Opinion ID: 2995593
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application of the murder cross

Text: reference The district court inferred from Spradley’s, Jones’s, and White’s participation in the cover-up that they knew Willis had been murdered by someone as a result of his informant activities, which threatened to expose the conspiracy. The attempt to cover up the murder, the district court concluded, was done in furtherance of the goals of the conspiracy and in an attempt to avoid detection. Because relevant conduct includes any action that . . . occurred . . . in the course of attempting to avoid detection or responsibility for that offense, see U.S.S.G. sec.1B1.3(a)(1), the court thought the sec.2D1.1(d)(1) murder cross reference should be applied to each of these defendants./2 According to these defendants, the district court’s findings are insufficient to support application of the cross reference. The Guidelines define relevant conduct as activities that occurred in the course of attempting to avoid detection or responsibility for [the] offense [of conviction]. U.S.S.G. sec. 1B1.3(a)(1)(B). Therefore, they argue, it was inappropriate for the district court to base its application of the cross reference on their cover-up activities because their offense of conviction is a drug-trafficking conspiracy, not murder./3 We disagree with the defendants’ characterization of the district court’s ruling. A fair reading of the court’s order makes clear that it found that the cover-up activities were committed at least in part to avoid detection of the conspiracy. For example, the district court links the defendants’ cover-up activities to the conspiracy when rejecting Spradley’s objection to the Guideline application: Spradley’s role in the clean-up and his knowledge that Willis was giving evidence to the police support the inference that Spradley was aware that Willis had been murdered in an attempt to keep Willis from doing any further damage to the cocaine conspiracy. Similar language is used regarding defendants Jones and White. Therefore we believe that the district court did not treat the murder as the defendants’ offense of conviction. However, the defendants’ argument highlights another potential problem with the district court’s ruling--the possibility that section 2A1.1’s premeditation requirement (see U.S.S.G. sec. 2A1.1, cmt. n. 1) may have been lost in the application of the several Guideline provisions at play here. We remanded a case recently because a district court failed to make a specific finding of premeditation. In that case, United States v. Thomas, 280 F.3d 1149 (7th Cir. 2002), the district court applied the First-Degree Murder Guideline to a defendant convicted of firearm- related convictions. Several facts relied upon by the district court seemed to connect the defendant (Thomas) to the murder of Armando Leal: Thomas was arrested while driving Leal’s vehicle; Leal was likely murdered in that vehicle; Thomas pawned a pistol owned by Leal; and Leal’s blood was found in Thomas’s driveway. But the district court did not discuss how these facts showed that Thomas murdered Leal with malice aforethought. Id. at 1158. The inference of premeditation was not the only one that could be drawn from those facts (for example, Thomas could have driven away in Leal’s car after Leal had been murdered by someone else) so we remanded for the district court to make a specific finding of premeditation. Id. at 1156-57. Here, the district court found that Spradley, Jones, and White knew of the murder and that it was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. In so doing, the court apparently invoked Guideline sec.1B1.3(a)(1)(B), which holdsdefendants accountable at sentencing for the reasonably foreseeable relevant conduct of their coconspirators as long as the conduct was done in furtherance of the conspiracy. Because this additional Guideline is in play, the question we are presented with is slightly different than that presented in Thomas. The question here is whether it was reasonably foreseeable to Spradley, Jones, and White that Willis could be killed, with malice aforethought (premeditation), in furtherance of the conspiracy. See U.S.S.G. sec. 1B1.3(a)(1); sec. 2A1.1. After thoroughly reviewing the court’s ruling, we believe that it made findings sufficient to support application of the First-Degree Murder Guideline to Spradley, but not to Jones or White. We now focus our discussion on whether Willis’s murder was reasonably foreseeable to each defendant.
The district court found that Spradley knew Willis had been murdered to keep him from relaying any more information to law-enforcement authorities. It based its findings, in part, on evidence that Spradley knew about Willis’s informant activities. Coconspirator Keith Cork testified at trial that several days before Willis’s murder, he and Spradley confronted Willis about rumors that he had been talking to the police. Cork’s testimony was corroborated by a statement to the same effect made by Willis to police on June 20, 1997, approximately ten days before the murder. In addition, Cork testified that Spradley, in a meeting about Willis’s informant activities attended by several conspiracy members, said that he would not let anyone hurt them. We believe that this evidence sufficiently supports the conclusion that it was reasonably foreseeable to Spradley that Willis would be murdered with malice aforethought. Spradley knew that Willis was likely to be murdered in an attempt to prevent him from further exposing the conspiracy, which satisfies the test of reasonable foreseeability. Therefore the district court did not err by applying the First-Degree Murder Guideline to Spradley. See United States v. Walker, 142 F.3d 103, 114 (2d Cir. 1998).
We have more difficulty concluding that the Guideline was properly applied to Jones. We do not think the fact that Jones lied to the police about his whereabouts on the morning of June 30th and his participation in the cover-up, taken together, are sufficient to support the inference that it was reasonably foreseeable to him that Willis would be murdered with malice aforethought. These facts tell us nothing about whether Jones had reason to know that someone in the conspiracy was likely to murder an informant. Reasonable foreseeability is the divining rod of the relevant conduct sentencing provision, United States v. DePriest, 6 F.3d 1201, 1212 (7th Cir. 1993) (internal citation omitted), therefore, the burden of proving foreseeability under the circumstances of each individual case [rests] squarely on the government. United States v. Sandoval-Curiel, 50 F.3d 1389, 1393 (7th Cir. 1995). Here, the government has not met its burden. We have been willing to assume that carrying of weapons is foreseeable to most drug conspiracy members, in light of the violent nature of the drug business. See, e.g., id. But even with this presumption of violence, we still require the government to prove that the conspiracy’s actions were foreseeable to each defendant to whom it seeks to impute relevant conduct. See id. The government attempted to prove foreseeability by introducing evidence of conspiratorial violence, which we discuss in more detail later. The government’s evidence of random, non-fatal acts was not sufficient to meet its burden of proving foreseeability. Only one act the government points to actually resulted in an injury, and there was no evidence that this conspiracy had previously involved the murder or attempted murder of informants (or anyone else for that matter). This is simply not enough evidence. Without some better indication that Jones had reason to know that the conspiracy was likely to kill informants, we have no basis for concluding that the premeditated murder of Willis was reasonably foreseeable to him. Cf. United States v. Diaz, 176 F.3d 52, 99-100 (2d Cir. 1999) (holding the murder of a bystander in the commission of attempted murder of another was reasonably foreseeable because the conspirators had agreed to the attempted murder); United States v. Brooks, 957 F.2d 1138, 1149 (4th Cir. 1992) (holding the use of firearm was foreseeable to conspirator who himself had been threatened at gunpoint by other conspirators around the time gun was used). Therefore, we believe the district court erred by applying the First-Degree Murder Guideline to Jones. However, we do not think it necessary to remand for the district court to make additional findings. The court has already recognized in its order that there is no evidence that this conspiracy had [ ] ever engaged in murder. Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s imposition of a life sentence to Jones based on the application of the First-Degree Murder Guideline and remand for the recalculation of his sentence.
For similar reasons, we believe that the district court erred by applying the First-Degree Murder Guideline to White. The court based its application of the Guideline to White on the fact that he lied about his whereabouts on the morning of/after the murder and that he participated in the cover-up./4 From these two facts, it concluded that White knew that Willis had been murdered in White’s sports utility vehicle and that the murder was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy. As our analysis of Jones’s challenge suggests, these facts are insufficient. The fact that White knew that Willis had been murdered does not tell us whether the murder was reasonably foreseeable to him. And it certainly does not tell us whether it was reasonably foreseeable to him that Willis would be murdered with malice aforethought. There is also no indication that the conspiracy had previously engaged in murder or attempted murder. We need more of an explanation to judge whether the inference can be made from these facts that Willis’s premeditated murder was reasonably foreseeable to White, but as is the case with Jones, we think that a remand for additional findings is unnecessary. Instead, we remand for resentencing consistent with our ruling.