Opinion ID: 187186
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The aggregation of drug amounts

Text: A defendant convicted of conspiring to deal drugs in violation of § 846 shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense in § 841(a). 21 U.S.C. § 846. Law claims this means the district court can sentence a defendant convicted of conspiracy under § 846 only for the largest offense (violation of § 841(a)) within that conspiracy. Thus, if a conspiracy involves five sales of 10 grams of crack cocaine, the district court can only sentence the defendant like someone who sold 10 grams of crack cocaine, not like someone who sold 50 grams. Law argues the district court erred by allowing the jury to aggregate the drug quantities throughout the conspiracy, and then by relying on this figure to impose the mandatory life sentence. Since Law never raised this argument before the district court, we review for plain error. See United States v. Coles, 403 F.3d 764, 767 (D.C.Cir.2005). We join our sister circuits in holding a defendant convicted of conspiracy to deal drugs, in violation of § 846, must be sentenced, under § 841(b), for the quantity of drugs the jury attributes to him as a reasonably foreseeable part of the conspiracy. See United States v. Pressley, 469 F.3d 63, 65-67 (2d Cir.2006) (per curiam); United States v. Gori, 324 F.3d 234, 237 (3d Cir.2003); United States v. Pruitt, 156 F.3d 638, 644-45 (6th Cir.1998). As the Supreme Court has explained, a single agreement to commit several crimes constitutes one conspiracy. United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563, 570-71, 109 S.Ct. 757, 102 L.Ed.2d 927 (1989). As a result, a single violation of the conspiracy statute encompasses all of the crimes reasonably foreseeable within that conspiracy. See United States v. Walker, 160 F.3d 1078, 1093 (6th Cir.1998) (a conspiracy is a single violation of the drug laws, and the fact that this particular conspiracy was characterized by separate transactions is a fact of no legal significance). Here, the conspiracy was dealing drugs, and thus the entire sum of the drugs within the conspiracy constituted a single conspiracy violation. Accordingly, the district court did not commit plain error by relying on the jury's aggregated drug quantity determination in imposing the life sentence on Law. [9]