Opinion ID: 1288101
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Clemons Trip

Text: With regard to the Clemons trip, Mr. Hollins contends simply that there was insufficient evidence for the district court to conclude that the bottles carried liquid cocaine or that they carried the amount attributed to Mr. Hollins at sentencing (more than 2900 grams). It is true that the testimony at trial was that the Clemons trip had certain logistical differences from some of the other trips made in furtherance of the conspiracy: Clemons paid his own transportation and apparently did not know before arriving in Jamaica the purpose of his trip. Clemons also did not pay Mark, the Jamaican contact, money sent by Mr. Hollins or Wilson in exchange for cocaine as some other witnesses testified they had. Mr. Hollins claims that these differences demonstrate that the Clemons trip was only a test run for future use of wine bottles that actually would contain liquid cocaine. In this case, he argues, the bottles were filled only with champagne. Mr. Hollins' characterization may be a plausible account of the Clemons trip, but it is not one required by the record. At trial, Clemons testified that Mark informed him that the bottles did contain cocaine and that Clemons purchased, carried and handed over the bottles to Mr. Hollins believing they contained cocaine. In addition to Clemons' testimony, the district court also had evidence that other individuals caught doing substantially the same thing (albeit with different particulars) were indeed found to have been carrying liquid cocaine. That Mr. Hollins presents an alternative view of the evidence does not demonstrate that the district court's finding was clear error. See United States v. Marty, 450 F.3d 687, 690-91 (7th Cir.2006). Where there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder's choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous. Anderson v. City of Bessemer, 470 U.S. 564, 574, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). As to the quantity of cocaine the Clemons bottles contained, although evidence of drug quantity must be more than speculative, nebulous eyeballing, the sentencing guidelines permit some amount of reasoned speculation and reasonable estimation by a sentencing court. United States v. Jarrett, 133 F.3d 519, 530 (7th Cir.1998) (citing U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1); see U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1, Application Note 12 (Where there is no drug seizure or the amount seized does not reflect the scale of the offense, the court shall approximate the quantity of the controlled substance. In making this determination, the court may consider, for example, . . . similar transactions in controlled substances by the defendant. . . .); Beler, 20 F.3d at 1433 (noting the necessity of approximation). In this case, the district court relied on the drug quantities it had attributed to Mr. Hollins from the Addison II trip. This was not baseless speculation or a number drawn out of thin air, Jarrett, 133 F.3d at 530; neither was it based on an impermissible conclusion that the quantity of drugs known to have been used in a particular run was standard for all runs, cf. United States v. Johnson, 185 F.3d 765, 768-69 (7th Cir.1999) (discussing the problems with applying an average-quantity approach). Instead, the district court looked to the Addison II trip, which was the most closely analogous trip, in which the same specific smuggling method had been used. The court concluded that a per-bottle quantity of liquid cocaine was likely consistent and should be applied to the Clemons bottles as well as to the Addison II bottles. The determination that a per-bottle amount was standard was not baseless, as each of the wine bottles tested in the Addison II trip contained the same amount of liquid cocaine. Moreover, the court's estimate on the Clemons trip was generous to Mr. Hollins based on the facts of the two trips: Although the court believed the wine bottles used in the Addison II trip and the champagne bottles used in the Clemons trip carried the same volume of liquid cocaine, Clemons testified that he carried six bottles rather than the four bottles on which the Addison II trip quantity ultimately was calculated. The court nevertheless attributed an identical total amount of cocainebased on the four bottle quantity from the Addison II trip rather than using a per-bottle estimate based on six bottles in the Clemons trip. This method of calculation is the kind of reasonable approximation that a district court is directed to undertake under the guidelines.