Opinion ID: 766486
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Bicaksiz's Consecutive Sentences2

Text: 15 Bicaksiz first argues on appeal that the District Court erred in imposing consecutive sentences for his conspiracy and substantive offense convictions under 18 U.S.C.1958 3 -that is, for imposing separate sentences for each of the charged offenses. 16 Bicaksiz relies principally on cases from other circuits holding that a defendant may not receive multiple sentences for violating multiple subsections of another statute, 18 U.S.C. 922(g). See, e.g., United States v. Munoz-Romo, 989 F.2d 757 (5th Cir. 1993); United States v. Winchester, 916 F.2d 601 (11th Cir. 1990). Section 922(g) prohibits the shipment or receipt of a firearm or ammunition by certain types of individuals-such as convicted felons and drug addicts-enumerated in the statute's subsections. 4 In Winchester, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that Congress did not intend to provide for the punishment of a defendant under two or more separate subdivisions of 18 U.S.C. 922(g). Winchester, 916 F.2d at 607. The Winchester Court reasoned that 922(g) was meant to be used to keep guns out of the hands of certain categories of persons, not to punish individuals for having a particular status, such as that of convicted felon, drug addict, or illegal alien. The Winchester Court also noted that a contrary interpretation would allow a defendant who is a convicted felon and is also a fugitive from justice, a drug addict, a mental defective, and an illegal alien, to be sentenced to five separate terms for the same incident. Id. at 607. 17 These 922(g) cases, however, are inapposite. The multiple convictions of Bicaksiz are attributable not to his multiple characteristics or statuses but, instead, to the fact that he both committed a substantive offense and engaged in a conspiracy to commit that offense. The Supreme Court has long held that these are separate and distinct offenses that may permissibly result in the imposition of cumulative sentences. See Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 593, 5 L.Ed.2d 312 (1961). The Callanan Court explained: 18 This settled principle derives from the reason of things in dealing with socially reprehensible conduct: collective criminal agreement-partnership in crime-presents a greater potential threat to the public than individual delicts. Concerted action both increases the likelihood that the criminal object will be successfully attained and decreases the probability that the individuals involved will depart from their path of criminality. Group association for criminal purposes often, if not normally, makes possible the attainment of ends more complex than those which one criminal could accomplish. 19 Id.; see also United States v. Ramirez-Amaya, 812 F.2d 813, 817 (2d Cir. 1987) ([C]onspiracies have traditionally been viewed as offenses that cause kinds of harm that are distinguishable from the harm caused by the underlying substantive offenses.). Moreover, the Callanan Court held that Congress had exercised its clear prerogative to authorize separate, potentially cumulative sentences for conspiracy and substantive offenses when it amended 18 U.S.C. 1951, which is similar in structure to 1958. Id. at 594-595. 5 20 Seeking to distinguish 1958 from 1951, Bicaksiz claims that the pre-enactment structure of the Hobbs Act Amendments of 1946 (which amended 1951) demonstrates that Congress in that instance intended conspiracy and substantive offenses to be punished separately. 6 Specifically, he contends that the separation of the conspiracy and substantive provisions of the Hobbs Act Amendments into distinct paragraphs indicates a legislative intention to provide for separate-and, thus, possibly cumulative-punishments. He argues that 1958, in contrast, was not enacted in this form and, therefore, the teaching of Callanan is simply not applicable to 1958. 21 The argument is not persuasive. In holding that 1951 imposed separate, potentially cumulative punishments for conspiracy and substantive offenses, the Supreme Court in Callanan did not rely on the structure of the Hobbs Act Amendments. 7 Instead, the Callanan Court reasoned that when Congress passed the Amendments, it was not . . . unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law, 364 U.S. at 594, including the principle that a substantive offense and conspiracy are separate convictions for which separate punishments may be imposed. Furthermore, the Court noted that Congress had passed the Hobbs Act Amendments after American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328 U.S. 781 (1946), in which the Court had affirmed separate, cumulative sentences for conspiracy to monopolize and monopolization, both of which were made criminal by 2 of the Sherman Act. See Callanan, 364 U.S. at 594-95. The Court concluded: To dislodge such conventional consequences in the outlawing of two disparate offenses, conspiracy and substantive conduct, and effectuate a reversal of the settled interpretation we pronounced in American Tobacco[,] would require specific language to the contrary. Id. at 595. 22 The statutory backdrop of 1958 is, if anything, even more compelling than that of 1951, because 1958 was enacted after Callanan. Yet, like 1951, 1958 criminalizes both substantive offenses and conspiracy, without any specific language precluding cumulative punishment of a defendant, such as Bicaksiz, who commits both. Accordingly, we hold that Bicaksiz's separate, cumulative sentences are authorized by the statute. 23