Opinion ID: 223527
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Hernandez's Separate Claims

Text: Hernandez likewise challenges both his conviction and his sentence. He first contends that the jury's verdict, finding him guilty of conspiring to distribute narcotics, rested on insufficient evidence. He then contends that the district court erred in sentencing him to life imprisonment, alleging three infirmities with the district court's consideration of his case. Neither contention has merit.
Like his co-defendant Rodriguez, Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute controlled substances in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. Hernandez's arguments are even weaker than Rodriguez's, and we easily conclude that sufficient trial evidence showed that Hernandez either implicitly or explicitly agreed with other Deuces to distribute narcotics or possess them with the intent to distribute them. Vallar, 635 F.3d at 286. Hernandez was a long-standing gang member and participant (joining at the age of twelve and rising to Junior status), he was present in Insane Deuce meetings where drug dealing using the Nation's caja was discussed, he was recorded requesting quantities of drugs for himself and his cousin, he routinely used marijuana with other Deuces, and he was filmed during a hand-to-hand transaction in which he accepted money in exchange for a small package and placed the money in his sock. The evidence that Hernandez knew of the narcotics conspiracy was overwhelming, leaving only a question of whether he agreed to join it. See United States v. Longstreet, 567 F.3d 911, 918-19 (7th Cir. 2009). That no evidence conclusively proved that Hernandez personally bought, sold, or possessed any narcotics does not prevent a jury from finding him guilty of violating 21 U.S.C. § 846. See Bolivar, 532 F.3d at 603; Johnson, 592 F.3d at 754 n. 4. The jury could reasonably infer from the totality of the evidence that Hernandez joined the Insane Deuces' narcotics conspiracy. Accordingly, we will affirm his conviction.
Hernandez next contends that we must order a resentencing because the district court wrongly sentenced him to a term of life imprisonment. He first argues that the evidence presented at trial and during the sentencing hearing could not support the district court's upward adjustment of his offense levels based on his co-defendants' conduct (both their violent acts and their distribution of narcotics). His second argument focuses on the inclusion of four prior sentences in categorizing his criminal history; he argues that the sentences were based on activities relevant to the charged conspiracies and thus could not be separately counted to enhance his sentence in this case. His third argument is that the district court did not properly consider the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) because it ignored his arguments about the factors. We find none of the arguments convincing and dispose of them quickly. As discussed in our analysis of Rodriguez's sentence above, the district court must consider conduct relevant to the charged offense when calculating the guidelines-recommended sentence range. See U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3; United States v. Quintero, 618 F.3d 746, 755 (7th Cir.2010). The reasonably foreseeable actions of the other Insane Deuces in the racketeering conspiracy can be attributed to Hernandez for the purposes of sentencing, Quintero, 618 F.3d at 755, and the district court specifically adopted Hernandez's PSR and its findings during the sentencing hearing, (Hernandez Sent. Tr. 48). The PSR, in turn, clearly defined Hernandez's scope of jointly undertaken criminal activity to be the same as that of the Insane Deuce racketeering conspiracy overall. (Hernandez PSR at 14.) It also found that, despite Hernandez's possible ignorance of some of his co-conspirators' violent acts, each of the violent acts detailed in the report was reasonably foreseeable to Hernandez due to the nature of the enterprise he joined and actively participated in. Id. Hernandez argues that some of those acts could neither be foreseeable nor in furtherance of the conspiracy because they were random and involved victims who were not rival gang members. But trial testimony showed that these acts were undertaken out of mistaken beliefs regarding the victims' identities or affiliations; in that sense the shootings were neither random nor unforeseeable. Although some of the evidence presented throughout trial and sentencing may have conflicted, the district court was in the best position to determine what information was most credible. It certainly had sufficient, credible evidence before it to find by a preponderance of the evidence that Hernandez embraced the entire scope of the racketeering conspiracy's activities and foresaw the violent acts of his co-conspirators. Accordingly, the district court did not clearly err in finding the violent acts to be conduct relevant to Hernandez's offense under the Sentencing Guidelines. [10] Hernandez next argues that the district court should not have counted four of his previously served sentences in its determination of his criminal history category. He asserts that the sentences were imposed for crimes that occurred during the period of the racketeering conspiracy described in the indictment and that those crimes involved conduct relevant to the conspiracy. He concludes that these prior sentences should not have been included in the court's guidelines calculations. See U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2 cmt. n. 1; Nance, 611 F.3d at 412-13 ([W]hen calculating a defendant's criminal history, a district court ordinarily cannot consider previous sentences for acts that qualify as relevant conduct.). His argument is unavailing for two reasons. First, he does not explain how his previous convictions  for example, for aggravated battery of a school employee and domestic battery of his girlfriend  were relevant to his racketeering offense. Second, even assuming that each sentence resulted from relevant conduct, the sentences would still have been appropriately counted in the criminal history computation. The guidelines recognize that a defendant may be convicted of racketeering based in part on conduct for which he has already been convicted and sentenced. See U.S.S.G. § 2E1.1 cmt. n. 4. In such a case, if the previously imposed sentence resulted from a conviction prior to the last overt act of the instant offense the previously imposed sentence is treated as a prior sentence under § 4A1.2(a)(1) and not as part of the instant offense. Id. In other words, RICO presents an exception to the general rule of § 4A1.2(a)(1). United States v. Garecht, 183 F.3d 671, 677 (7th Cir.1999). Because Hernandez was personally active in the racketeering conspiracy after the date of his most recent criminal conviction in July 2002, the district court did not err in including these four sentences in his criminal history. In his final sentencing issue, Hernandez accuses the district court of having refused to consider all of the sentencing factors contained in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). His argument is meritless. After hearing Hernandez's arguments regarding the statutory factors at the sentencing hearing, the district court addressed the factors, including Hernandez's difficult childhood, the circumstances that allegedly drove him into the gang, the seriousness of the offense, and the needs for protection and deterrence. The district court also had reviewed and ultimately adopted the PSR that recounted the family and substance abuse information that Hernandez now contends the district court ignored. Hernandez essentially argues that the district court gave insufficient weight to facts that might have counseled a lower sentence, but it is perfectly acceptable for courts to assign varying weights to the [§ 3553(a)] factors as they deem appropriate in the context of each case. United States v. Busara, 551 F.3d 669, 674 (7th Cir.2008). The district court adequately considered the statutory factors and explained its reasons for the sentence it imposed, and [t]hat was all it had to do. United States v. Ashqar, 582 F.3d 819, 826-27 (7th Cir.2009). Accordingly, we will affirm Hernandez's sentence.