Opinion ID: 199606
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: First Question Presented

Text: 56 Based upon the premise that counts with the same victim may be grouped and those with different victims may not be grouped, the defendant urged the district court to group all five counts into one group because all five counts shared the same primary victim (Richard Carpenter) and a common criminal objective (to harass Richard Carpenter's family). Nedd contends that Andrea and Chantelle Carpenter were mere secondary or indirect victims of his threatening behavior. See U.S.S.G. § 3D1.2, cmt. n. 2 (The term 'victim' is not intended to include indirect or secondary victims. Generally there will be one person who is directly and most seriously affected by the offense and is therefore identifiable as the victim.). If this were so here -- and defendant argues it was by virtue of the fact that all four of his phone calls began Hey Richard -- § 3D1.2(b) might be invoked to form just a single group from all five counts, thereby resulting in a lower guideline sentencing range. 57 The district court rejected this contention finding that [t]he plain reading of . . . the communication [the four threats], suggests there were three primary victims, there were threats directly to three different people. The district court therefore refused to find that Richard Carpenter was the sole primary victim, and that Chantelle and her mother Andrea were not also primary victims, of Nedd's threatening conduct. Finding three primary victims, the court determined that it could not group all five counts as one. 58 The district court based its factual finding that all three victims were primary on the language of the indictment, the tape recordings of the threats, and the written victim impact statements submitted by each of the three Carpenters. These sources attested to the independent, personal, and deeply traumatic effects of Nedd's harassing, threatening and stalking behavior upon each member of the Carpenter family. We can find no error in the district court's assessment to this effect, let alone clear error. We accept the district court's ruling that there were three primary victims across all five counts. See United States v. Freeman, 176 F.3d 575, 578 (1st Cir. 1999) (reviewing a district court's factual determinations at sentencing for clear error). Defendant's argument -- that each threat begins with Hey Richard -- does not obviate the fact that each threat, except the first, names another Carpenter and holds out the prospect of terrifying violence against her. It follows, then, that the court did not err in denying defendant's request to form one group from the five counts based on a common primary victim where some counts, although not all, contained additional primary victims. See U.S.S.G. § 2A6.1, cmt. n. 2 (Multiple counts involving different victims are not to be grouped . . . .).