Opinion ID: 197023
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Billmyer Sentencing Claim

Text: 73 Billmyer challenges a two-level enhancement of his base offense level (BOL) for abusing a position of private trust. See U.S.S.G. § 3B1.3 (1995). We review the § 3B1.3 ruling de novo. United States v. Tardiff, 969 F.2d 1283, 1289 (1st Cir.1992). As Billmyer acknowledges a sound factual basis for the § 3B1.3 enhancement, we need only apply the pertinent guideline language. 74 If the defendant abused a position of public or private trust, or used a special skill, in a manner that significantly facilitated the commission or concealment of the offense, increase by 2 levels. This adjustment may not be employed if an abuse of trust or skill is included in the base offense level or specific offense characteristic. 75 U.S.S.G. § 3B1.3 (Nov. 1995) (emphasis added). 76 The district court applied U.S.S.G. § 2B4.1 (commercial bribery) to determine Billmyer's BOL. As the specific offense characteristics listed in § 2B4.1(b) are not germane, 13 we must consider whether the BOL prescribed in § 2B4.1 included an abuse-of-trust component which would render the offense level enhancement invalid under the second sentence in § 3B1.3. 77 The Guidelines prohibit the sentencing court from imposing an abuse-of-trust enhancement in a public bribery case, see U.S.S.G. § 2C1.1, comment. (n. 3), unless special circumstances require reference to other offense guidelines, see id. § 2C1.1(c). Thus, in its main thrust the present challenge attempts to equate Billmyer's commercial bribery offense with bribery of a public official. According to Billmyer, the same general rule must apply because public bribery and private bribery are virtually identical offenses. We are not persuaded. 78 The absence of an explicit provision restricting the application of the abuse-of-trust enhancement in commercial bribery cases severely undercuts the analogy urged by Billmyer. See United States v. Newman, 982 F.2d 665, 673-74 (1st Cir.1992) (applying expressio unius est exclusio alterius principle in this sentencing context), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 812, 114 S.Ct. 59, 126 L.Ed.2d 28 (1993). Furthermore, the Sentencing Commission took pains throughout the Guidelines to specify the circumstances in which courts should not impose enhancements for abuse of trust. 14 In sum, the overall structure of the Guidelines simply does not warrant the categorical ban advocated by Billmyer. 79 Moreover, not only does Billmyer cite no supporting case law, but our research discloses ample authority for imposing an abuse-of-trust enhancement in such a case. For example, in United States v. Butt, 955 F.2d 77 (1st Cir.1992), the court provided clear explication of its rationale for upholding an abuse-of-trust enhancement in the case of a police officer convicted on a RICO charge, even though the underlying racketeering activity included extortion under color of right. 80 The base offense level prescribed by the guidelines for a particular crime presumably reflects, or includes, those characteristics considered by Congress to inhere in the crime at issue. In the case of extortion under color of right, abuse of trust would be one such characteristic, since Congress could reasonably have determined that every act of extortion under color of right involves an abuse of public trust. Because the RICO statute, by contrast, can be violated in innumerable ways, there are, arguably, no offense characteristics common to all RICO offenses. 81 Id. at 89. The same holds true here. 82 Billmyer was convicted of mail fraud conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. As not every mail fraud conspiracy involves an abuse of trust, we cannot conclude that the BOL for commercial bribery necessarily includes an abuse-of-trust element so as to preclude an enhancement pursuant to § 3B1.3. See United States v. Kummer, 89 F.3d 1536, 1546-47 (11th Cir.1996) (rejecting similar argument under U.S.S.G. § 2E5.1 (bribe affecting employee benefit plan)); cf. United States v. Connell, 960 F.2d 191, 199 (1st Cir.1992) (finding that BOL applicable to currency reporting violations did not encompass stockbroker's special skill). 15 83 United States v. Sinclair, 74 F.3d 753, 762-63 (7th Cir.1996), likewise demonstrates that the commercial bribery guideline does not take into account an abuse of trust. 16 Sinclair, a bank officer, was convicted of accepting a bribe in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 215(a)(2), a crime that would seem almost invariably to entail an abuse of trust. Yet the court noted that the statute did not define a single crime, see id. § 215(a)(1) (prohibiting person from offering bribe to bank officer), and reasoned that it would be wrong to require that the briber, who did not necessarily breach a position of trust, receive the same sentence as the bank-officer recipient. Sinclair, 74 F.3d at 763. Similarly, we think Billmyer's greater culpability, relative to other defendants who need not necessarily have abused a position of trust in the course of a mail fraud conspiracy, entitled the district court to impose the § 3B1.3 adjustment in this case. Accordingly, we affirm the enhancement. III