Opinion ID: 721368
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mordan.

Text: 15 A. Drug Quantity. Mordan came to Omaha from New York in late 1993 and was recruited by Alfredo Diaz and Aguirre-Helming into the conspiracy. He made two trips to New York in February 1994, returning with four ounces of cocaine and three bottles of a cutting agent. In March, he made another trip to New York City, where he was arrested in a taxi cab with 500 grams of cocaine. Before Mordan pleaded guilty, the district court suppressed these 500 grams as illegally seized. On appeal, Mordan argues that the court then erred in basing its drug quantity finding for sentencing purposes on this suppressed half kilogram. Excluding this quantity would reduce his base offense level from twenty-six to eighteen, see U.S.S.G. §§ 2D1.1(c)(7) and (11), and trigger a reduction in his forty-six-month prison sentence. 16 Mordan first argues that the court abused its discretion in granting the government a two-week continuance of the sentencing hearing. At the initial hearing, FBI agent Culver testified to the amount of cocaine seized in New York, relying upon a laboratory report prepared by the New York City Police Laboratory. Mordan objected to use of this report as unreliable hearsay, and the court sustained that objection. See United States v. Marshall, 940 F.2d 382, 383 (8th Cir.1991) (per curiam). However, the court also continued the hearing for two weeks so that the government could produce the author of the report. That chemist testified two weeks later in support of the statements in the report. She was vigorously cross-examined by Mordan's attorney. 17 The district court did not abuse its substantial discretion in granting this continuance. See United States v. Kopelciw, 815 F.2d 1235, 1238 (8th Cir.1987) (standard of review). The government was not unreasonable in initially believing it had enough other corroboration of cocaine quantity to establish the lab report's reliability--Alfredo Diaz testified that he had sent Mordan to New York to purchase 500 grams of cocaine. When the district court ruled otherwise, the resulting two-week delay did not prejudice Mordan, who thoroughly cross-examined the chemist. 18 Mordan next argues that the cocaine illegally seized in New York should not be admissible to prove drug quantity at sentencing. This is an issue of first impression in this circuit. Congress has told us not to apply exclusionary rules at sentencing. See 18 U.S.C. § 3661, repeated in U.S.S.G. § 1B1.4. Most of our sister circuits have concluded that the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule does not apply in federal sentencing proceedings, 3 though two separate opinions have urged the contrary rule. See United States v. Jewel, 947 F.2d 224, 238-40 (7th Cir.1991) (Easterbrook, J., concurring); Kim, 25 F.3d at 1437 (Schroeder, J., dissenting). 19 The Supreme Court has declined various invitations to extend the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule beyond the criminal trial. The rule does not apply to grand jury proceedings, see United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974), to INS deportation proceedings, see I.N.S. v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 104 S.Ct. 3479, 82 L.Ed.2d 778 (1984), or to civil tax proceedings, see United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976). When deciding whether to extend the rule to proceedings other than criminal trials, the Court balances the likelihood of deterring Constitutional violations against the cost of withholding reliable information from the proceedings in question. See Illinois v. Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 347, 107 S.Ct. 1160, 1165-66, 94 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987). 20 Extending the exclusionary rule to sentencing would have a detrimental effect on the traditional judicial prerogative of sentencing an offender based upon all the relevant and reliable information that is available. See United States v. Lynch, 934 F.2d 1226, 1236 (11th Cir.1991), cert denied, 502 U.S. 1037, 112 S.Ct. 885, 116 L.Ed.2d 788 (1992). Turning to the deterrence side of the balance, there is some force to the contention that, under the Sentencing Guidelines' relevant conduct regime, the exclusionary rule is needed at sentencing to deter police who have lawfully obtained enough evidence to convict from illegally seizing additional contraband in order to greatly increase the offender's sentence. See McCrory, 930 F.2d at 70-72 (Silberman, J., concurring), and the previously cited separate opinions of Judges Schroeder and Easterbrook. However, we doubt that there are many police officers who would risk the fruits of prior legitimate law enforcement activities in so cynical a fashion. See Lynch, 934 F.2d at 1236 & n. 14. More significantly, whatever increased deterrence might result from this extension of the exclusionary rule does not, in our view, outweigh the cost of truncating the sentencing judge's traditionally broad inquiry into all that may be relevant and reliable in determining the convicted defendant's appropriate punishment. See Tejada, 956 F.2d at 1263; Torres, 926 F.2d at 325. We therefore agree with the other circuits that a sentencing court may properly consider suppressed evidence in determining a Guidelines sentence. 21 B. Role in the Offense. Mordan also argues that the district court erred in finding that he was a minor participant in the conspiracy, entitled to a two-level reduction, rather than a minimal participant, entitled to a three- or four-level reduction. See U.S.S.G. §§ 3B1.2(a) and (b). Mordan claims that he was the least culpable member of the conspiracy because he joined later than the others and only participated as a courier. 22 [T]he downward adjustment for a minimal participant will be used infrequently, for example, where an individual was recruited as a courier for a single smuggling transaction involving a small amount of drugs. U.S.S.G. § 3B1.2, comment. (n. 2). The district court found that Mordan made several trips to New York to purchase more than a small amount of cocaine for his more culpable conspirators. The court's findings as to Mordan's role in the offense are not clearly erroneous, and thus the two-level reduction must be affirmed. See United States v. Fregoso, 60 F.3d 1314, 1329 (8th Cir.1995) (standard of review). 23 The judgments of the district court are affirmed.