended consequence of their actions.” Id. The evidence before the court included recorded conversations between Perdomo and the buyers negotiating a ﬁve- to ten-kilogram deal and testimony from Perdomo that the deal was for ﬁve kilograms of cocaine. On this Nos. 18-1236 & 18-1315 9 evidence, the district court would not have been required to ﬁnd the appellants were responsible for ﬁve kilograms, but we are not left with a deﬁnite and ﬁrm conviction that the court committed a mistake in its analysis. The district court reached a reasonable result on the basis of evidentiary conﬂicts and uncertainties that are common in drug conspiracy cases. Appellants argue that the court erred by relying on Perdomo because he was not a credible witness. They highlight inconsistencies in his statements to detectives, his possible motives to lie, and the lack of corroborating evidence. Appellants believe it was clear error to give any weight to Perdomo’s testimony regarding the ﬁnal drug quantity and whether he communicated that amount to the appellants because these statements were “unsubstantiated and self-serving.” We have declined to presume a co-conspirator’s testimony is unreliable. We have said many times that “a sentencing judge is free to credit testimony that is totally uncorroborated, comes from an admitted liar, convicted felon, . . . large scale drug-dealing, paid government informant, or self-interested co-conspirator.” United States v. Isom, 635 F.3d 904, 908 (7th Cir. 2011) (cleaned up); Austin, 806 F.3d at 431 (“Determining witness credibility is especially within the province of the district court and can virtually never be clear error.”) (also cleaned up). We will not second-guess on appeal the district court’s evaluation of Perdomo’s testimony. The district court did not give great weight to Perdomo’s testimony anyway. The judge explained that he “didn’t ﬁnd him incredible . . . [or] credible, either. It just didn’t really matter as to the uncorroborated portions of his testimony.” In 10 Nos. 18-1236 & 18-1315 light of Perdomo’s possible motive to cooperate and his inconsistent statements, the judge explained that he “of course, considered [the] cooperator testimony with caution and great care.” Soria-Ocampo, 2018 WL 527926, at  n.1. The judge noted that in addition to Perdomo’s testimony, “the record here includes numerous recorded undercover conversations, the sworn plea colloquies of several coconspirators, the undisputed portions of the PSRs of Ocampo and Benitez, and the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom.” Id. That was an eminently reasonable approach to Perdomo’s testimony. Appellants also contend that “for there to be reasonable foreseeability on the part of a drug co-conspirator, there must be both, (1) a long tenure of conspiracy and (2) multiple transactions in the course of the conspiracy.” They argue that United States v. Gonzalez, 765 F.3d 732 (7th Cir. 2014), and United States v. Seymour, 519 F.3d 700 (7th Cir. 2008), require a court to consider these additional factors when determining foreseeability of drug quantities. Both Gonzalez and Seymour used the long-tenure and multiple-transactions factors, however, to “support the ﬁnding that the defendant can be held accountable for the aggregate amount of drugs attributable to all the conspirators.” Gonzalez, 765 F.3d at 739. These cases did not create a new requirement that the court should ﬁnd defendants liable for the actions of their co-conspirators only if the scope of the conspiracy involved multiple transactions over a long period. The district court did not commit clear error by supposedly failing to consider these factors. In sum, the district court did not err when it attributed ﬁve kilograms of cocaine to the appellants and used base oﬀense level 30 for both. Nos. 18-1236 & 18-1315 11