Opinion ID: 569341
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: michael anderson

Text: 25 Anderson reiterates Morrison's last two claims on appeal. For the reasons detailed in II.C. and II.D., these arguments fail.
26 Anderson also challenges the district court's Sentencing Guidelines calculations. Based on evidence presented by the government, the district court determined that prior convictions placed Anderson in criminal history category II of the Guidelines. The court ruled, however, that an upward departure, shifting Anderson to criminal history category VI was appropriate, because one of the prior convictions contributing to Anderson's criminal history score was for a brutal, execution-style murder. Criminal history category II, determined the court, seriously underestimated the severity of this crime. (In category II, Anderson's sentencing exposure was 168-210 months; in category VI, it was 262-327 months.) Anderson challenges the propriety of this significant enhancement. 27 The Sentencing Guidelines allow the district court to depart upward in calculating a defendant's criminal history score when the criminal history category does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant's past criminal conduct. § 4A1.3. In reviewing a district court's decision to depart we must determine first whether the stated grounds for departure are legitimate and then whether the degree of departure was reasonable. The former inquiry is legal, and hence de novo in nature, whereas we will give considerable leeway to a sentencing court's determination in considering whether the degree of departure was appropriate. United States v. Williams, 901 F.2d 1394, 1396-97 (7th Cir.1990). 28 We turn to the first prong of the inquiry--whether the very nature of Anderson's prior criminal conviction was legitimate reason for the district court's upward departure. Section 4A1.3 provides a non-exclusive list of situations where an upward departure may be warranted because the criminal history category does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the defendant's past criminal conduct. The list's examples are all of a particular type: each suggests that an upward departure may be warranted when the defendant has committed crimes or conduct that the criminal history calculation instructions, see § 4A1.1-2, fail specifically to consider. See, e.g., § 4A1.3(a) (foreign convictions); § 4A1.3(b) (consolidated sentence that is the consequence of a series of serious offenses should be weighted more heavily than other sentences for single offenses); § 4A1.3(c) (misconduct established by civil or administrative adjudication); § 4A1.3(e) (prior criminal conduct not resulting in a criminal conviction). In essence, § 4A1.3 is a backstop, designed to ensure that relevant conduct does not fall through unintended gaps in the Commission's broadly written calculation instructions. 29 The district court's departure in this case was of a completely different kind than the examples set out above. The Sentencing Commission did not neglect to award criminal history points for murder; to the contrary, Anderson was assigned criminal history points for his conviction as mandated by § 4A1.1. The district court simply believed that the Guidelines did not impute to Anderson sufficient criminal history points for his heinous crime. The court reasoned that by awarding a defendant three criminal history points for any offense resulting in a sentence of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month, § 4A1.1 inexplicably weighted murder no more than non-violent crimes such as forgery. We believe the district court erred in departing upward for this reason. As we suggest above, the examples set out in § 4A1.3 speak to a very different purpose behind the Guideline than the one to which it was put by the district court. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but the principle of ejusdem generis nevertheless counsels that we be hesitant in allowing interpretations of § 4A1.3 that wander far afield of the examples contained therein. We are inclined to agree with the district court that the practice of weighing identically all prior sentences of a length greater than one year is somewhat indiscriminate, but to allow upward departures on the basis of the nature of a considered offense would render that very choice meaningless. The Commission consciously chose to award defendants three criminal history points for every conviction of greater than one year, regardless of the nature of the underlying offense conduct. See § 4A1.1. To sanction the district court's upward departure would fly in the face of that choice, and invite sentencing courts to create their own weighing schemes for prior criminal convictions. However appalled we are by Anderson's criminal past, and however much we might believe that the Guidelines ought to be more discerning about the nature of a defendant's criminal past, we cannot find support for the district court's upward departure in the Guidelines.C. 30 Anderson also contends that government agents engaged in misconduct by improperly preparing a witness before trial. He charges that DEA agent Tasch approached a sequestered witness, Michael Doyle, before Doyle was to testify at trial against Anderson, and warned him to be careful in identifying Anderson because two previous government witnesses had already misidentified Anderson. Morrison also alleges that IRS agent Larry Kaiser showed Doyle a photograph of Anderson to ensure that Doyle would not be added to the list of government witnesses who botched their identifications of Anderson. These allegations are very serious indeed, and, if true, detail identification procedures which may violate due process by virtue of their impermissibly suggestive nature. See Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 109-114, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 2250-53, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977); Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 383-84, 88 S.Ct. 967, 971, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 300, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 1971, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967). 31 The problem with Anderson's allegations is that they border on misrepresentation of the record. It is true that Tasch met with Doyle on the night prior to his testimony, and that in the course of reviewing his upcoming testimony, explained to him that Anderson had been previously misidentified. It is emphatically not the case, however, as Anderson's brief implies, that Doyle was shown a photograph of Anderson that same night. During the district court's inquiry into the alleged misconduct, Doyle testified that he was not shown a photograph or given a description of Anderson. IRS agent Kaiser did show Doyle a picture of Anderson, but that identification occurred sometime in 1988, during the course of the government's investigation, months before Doyle's testimony in April of 1989. Anderson's attorney, however, has laid side-by-side the two temporally distinct episodes, implying, we think, that Kaiser was at Tasch's side on the eve of Doyle's testimony, showing Doyle a photograph of Anderson. If the juxtaposition of these events was intentional, sanctions would be in order. Absent additional evidence, however, we will attribute the misstatement to careless inadvertence rather than an intent to deceive. 32 After conducting an inquiry in which it questioned Tasch outside of the presence of the jury, the district court found that Tasch's discussion with Doyle on the eve of his testimony against Anderson did not warrant the relief Morrison sought--striking Doyle's testimony. We agree. While it surely would have been more appropriate for Tasch not to have brought up the subject of the misidentifications of Anderson at all, Tasch's comments concerning prior misidentifications did not violate the witness sequestration order--which was intended to prevent witnesses from conforming their testimony to one another--nor were they unnecessarily or impermissibly suggestive. D. 33 Anderson also challenges the sufficiency of the government's evidence to support his convictions for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to import marijuana. Neither challenge is persuasive. 34 As to the cocaine conspiracy conviction, the evidence against Anderson came from a single witness, Dennis McCarthy, who as we noted above, was a significant participant in the conspiracy, working closely with its kingpin, John Roubas. McCarthy testified that Anderson first worked for him in 1983 as a courier, transporting money and cocaine on a single occasion between McCarthy and Roubas. McCarthy also testified that in late 1985, Anderson was among a group of five (including Roubas, Andrini-Varga, and Pallais and Morrison, the men who piloted the cocaine from Panama) present at Gonzi Marine while cocaine was being unloaded after the successful air-drop, that Anderson took part in packaging the cocaine from shipment in sealed coffee cans to Chicago, and that he was paid for his services. This is evidence enough to allow a jury to infer that Anderson agreed to help distribute cocaine. 35 There is even more evidence supporting Anderson's conviction for conspiring to import marijuana. McCarthy placed Anderson at planning sessions for importation operations in the early summer of 1986, on one of the boats picking up a 540 kilogram shipment of marijuana in July, 1986, and at a warehouse packaging the marijuana for shipment soon thereafter. McCarthy testified that Anderson was paid for his services. McCarthy also testified that he and Anderson accompanied Roubas on a marijuana-buying junket to Jamaica in November, 1986. Anderson carried with him cash that was used to pay Roubas' supplier, and was present during negotiations for another shipment. Another minor participant in the conspiracy, Randy Friedl, testified that Anderson was a security guy for the drug ring. Yet another participant in the conspiracy, James Brandt, testified that Anderson was involved in another importation episode in February or March of 1987. Brandt said that Anderson was with him on the beach during marijuana pick-up operations. Brandt also testified that Anderson supervised the loading of another shipment of marijuana onto a plane in Jamaica in July or August of 1987. Similarly, Kevin Cleary, another participant-turned-government witness, testified that he had received collect calls from Anderson while Anderson was in Jamaica supervising the shipment of a load of marijuana in October of 1987. Taken together, this evidence is more than sufficient to support Anderson's conviction for conspiring to import marijuana.