Opinion ID: 772558
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Uncertainty of the Verdict and Sentencing Implications

Text: 28 While defendant has not demonstrated prejudice based on a lack of notice or double jeopardy concerns, defendant would be harmed by a sentence based on the assumption that the jury convicted him for participation in both the Afternoon Transaction and the Evening Transaction. Such a sentence would not properly take into account the uncertainty of whether a general verdict of guilty conceal[ed] a finding of guilty as to one crime and a finding of not guilty as to another. See Margiotta, 646 F.2d at 733. The government itself concedes the existence of this uncertainty inherent in the verdict, agreeing that we may not know which one (or if both) of the transactions the jury agreed upon unanimously. 29 Notwithstanding this uncertainty, it appears that the district court treated defendant as if he had been convicted of both crimes charged in the duplicitous indictment. This is evidenced by, among other things, the district court's express reliance upon the PSR, which listed under the Sentencing Options the applicability of the mandatory statutory sentencing range for offenses involving five or more grams of crack cocaine. See 18 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B). This mandatory minimum would only be applicable if defendant had been convicted based on participation in both the Afternoon Transaction involving 3.4 grams and the Evening Transaction involving 2.8 grams. See Darmand, 3 F.3d at 1581 (Unlike the Guidelines, which require a sentencing court to consider similar conduct in setting a sentence, the statutory mandatory minimum sentences of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1) apply only to the conduct which actually resulted in a conviction under the statute.). The discussion by the parties and the court during the sentencing phase of the trial of defendant's safety valve request, a request that seeks to avoid the effect of applying a statutory minimum sentence to a court's calculations under the Guidelines, see U.S.S.G. § 5C1.2, provides similar evidence that the court and the parties assumed a conviction based on both transactions that triggered the statutory minimum sentence. 30 In addition, neither the district court nor the PSR suggested that one of the transactions might constitute relevant conduct with respect to sentencing based on the other transaction, which would have justified aggregating the drug amounts from the Afternoon and Evening Transactions under the Guidelines. See U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3. In fact, the only specific decision that the district court appears to have made about the relationship between the two transactions is that there was not a sufficient link between them to sustain a conviction on the charge of conspiracy in Count I. 31 In Darmand, this Court addressed a similar situation in which it appeared that the district court had, in imposing a sentence, incorrectly treated the defendant's prior conduct as conduct for which he had been convicted. Specifically, we noted that 32 our review of the sentencing proceedings... indicates that the district court may have assumed that U.S.S.G. § 3D1.2(d) (grouping rules for convictions)applied rather than U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(2) (relevant conduct) applied to this case. In particular, it appears that the district court, with the acquiescence of the parties, adopted the analysis of the presentence report on this issue. 33 Darmand, 3 F.3d at 1581. We rejected the government's argument, also made here, that the district court's decision to include drugs from an earlier incident in its sentencing calculations should be deemed to reflect an implicit relevant conduct analysis, and remanded for the court to consider the relevant conduct issue and resentence accordingly. Id. at 1581, 1583. Although a finding of relevant conduct on remand would have allowed the district court to impose a sentence of the same duration, we emphasized that the initial failure to make such a finding was not immaterial: 34 The difference is significant because, while both sections [of the Guidelines cited above] require the addition of quantities of drugs involved in separate offenses to determine the offense level, they do so in different contexts and use different standards.... 35 ... Section 1B1.3... may deal with conduct which has not led to a conviction or otherwise been established beyond a reasonable doubt.... 36 We think the Sentencing Commission could reasonably conclude that not all such conduct is relevant. 37 Id. at 1582. Absent a remedy, defendant here would be similarly harmed by the duplicity of Count II of the indictment.