Opinion ID: 714051
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Quantity of Attributable Heroin

Text: 34 Edwards argues that the sentencing court erred in determining that he was responsible for 47 kilograms of heroin. The first of Edwards's contentions is that the district court erred in relying on unreliable, hearsay testimony to determine the total amount of pure heroin that he purchased for distribution. Second, the defendant argues that the sentencing court improperly calculated the weight of diluted heroin that Edwards sold on the street level. We review the district court's calculation of the quantity of narcotics attributable to Edwards for clear error. United States v. Taylor, 72 F.3d 533, 542 (7th Cir.1995); United States v. Vold, 66 F.3d 915, 918 (7th Cir.1995). The law regarding the evaluation of evidence supporting sentencing determinations is well settled: 35 Information may properly be used in sentencing when it has sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy. United States v. Ewers, 54 F.3d 419, 421 (7th Cir.1995) (citing United States v. Lueddeke, 908 F.2d 230, 234 (7th Cir.1990)). However, this reliability standard must be rigorously applied. United States v. Beler, 20 F.3d 1428, 1432 (7th Cir.1994); see U.S.S.G. § 6A1.3(a) (In resolving any reasonable dispute concerning a factor important to the sentencing determination, the court may consider relevant information without regard to its admissibility under the rules of evidence applicable at trial, provided that the information has sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy.). 36 United States v. Townsend, 73 F.3d 747, 751-52 (7th Cir.1996). 37 At the sentencing hearing, DEA Agent Vincent Balbo testified that he had interviewed two of Edwards's heroin suppliers: Raymond Davis and Abiodun Agbele. 9 According to Balbo, Davis told him that Edwards purchased one to two ounces of black tar heroin a week for two years, between 1990 and 1992, paying approximately $6700 per ounce. Davis made a conservative estimate that he had sold Edwards a total of six kilograms of black tar heroin over the course of the two years. Additionally, Davis told Agent Balbo that he sold Edwards 85 grams of white heroin. 38 From the Davis evidence, the sentencing court calculated that 6,035 grams of total sold heroin (six kilograms black tar heroin plus 85 grams white heroin) at 35 percent purity 10 yields 2,130 grams of pure heroin. 39 Agent Balbo next testified that in October 1991 he interviewed Abiodun Agbele, another source of Edwards's heroin. Abiodun told Agent Balbo that he had sold a total of 463.5 grams of white heroin to Edwards in 1989 and early 1990. From the Abiodun evidence the sentencing court calculated that 463.5 grams of total heroin at 50 percent purity 11 yields 232 grams of pure heroin. Thus, the combined pure heroin supplied by Davis and Abiodun amounted to 2,362 grams (232 plus 2,130). 40 DEA Agent Balbo testified that from his experience in law enforcement, pure heroin is almost always cut or diluted before it is sold on the street. In order to calculate the street or retail level purity of Edwards's sales, Agent Balbo summarized the drug purchases made by a cooperating individual, Walter Pettigrew, from Edwards. 12 A DEA lab had analyzed the narcotics purchased by Pettigrew from Edwards and calculated the percent purity of each sample; the majority of the purchases contained less than 5 percent pure heroin, confirming Agent Balbo's testimony regarding the practice of diluting narcotics before street sale. 41 Applying the street level purity of 5 percent to the 2,362 grams of pure heroin supplied by Davis and Abiodun, the district court calculated street level sales of 47,240 grams of heroin. 13 42 Although Edwards argues that the information provided by heroin suppliers Davis and Abiodun is unreliable because they were cooperating witnesses (and hence had a motive to exaggerate Edwards's purchases to receive more favorable treatment from the government), we observe that their statements were corroborated by other evidence at trial. Jimmie Edwards, Edwards's brother, testified that Davis and Abiodun were two out of defendant Edwards's four sources of heroin. Lorri Edwards, the defendant's wife, also testified that she was aware Abiodun was a regular supplier of heroin. Edwards himself, upon arrest, told the DEA that he had been purchasing ounce quantities of heroin a week from Davis for the previous year-and-a-half. Moreover, the government's calculation was conservative: it ignored the heroin supplied by Matthews and Burrell, two additional sources of narcotics for Edwards. 43 We conclude that the information relied upon to calculate the total amount of Edwards's drug supply bore sufficient indicia of reliability. See Taylor, 72 F.3d at 543 (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 drug users). United States v. Rose, 12 F.3d 1414, 1425 (7th Cir.1994) (We cannot expect that witnesses will possess the credibility of people of the cloth, such as rabbis, priests, and nuns....). Although the quantity of pure heroin supplied by Davis and Abiodun was determined by analyzing the purity of a single sample purchase, the district court may base its findings as to the quantity of drugs involved in an offense on estimation. Vega, 72 F.3d at 512 (citing United States v. Sturman, 49 F.3d 1275, 1284 (7th Cir.1995)). 44 Edwards also asserts that it was clear error for the sentencing court to assume that the 2,362 grams of pure heroin attributable to Edwards was all sold on the street at 5 percent purity (yielding 47,240 grams of total retail heroin). Edwards points to the fact that he sold one gram of heroin to Walter Pettigrew, a cooperating individual, that was 47 percent pure heroin. See United States v. Nobles, 69 F.3d 172, 191 (7th Cir.1995) (Judges in the federal system, whether they are in the trial or appellate system, do not operate in a vacuum, shielded from knowledge of drug operations in the real world.) (quoting United States v. Hatchett, 31 F.3d 1411, 1420 (7th Cir.1994)). 45 However, according to the testimony at sentencing, that sale of a single gram was an exception: the DEA lab determined that six other sales to Pettigrew were of heroin in purities of 4.7 percent, 4.8 percent, 4.7 percent, 3.0 percent, 1.6 percent, and 4.0 percent, respectively. Agent Balbo testified that these purity figures confirmed his own knowledge that heroin distributed at the street level is almost always cut to less than 10 percent purity. 46 Further, according to the information set forth in the DEA wiretaps and the defendant's own admissions, the bulk of Edwards's drug sales were street level and in the form of $10 cut bags of heroin, weighing one tenth of a gram. Edwards's own drug sellers, Barefield, Kellum, and Campbell, testified at trial that Edwards fronted them $10 packages of cut heroin to sell. Thus, the street level purity of 5 percent accurately portrayed Edwards's criminal enterprise. We conclude that the district court did not commit clear error in its determination of the quantity of heroin attributable to Edwards. See Sasson, 62 F.3d at 889 (stating that it is rational to penalize a defendant for the combined weight of a drug's active ingredient and the carrier medium because the carrier facilitates distribution and sale of the narcotics); United States v. Tucker, 20 F.3d 242 (7th Cir.1994) (defendant accountable for the weight of water and baking soda contained in a cocaine-base mixture).