Opinion ID: 710067
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The District Court's Reliance on the Presentence

Text: Investigation Reports 48 The appellants claim that the court improperly relied on drug quantity estimates prepared by the probation office, which in turn were based upon statements of questionable reliability. According to the appellants, the PSR estimates were derived largely from the statements of admitted drug users, some of which contained internal inconsistencies, and the PSR often presented conclusory facts without attributing statements to their source. 49 We do not agree with the appellants that the district court's reliance on the PSR was misplaced. While it is true that a criminal defendant has a due process right to be sentenced on the basis of reliable information, United States v. Westbrook, 986 F.2d 180, 182 (7th Cir.1993) (citations omitted), it is well established that the evidentiary standards that apply to sentencing are not as stringent as those applicable in a criminal trial. The Criminal Code provides that: 50 No limitation shall be placed on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person convicted of an offense which a court of the United States may receive and consider for the purpose of imposing an appropriate sentence. 51 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3661. See also Fed.R.Evid. 1101(d)(3) and U.S.S.G. Sec. 6A1.3 (hearsay evidence is admissible at sentencing). When sentencing a defendant, a judge may appropriately conduct an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come. United States v. Harty, 930 F.2d 1257, 1268 (7th Cir.1991), quoting United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 446, 92 S.Ct. 589, 591, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972). [S]o long as the information which the sentencing judge considers has sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy, the information may properly be taken into account in passing sentence. United States v. Cedano-Rojas, 999 F.2d 1175, 1180 (7th Cir.1993); see also U.S.S.G. Sec. 6A1.3(a). Provided that the facts contained in a PSR bear sufficient indicia of reliability to support their probable accuracy, the district court may adopt them as support for its findings and conclusions regarding the quantity of drugs attributable to a defendant. United States v. Salinas, 62 F.3d 855, 859 (7th Cir.1995). 52 We believe that the information relied upon by the probation office in calculating drug quantities, coming as it did from at least half a dozen individuals with first-hand knowledge of the drug-distribution network, bore sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy. Because the individuals who provided this information gave largely consistent and mutually-corroborating accounts, we are not overly concerned that some of these individuals were admitted drug users, nor are we troubled that they provided varying estimates of drug quantities. 53 This court has held that a district judge should carefully scrutinize the statements of drug addicts (such as Pryne) before using them against a defendant for sentencing purposes. United States v. Beler, 20 F.3d 1428, 1435 (7th Cir.1994). However, such heightened scrutiny is not necessarily required when other factors demonstrate that the statement is reliable. In this case, for example, the statements relied upon by the probation department overlapped or corroborated one another to a significant extent, thus obviating the need for a searching inquiry into how drug use affected the reliability of a particular individual's statement. Furthermore, it is unrealistic for a criminal defendant to expect that government witnesses (in this case, the cooperating individuals who provided information to the probation department and to law enforcement officers) possess the credibility of people of the cloth such as rabbis, [ministers], priests, and nuns. Rodriguez v. Peters, 63 F.3d 546, 563 n. 14 (7th Cir.1995). 54 Finally, we observe that the probation office did not take the estimates provided by Pryne and others at face value. Rather, they arrived at a fairly conservative approximation (twenty four ounces per month) by multiplying an average amount of cocaine (four ounces per trip) by the probable frequency of trips (six per month). This process of discounting the estimates takes into account the possibility that drug use and other factors may have adversely affected perception and memory. Taken as a whole, the information provided by these individuals amply supports the conservative estimates of the probation department with respect to both the conspiracy's duration (Spring 1992 through February 1993) and the approximate amount of cocaine distributed per month (24 ounces). 55 The statements of Ray Ninneman, William Nelson, and Marilyn Draxler refute Demski's claim that the drug conspiracy did not begin until late July or August of 1992. Ninneman recalled that he began purchasing cocaine from Charles Taylor in the Spring of 1992. When testifying before the grand jury, William Nelson, Charles' first courier, stated that he ran drugs for Charles basically all summer. His live-in girlfriend, Marilyn Draxler, recounted that the drug runs began in approximately May or June. It would appear, at the very least, that the conspiracy was in high gear by late June 1992, for Jason Craig stated that he learned of its operation immediately after moving in with Charles Taylor and Catherine Demski in early July of 1992. 56 Substantial evidence also refutes Demski's claim that the conspiracy ended in December 1992. Demski herself provided the most persuasive evidence of this when she spoke to Stacey Lecas in February of 1993. During that tape-recorded conversation, Demski said We send Harley all the time. It is significant that Demski used the present tense, indicating that these trips were an ongoing practice, instead of saying We used to send Harley all the time, or We could send Harley again. In her objections to the PSR, Demski rather lamely asserts that her statements in this conversation cannot be credited because she was exaggerating. 57 Harley Pryne's statements to undercover Detective Albers on February 12-13, 1992 provide further evidence that the drug distribution network continued to be active past December of 1992. Pryne described the conspiracy as an ongoing proposition and specifically mentioned that since the search of the Demski-Taylor apartment in December 1992, Charles Taylor no longer stored cocaine at the apartment but rather at his house in Wisconsin Rapids. 58 Finally, Tom Arnold, one of the conspiracy's customers, stated that he purchased approximately two ounces of cocaine each month from Gary and Charles Taylor from the end of 1992 through the middle of 1993. Arnold wrote Demski a check for $1,600 (which she cashed) in anticipation of receiving cocaine from the February 12, 1993 run. 59 Ample evidence also supports the conclusion (adopted by the district court) that the drug runs to Illinois occurred on average six times per month and involved approximately four ounces of cocaine per trip. The statements of Ray Ninneman, Chad Kuehl, Harley Pryne, Jason Craig, and William Nelson are, for the most part, consistent and corroborated, despite the fact that they provide differing estimates of exactly how often the drug runs occurred and precisely how much cocaine was involved. 60 As the Government observes in its brief, the probation office (and by extension, the district court) did not wholly accept the estimates of [these individuals], but rather, balanced the conflicting accounts and arrived at a reasonable representative monthly average [of 24 ounces]. This process of approximation or estimation is perfectly acceptable. See Mumford, 25 F.3d at 467; U.S.S.G. Sec. 2D1.1 cmt. 12. We have held that as long as nebulous eyeballing is avoided, factual determinations under the Guidelines need not emulate the precision of Newtonian Physics. United States v. Duarte, 950 F.2d 1255, 1265 (7th Cir.1991), cert. denied 506 U.S. 859, 113 S.Ct. 174, 121 L.Ed.2d 120 (1992). The district court, after reviewing the PSR, the Government's account of the Taylor conspiracy, and the defendants' objections to the PSR, was obviously satisfied that the probation office had not engaged in mere guesswork or nebulous eyeballing, but rather had arrived at a responsible approximation of what occurred. 61 Demski, now joined by appellants Pryne and Gary Taylor, Sr., 15 asserts that the conspiracy began later, ended sooner, and involved smaller amounts of narcotics. In her written narrative of events, submitted at sentencing along with detailed objections to the PSR, Demski recalled that August of 1992 is when we got into cocaine and that she and Charles got out of dealing in December 1992, following the raid on their apartment. Demski was certain that there was no drug-dealing while Charles' daughter Tonya was living in Wisconsin Rapids (through June of 1992), or after the search of the apartment in December 1992. Demski also claimed that the quantity we dealt with was about two to three ounces a week, sometimes skipping a week in between, for approximately four months. Based upon these estimates, the conspiracy only trafficked in a total of 77 ounces, or 2.183 kilograms of cocaine (including the amounts from the Arizona trip and taking account of some periods during which Demski claims there were no drug runs to Illinois). 62 The court decided not to credit Demski's self-serving assertions in light of substantial evidence to the contrary in the PSR, particularly the mutually-corroborated statements of a number of the co-conspirators. The court specifically rejected Demski's assertion that the conspiracy was active for a shorter period of time than alleged in the PSR, stating that Demski's version of events: 63 simply does not jibe with all of the information from all of these other people as to when they were starting to get cocaine from your husband. 16 .. It doesn't jibe with Ms. Draxler's statement about when she was getting cocaine. It doesn't jibe with Mr. Nelson's statements.... It doesn't jibe with the statement that Mr. Nelson gave at the grand jury that the conspiracy went on all summer and into mid-November or a period of at least five to six months. It simply doesn't jibe with all of the other information, and I think it is given simply to make your role, your responsibility, more minimal. 64 The other end of the conspiracy, it doesn't make sense either because you say ... that you absolutely stopped when the search warrant was executed and that is not what the evidence shows. The evidence shows that the conspiracy continued and we got a tape recording of your talking on the telephone in February [1992 to Stacey Lecas] saying this is what we do, this is how we run the conspiracy. We send Harley down for this and we pay for this and do this. So my view is simply that you have not accepted responsibility for the extent of your involvement in this conspiracy and for the scope and nature of the conspiracy that you were involved in. 65 We hold that the district court's reliance on the information in the PSR was proper. The recitation of facts contained in the PSR was based upon statements provided by several of the co-conspirators to the grand jury or to law enforcement officers or the probation department. As discussed above, these statements are largely consistent and mutually-corroborating; they thus bear indicia of reliability sufficient to demonstrate their probable accuracy. The district court therefore did not commit clear error when it chose to adopt the calculations of the probation officer rather than the self-serving assertions of the appellants with respect to drug quantities because, if two permissible views exist, the fact-finder's choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous. United States v. McDonald, 22 F.3d 139, 144 (7th Cir.1994). 66