Opinion ID: 4199486
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sentencing in Stash-House Sting Cases

Text: As is all too often the case, not only do stash-house stings risk ensnaring those who might otherwise not have committed crimes, but also the resulting convictions regularly give rise to particularly dubious applications of the Sentencing Guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences. Here, as is typical of these stings, the Government intentionally set the amount of fictitious drugs at a level that substantially increased Washington’s sentencing exposure. 11 Kindle, 698 F.3d at 415–16 (Posner, J., dissenting). As I suggested earlier, given Washington’s statements during this scheme, he is not the best example of someone being lured into criminality who may otherwise have continued restoring his life in the community. Nonetheless, he still had the support of a family, and at the sentencing hearing, his loved ones told the court that Washington, after serving time for his first conviction, was “out doing the right thing . . . doing really good,” having, for example, acquired his own business and taking children in the community to baseball games. Sentencing Tr. 36. His mother stated: “He was doing a lot of good things and how he got caught up in that situation is beyond me.” Id. His statements during the scheme notwithstanding, concerns that have been expressed about fictitious stashhouse schemes are no less valid. The tactic still is troubling. 12 See Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura, Redemption in the Presence of Widespread Criminal Background Checks, 47 Criminology 327, 327–59 (2009) (“Recidivism probability declines with time ‘clean,’ so some point in time is reached when a person with a criminal record, who remained free of further contact with the criminal justice system, is of no greater risk than a counterpart of the same age [who has no criminal record] . . . .”). 5 The potential for mischief and abuse is rewarded and encouraged by applying an extraordinarily heavy mandatory sanction that I doubt Congress ever intended to apply where no drugs exist,13 and where the defendant would not have committed a crime without the government’s assistance. Here, the Government decided to charge Washington with a conspiracy involving 5 kilograms or more of cocaine. As the majority notes, given that quantity, Washington’s prior convictions subjected him to a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence. Accordingly, the District Court concluded that it was required to impose the 20-year mandatory minimum sentence that Washington received. Surely, sentences should bear some rational relationship to culpability. Otherwise, the entire enterprise of criminal sanctions is reduced to little more than an abstract matrix of numbers and grids. Yet, on this record, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that Washington would not have conspired to rob a stash house containing, for example, a kilogram less than the 5-kilogram mandatory trigger. No mandatory minimum would have “applied” had this trap been baited with the illusion of a stash house containing four kilograms (translating roughly to upwards of $160,000 in value based on the trial testimony)—thereby placing him beyond the reach of the perceived need to impose a 20-year statutory mandatory minimum sentence.14 It is worth repeating that Washington had no prior history of robbing stash houses containing any quantity of cocaine (let alone 10 kilograms of it), or any history of 13 See infra Part III for a discussion of what, ostensibly, were Congress’s original intentions for tying mandatory minimums to specific drug quantities. 14 I recognize that the 5-kilogram cutoff is equally arbitrary when defendants are sentenced for a quantity of drugs that actually exists. Some degree of arbitrariness may be necessary to any sentencing scheme, and this is no less true when sentencing ranges are largely determined by artificially constructed Federal Sentencing Guidelines ranges. However, that practical reality does not minimize or negate the very real issues of unfairness and the potential for sentencing manipulation in these kinds of cases. 6 committing violent crimes. In addition, as I have noted, he initially stated that he did not want to get involved with cocaine. Even if we accept the deterrent value of mandatory minimum sentences, it is fanciful to believe that Washington would not have been deterred from future criminal activity had a much shorter period of incarceration been imposed. As Judge Posner has argued in similar circumstances, if a shorter sentence had been imposed, “[could] there be any serious concern that upon emerging [from prison, Washington] would embark on a career of robbing stash houses? That if approached by anyone [subsequently] inviting him to launch such a career he would listen to the person?”15 I think not. My concern is exacerbated by the fact that very few nationally-reported cases of government sting operations or investigations specify any fictional amount of cocaine that is less than the 5 kilograms that triggers this mandatory minimum sentence. Other courts have recognized this problem. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit noted in another stash-house case: It is unsettling that in this type of reverse sting, the government has a greater than usual ability to influence a defendant’s ultimate Guidelines level and sentence. It appears to be no coincidence that the [government] chose to [use] no less than [the amount of sham cocaine that would trigger as much as 78 more months of imprisonment] . . .16 15 Kindle, 698 F.3d at 416 (Posner, J., dissenting) (criticizing the fact that the defendant in that stash-house case was imprisoned for 27 years—and proposing that a sentence of 5 years was “more than adequate,” in part because, as a result of the sting, “taxpayers w[ould] be supporting [the defendant] at considerable expense for the next quarter century”). 16 United States v. Caban, 173 F.3d 89, 93 (2d Cir. 1999) (recognizing the defendant’s argument as one paralleling sentence manipulation but concluding that the status of the doctrine at the time was unclear). 7 In fact, it is usually the government’s initial scripting of the stash-house operations, including the quantity of drugs, that automatically subjects defendants to particular sentences.17 It is very troubling that the government can initiate and facilitate criminal conduct, and make strategic choices that result in sentences that have a relationship to culpability that is, at best, tenuous and theoretical. As other courts have observed, in fictitious stash-house stings, “the government has virtually unfettered ability to inflate the amount of drugs” involved—in addition to selecting the type of drugs—“thereby obtain[ing] a greater sentence for the defendant.”18 The government can also “minimize the obstacles that a defendant must overcome to obtain the drugs.”19 Though the District Court here felt compelled to rely on the fanciful quantity the Government selected and to impose the corresponding 20-year 17 It is also the government’s initial scripting of the type of drugs that bears on mandatory minimum sentencing. When asked about choosing that drug for the sting operation in this case, the Government witness described stash-house stings as a “technique . . . developed in the 1980s in response to a trend,” and that “[m]any of the robbery crews . . . specifically target houses where cocaine is stored.” Trial Tr. 82–83. Therefore, “[the sting operation] has to be realistic” and “mirror what’s really going on in the streets for them to believe it and for our safety.” Id. at 83. The witness explained that “when you’re talking about the operation of a stash house, cocaine lends itself . . . as opposed to say another drug like marijuana where—if you’re talking about a large scale, typically you’re talking about a grow house or something like that.” Id. As discussed, infra, however, my concerns about the degree to which such street-informed testimony can be tested leave me doubting whether the government must use cocaine to achieve its law enforcement objectives. Here, for example, Berry expressed only a general interest in robbing a drug stash house without regard for a specific type. 18 United States v. Briggs, 623 F.3d 724, 729 (9th Cir. 2010). 19 Id. at 730. 8 mandatory minimum, “the Government assured such a result in advance by the script that it wrote . . . .”20 My colleagues correctly note that that there was little, if any, countervailing evidence for the District Court to consider in making the factual determination that the agents could have used an amount less than 10 kilograms in creating the stash house.21 The only relevant findings stem from the undercover Agent’s trial testimony that the 10-kilogram amount was selected because that quantity mirrored drug weights typically found in stash houses in Philadelphia. He explained that the proposed scenario had to be realistic, lest robbery crews question the operation’s legitimacy. He also testified that that quantity was based on a consultation with the Drug Enforcement Agency (presumably the Philadelphia Division), which, he claimed, provides “experts in this information.”22 Apparently, the DEA is “aware of exactly what was going on . . . in the Philadelphia Metropolitan region” and provided the quantity “based on search warrants and investigations that they had conducted.”23 Another district court considering a stash-house sting prosecution using 10 kilograms of cocaine was faced with similar government evidence. However, unlike here, that court was able to conclude that “the record [there] [wa]s clear that [the defendant] was ‘in for a penny, in for a pound,’”24 and that the evidence before it had established that the defendant was “‘hungry’ enough to pursue . . .[the] undertaking regardless of any specific amount of drugs.” 25 That district court explained that “[o]nce the Government established that [the defendant] 20 United States v. McLean, 199 F. Supp. 3d 926, 939 (E.D. Pa. 2016). 21 While it was ultimately the 5 kilograms of cocaine that the Superseding Indictment charged that drove Washington’s 20year mandatory minimum, the amount the Government selected allowed it to charge Washington with conspiring to rob 5 kilograms or more, and thereby trigger the mandatory minimum. 22 Trial Tr. 85. 23 Id. 24 McLean, 199 F. Supp. 3d at 935. 25 Id. at 938. 9 was willing to engage in an armed robbery of any quantity large enough to resell, its core law enforcement objective was met.”26 The court cited to the government’s own testimony that “the street value” of a single kilogram of cocaine was $36,000 and that stolen narcotics “represent pure profit,” both factors that would seem to make the sting “sufficiently alluring well below 5 kilograms.”27 My agreement with the Majority on this specific issue notwithstanding, it is nearly impossible for a defendant to ever rebut the government’s “expert”-based explanation for why a given fictitious quantity is necessary or appropriate. Accepting such testimony at face value invites the mischief I mentioned at the outset to drive the sentencing. The district court is also deprived of its well-established sentencing discretion,28 a concern compounded by the problems the district court in McLean identified: The netherworld of criminal activity is by its very nature opaque. For that reason, almost out of necessity, law enforcement officers, whose experiences give them familiarity with that world, are allowed to render certain opinions about use of coded language and street slang. When used in that way, the opinion testimony is interpretive. In stash house sting cases, the Government seeks to make [that opinion testimony] dispositive because the charges themselves are the product of opinion testimony as to 1) the amount of cocaine that would be “expected” to be found in a stash house, and 2) the necessity of specifying substantial amounts to preserve the credibility and safety of the operation. There is a third unstated premise as well—that the targets of the sting would have the same familiarity with the 26 Id. at 935. 27 Id. at 937. 28 See, e.g., Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 390 (1989) (discussing the Sentencing Guidelines and Congress’s “strong feeling that sentencing has been and should remain primarily a judicial function” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 10 quantity of narcotics stored at the average stash house. By definition, such opinions are supported only by personal experience, and the dataset, to the extent that one exists, is created by, and only accessible to, law enforcement. There are no peerreviewed journals within the narcotics trade. There is no way to test the premises on which these sting operations are based. None of the traditional means by which expert testimony can be tested in a systematic way apply here, yet courts are expected to accept such opinion as the justification for undercover operations that inexorably and indiscriminately give rise to large mandatory minimum sentences. 29 I agree. Thus, regardless of whether a claim of sentencing manipulation is raised, any proffered evidence about the need for a given quantity or type of fictitious drugs deserves a great deal more scrutiny than courts give it. 30 Similarly, requiring evidence that a defendant only agreed to participate because of a given quantity or type of drugs seems more than appropriate. Requiring such scrutiny would not eliminate the myriad of problems that pervade these fictitious stash-house stings, but it would at least help minimize the unfairness that can arise from allowing the government to select the drug and the quantity that will reap the biggest reward at sentencing with little or no fear that a sentencing court would ever question the choices.31 29 Id. at 936–37. 30 Here, the District Court did not probe the testimony, which, as the Majority notes, it certainly was free to do. Maj. Op. at 40 n.73. As the Majority further suggests, had there been more fact-finding by the District Court on this issue, some deference to the testimony about the drug quantity may have been appropriate. Id. at 41 n.78. 31 To accept, wholesale, the unsubstantiated rationale that a fictitious quantity of drugs matches what is “realistic” in a particular geographic region also suggests that defendants across the United States could theoretically be subjected to 11 We should not be “delegat[ing] [sentencing discretion] all the way down to the individual drug agent operating in the field.”32 Scrutinizing the basis for the drug quantity would help restore the alignment between culpability and punishment that is jettisoned when the government is allowed to control the defendant’s sentencing exposure. “Deeply ingrained in our legal tradition is the idea that the more purposeful is the criminal conduct . . . the more severely it ought to be punished.” 33 Absent unique circumstances not evident here, a defendant’s criminal exposure should be linked to actual culpability regarding his/her dealings in specific drug quantities. Insofar as sentencing manipulation is concerned, “[t]he question is not whether the underlying criminal conviction is lawful, but rather whether there is reason to reduce the sentence due to the inducements used by undercover police or their agents.” 34 Moreover, “a sentence based on an evaluation of a defendant’s culpability for particular offense conduct, which includes a consideration of police inducements,” serves the retributive goals of “proportional and fair punishment,” is “compatible with the consequentialist aims of incapacitation and deterrence,”35 and is “directly supported by the systemic goal of identifying less blameworthy defendants and mitigating their sentences accordingly.”36 These fundamental principles of criminal justice necessitate closer scrutiny for schemes that originate with, and are driven by, law enforcement because it is highly unlikely that the Sentencing Guidelines were intended to apply to such circumstances.37 This scrutiny is appropriate mandatory minimum sentences if the stash-house drug quantities allowing for such a sentence happen to be “realistic” for those geographic areas, as they apparently are in Philadelphia. 32 United States v. Staufer, 38 F.3d 1103, 1107 (9th Cir. 1994). 33 Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 156 (1987). 34 Eda Katharine Tinto, Undercover Policing, Overstated Culpability, 34 Cardozo L. Rev. 1401, 1454 (2013). 35 Id. at 1418 (emphasis added). 36 Id. at 1420. 37 See infra Part III. 12 even absent specific evidence that the government “intended” to inflate a defendant’s sentence.38 My colleagues discuss our precedent in United States v Twigg39 in rejecting Washington’s claim that the sentence that resulted from this scheme is a denial of his constitutional right to due process. I would emphasize, however, that Twigg does not defeat any claim of sentencing manipulation. Indeed, if anything, Twigg strongly suggests that we should recognize some kind of sentencing factor manipulation claim when appropriate. Although, for reasons the Majority explains, the conduct here may not have crossed the due process threshold,40 38 See Tinto, supra n.34 at 1426 (concluding that “in the context of a sentencing claim, the requirement of an improper [police] motive ignores the needed link between the police conduct and the justification for a reduction in sentence” because “[r]egardless of whether police officers are explicitly making strategic choices based on sentencing laws (and the desire to increase a suspect’s sentence), the motivation for the law enforcement conduct or the inducements used may or may not be relevant from the perspective of assessing the defendant’s culpability”). 39 588 F.2d 373 (3d Cir. 1978). 40 I disagree with the Majority’s suggestion that Washington has not shown prejudice because Washington’s ultimate sentence was significantly below the recommended Sentencing Guidelines range. The Majority, itself, concludes that the District Court was “clearly guided by the mandatory minimum term on the drug counts in crafting the overall sentence.” Maj. Op. at 33 n.55. The District Court never mentioned whether, or the extent to which, it may have departed from the recommended Sentencing Guidelines range had it not been required to impose a sentence of at least 20 years. Neither do I find persuasive the distinction the Majority makes between this case and McLean, to the extent that Washington could rely on that case for whatever persuasive value it may have for his due process argument. The Majority, for example, discusses that the defendant in McLean received a “split” jury verdict on the amount of cocaine involved (5 kilograms with regard to conspiracy but 13 I believe Washington’s sentencing manipulation claim is more meritorious than the Majority concludes. III. Sentencing Factor Manipulation and Mandatory Minimum Sentences The fact that the sentence was mandatory does not necessarily deal a fatal blow to Washington’s sentence manipulation claim. It is difficult to believe that Congress ever considered requiring the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence where 1) the sentence is tied to a fictitious drug quantity in a criminal endeavor that originates with the government, and 2) the defendant would not have engaged in the criminal conduct but for the government’s prompting and encouragement. Congress intended for the 10-year mandatory minimum sentences to apply to “major traffickers,”41 i.e., “manufacturers or the heads of organizations.” 42 The 5-year mandatory minimums were intended to apply to “serious traffickers,” i.e., “managers of the retail level traffic . . . in substantial street 500 grams with regard to attempt) and that there was “no equivalent ambiguity” in the jury’s verdict for Washington here. But that jury finding, while it highlighted the “inherent problems” these prosecutions presented for the district court, McLean, 199 F. Supp. 3d at 939, was not one of the “factors” that led the court to conclude that enforcing the mandatory minimum would “offend due process.” Id. at 943. Regardless of any “ambiguity,” the jury in McLean still found the defendant guilty of conspiring to possess 5 kilograms or more of cocaine which, “absent some constitutional prohibition,” purportedly “bound” the district court—like the District Court here—to a mandatory minimum sentence. Id. at 938. 41 U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Special Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, 119 (1995). 42 H.R. Rep. No. 99-845, 99th Cong., 2d Sess. 1986, 1986 WL 295596; see also 132 Cong. Rec. 27, 193–94 (daily ed. Sept. 30, 1996); 132 Cong. Rec. 22, 993 (daily ed. Sept. 11, 1986). 42 H.R. Rep. No. 99-845, 99th Cong., 2d Sess. 1986, 1986 WL 295596 14 quantities.”43 Despite Congress’s intention for mandatory minimums to reflect culpability based on drug quantities, the law instead has, over time, targeted low-level offenders (e.g., street-level dealers and couriers) more often than high-level offenders.44 For example, in 2009, offenders sentenced for relatively minor roles represented the biggest share of federal drug offenders, while the highest-level traffickers made up a comparatively small share of federal drug offenders.45 The disconnect is not explained by the fact that there are more lowlevel dealers than high-level traffickers. The U.S. Sentencing Commission itself concluded in 2011 that “the quantity of drugs involved in an offense is not as closely related to the offender’s function in the offense as perhaps Congress expected.”46 43 Id. 44 U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Report to the Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System, Appendix D, Figure D-22, available at https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/news/congression al-testimony-and-reports/mandatory-minimumpenalties/20111031-rtc-pdf/Appendix_D.pdf; see U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Special Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, 20–21, 85 (May 2007). See also Deborah Young, Rethinking the Commission’s Drug Guidelines: Courier Cases where Quantity Overstates Culpability, 3 Fed. Sent. Rptr. 63 (1990) (tracking the disproportionate severity of quantity-based penalties for lower-level drug offenders and further observing that the quantity-based Sentencing Guidelines often apply to defendants less culpable than the key drug players, who are the “primary targets of the laws”). 45 U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Report to the Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System (October 2011), Appendix D, Figure D-22, available at https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/news/congression al-testimony-and-reports/mandatory-minimum-