Opinion ID: 779205
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Anthony Corrado

Text: 66 Anthony raises one additional issue, and the government cross-appeals his sentence.
67 Anthony appeals the district court's decision not to depart downward in sentencing him, based on the government's culpability for damaging his health in needlessly and (allegedly) vindictively transporting him from Rochester, Minnesota, to Detroit to testify in another case. 68 A district judge's refusal to depart downward is ordinarily unreviewable, but we may review the district court's decision if the district court was unaware of its discretion to depart downward. See, e.g., United States v. Byrd, 53 F.3d 144, 145 (6th Cir.1995). The district court implicitly acknowledges its discretion to depart downward where it clearly finds on the facts in the record that the requested downward departure is unwarranted. Such a finding precludes appellate review of the district court's decision. See United States v. Jones, 102 F.3d 804, 809 (6th Cir.1996); see also United States v. Abdullah, 162 F.3d 897, 905 (6th Cir.1998) (holding that district court's decision was unreviewable where district court entertained argument and clearly expressed recognition of his discretion to depart). 69 In the present case, the district court implicitly recognized its discretion to depart from the Guidelines by calling into question the factual basis of the defendant's motion. At the resentencing hearing, for example, the district court stated: 70 [Anthony's] counsel argues with great persuasive force that such mistreatment and its effects were clearly not contemplated by the drafters of the sentencing guidelines but are a special circumstance which a sentencing court should be able to take into consideration. Perhaps under the right circumstances, what counsel urges upon the Court should become part of our jurisprudence but not under these circumstances. First of all, the Court cannot conclude, based on Dr. Yee's testimony, that any maltreatment that Mr. Corrado may have suffered caused major and persistent damage to his health. The evidence is simply not conclusive on this point. Even if it were, there's no jurisprudentially satisfying record, other than the assertions of Mr. Corrado himself, that this maltreatment occurred and the Court cannot therefore find that it did. If such evidence were available, the Court would be confronted with another very difficult issue ... when, if at all, should maltreatment of a prisoner be a basis for downward departure.... 71 J.A. at 2004-05. The district court noted that, in certain circumstances, it would have to determine whether government maltreatment of a prisoner could serve as a basis for a downward departure but that, even if this were an appropriate basis for a downward departure, the facts of the present case would not support it. In other words, the court concluded that, even if it had discretion to depart downward on this basis, it would not. For this reason, this issue is not reviewable on appeal.
72 In its cross-appeal, the government argues that the district court erred in assigning Anthony Corrado a total offense level of 27. The government argues that Anthony Corrado should have been assigned a total offense level of 36. According to the government, the district court erred (1) in sentencing Anthony Corrado with respect to only one underlying offense for the Count 1 RICO conspiracy, i.e., obstruction of justice; and (2) in declining to enhance Anthony Corrado's Count 6 extortion conspiracy offense level because the acts of Nove Tocco and Paul Corrado triggering those enhancements were not reasonably foreseeable to Anthony Corrado. 73 We review de novo the sentencing court's interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines and statutes, and we review for clear error its factual findings. See, e.g., United States v. Swiney, 203 F.3d 397, 401 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 530 U.S. 1238, 1268, 120 S.Ct. 2678, 2734, 147 L.Ed.2d 288, 995 (2000). If the district court's factual findings are not clearly erroneous, this court reviews de novo the determination that the conduct in question constituted relevant conduct. United States v. Myers, 123 F.3d 350, 364 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 1020, 118 S.Ct. 611, 139 L.Ed.2d 498 (1997). Whether the criminal acts of others in a jointly undertaken criminal activity are reasonably foreseeable is a question of fact, reviewable only for clear error. United States v. Canestraro, 282 F.3d 427, 433 (6th Cir.2002). 74
75 Section 2E1.1 governs sentencing for RICO conspiracy convictions. It provides that the base offense level for a RICO count is the greater of 19 or the offense level applicable to the underlying racketeering activity. 7 In Tocco, we held that the test for determining whether conduct qualifies as an underlying racketeering activity for sentencing purposes is the relevant conduct test, i.e., that found in U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3. See 200 F.3d at 430. See also Corrado I, 227 F.3d at 542 ([T]he underlying acts of racketeering in a RICO conspiracy are ... simply conduct that is relevant to ... participating in a criminal enterprise.) The issue in the present case, then, is whether the district court erred by not including the following as underlying racketeering activity for the purpose of calculating Anthony Corrado's offense level for Count 1:(1) the extortion conspiracy; (2) the substantive acts of extortion; (3) the conspiracy to murder Harry Bowman; and (4) activities related to the Frontier and Edgewater Hotels. 76 We note at the outset that in order to convict Anthony of the RICO conspiracy charged in Count 1, the jury necessarily had to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Anthony agreed to the commission of at least two RICO predicate acts. See 18 U.S.C. § 1961(5) (`pattern of racketeering activity' requires at least two acts of racketeering activity); see also Salinas v. United States, 522 U.S. 52, 66, 118 S.Ct. 469, 139 L.Ed.2d 352 (1997); United States v. Joseph, 781 F.2d 549, 554-55 (6th Cir.1986). However, the district court found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Anthony was responsible for only one underlying racketeering offense, obstruction of justice, for the purpose of calculating Anthony's base offense level for the Count 1 RICO conspiracy pursuant to the relevant conduct provisions of U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3. Relevant conduct includes: (1) all acts or omissions that the defendant committed, aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, or willfully caused; and (2) all reasonably foreseeable acts and omissions of others in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity, that occurred during, in preparation for, or in the course of attempting to avoid detection or responsibility for the RICO conspiracy. U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(A) & (B). RICO predicate acts, then, for which a defendant is convicted necessarily constitute relevant conduct for the purpose of calculating the defendant's base offense level for a RICO conspiracy conviction. The district court thus erred in sentencing Anthony by finding, by a preponderance of the evidence, that he was responsible for only one underlying racketeering offense where the jury found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Anthony agreed to the commission of at least two RICO predicate acts. 77 We recognize that the jury in the present case rendered a general verdict and thus did not specify which of the predicate acts it found had been agreed to by Anthony and the other defendants. As we have previously held, however, the other verdicts of the same jury may serve the function of a special verdict on the predicate acts, where those other verdicts necessarily required a finding that the RICO defendant had committed the predicate acts. Callanan v. United States, 881 F.2d 229, 234 (6th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1083, 110 S.Ct. 1816, 108 L.Ed.2d 946 (1990). Because both the extortion conspiracy and the substantive acts of extortion were predicate acts of the Count 1 RICO conspiracy, we conclude that the district court erred in this case by not including the extortion conspiracy and the substantive acts of extortion for which Anthony was convicted as underlying racketeering activity for the purpose of calculating Anthony's Count 1 RICO conspiracy offense level. 78 With regard to whether the extortion conspiracy and the substantive acts of extortion constituted relevant conduct for Anthony's Count 1 RICO conspiracy base offense level, the district court stated at resentencing: 79 The court, having considered all the evidence, listened to and observed all witnesses at trial, listened to hours of tape recordings almost entirely of conversations between Nove Tocco and Paul Corrado, been present at the testimony last year of Nove Tocco, all of which it views in context against the imperative fundament of Anthony Corrado's conviction on Counts 1, 2, 6, 13, 20, 21, 23 and 24 concludes and finds that the street tax extortions of Nove Tocco and Paul Corrado were indeed independent of the overall Count 1 RICO conspiracy of which Anthony Corrado was convicted and that therefore those extortionate acts of Nove Tocco and Paul Corrado are not relevant conduct for the purpose of offense level calculations as to Anthony Corrado under Count 1. 80 Indeed, the court can only conclude from the lengthy consideration that it has given all the evidence related to the relationship(s) and interactions between Nove Tocco, Paul Corrado, on the one hand, and Jack Tocco and Anthony Corrado, on the other, that Nove Tocco and Paul Corrado carried out their street tax extortions in spite of the resistance and displeasure expressed consistently and in various ways by the older members of the Count 1 RICO conspiracy. 81 J.A. at 1176-77. 8 This statement seems entirely to ignore the fact that Anthony was convicted of the extortion conspiracy. See Corrado II, 2000 WL 1290343, at  (noting that a sentencing court cannot ignor[e] conduct of which a defendant has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt). Inasmuch as conspiracy to extort in violation of the Hobbs Act was listed as a predicate act in the indictment, see J.A. at 175 (Indictment), we believe that Anthony's conviction on the extortion conspiracy count serves the function of a special verdict on that predicate act. 82 It is at least possible, however, that Anthony's participation in the extortion conspiracy and his commission of substantive acts of extortion were independent of his participation in the Count 1 RICO conspiracy. 9 The facts of this case and our prior opinions in this case, though, require a conclusion that the extortion conspiracy was not independent of the overarching RICO conspiracy charged in Count 1. First, the same parties were involved in both conspiracies — in the same roles. Evidence established that, prior to starting up their business, Paul and Nove Tocco received permission from the boss of the Detroit family, Jack Tocco; that Anthony, as a capo in that family, supervised Paul and Nove Tocco in the street tax scheme; and that Anthony took steps, throughout the period in which Paul and Nove Tocco were extorting bookmakers in the Detroit metropolitan area, to rein in his subordinates to keep them from attracting the unwanted attention of law enforcement on the overarching RICO conspiracy. In addition, we mandated a three-level increase in the offense levels for the Hobbs Act conspiracy and substantive counts based on Anthony's supervisory role in the Hobbs Act conspiracy. See Corrado II, 2000 WL 1290343, at . 83 Second, we have previously held, in the forfeiture cases, Corrado III, 227 F.3d at 554-55, and Corrado IV, 286 F.3d at 938-39, that it was clear error for the district court to conclude that the Hobbs Act conspiracy was not part of the overarching RICO conspiracy in the present case. Forfeiture is a mandatory aspect of RICO sentencing, with the members of the criminal enterprise jointly and severally liable for the proceeds of the entire enterprise. See Corrado III, 227 F.3d at 550-51. In the Corrado III forfeiture case, we held that the district court erred in finding that the proceeds of the street tax scheme involved in the Hobbs Act counts were not attributable to the entire criminal enterprise, and thus that the district court committed clear error in failing to hold Jack Tocco and Giacalone jointly and severally liable for forfeiture of the street tax proceeds. Id. at 555. More recently, in the Corrado IV forfeiture case, we held that the evidence showed that Anthony Corrado was a member of the conspiratorial enterprise that empowered the collection of the street taxes, and thus that Anthony was jointly and severally liable, pursuant to mandatory RICO forfeiture, for the proceeds of the street tax scheme. Corrado IV, 286 F.3d at 938-39. 84 Because we conclude that the extortion conspiracy and the Count 1 RICO conspiracy were not independent, we hold that it was clear error for the district court, in resentencing Anthony, to find that the street tax conspiracy and the substantive acts of extortion involved in it were not underlying racketeering activity pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2E1.1(a)(2) for the purpose of calculating Anthony's base offense level for Count 1. Remand is thus necessary so that the district court can recalculate Anthony's sentence to include, at minimum, the Hobbs Act conspiracy and the specific acts of extortion for which Anthony was convicted as relevant conduct under the Count 1 RICO conspiracy conviction. In addition, the district court must reconsider the substantive acts of extortion charged in the indictment but for which Anthony was not convicted to determine whether those acts of extortion were relevant conduct for purposes of the RICO conspiracy charged in Count 1, i.e., whether these acts of Paul and Nove Tocco were reasonably foreseeable and in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity, U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), i.e., the RICO conspiracy. 85 On remand, however, the district court need not revisit its findings regarding whether the Frontier Hotel and Edgewater Hotel counts and the conspiracy to murder Harry Taco Bowman constitute relevant conduct for purposes of sentencing Anthony under Count 1. We conclude that the district court's findings with respect to these issues are adequate for appellate review and that they are not clearly erroneous. The evidence produced by the government to connect Anthony with these incidents was not sufficient to support a finding either that he was involved in any illegality in association with them or that any such illegality was reasonably foreseeable to him. A contrary conclusion is not dictated by the jury's guilty verdict on Count 1, in contrast to the Hobbs Act conspiracy and substantive counts. 10 86
87 At resentencing, the district court considered whether the substantive acts of extortion should be used to calculate Anthony's base offense level for the Hobbs Act conspiracy, applying the higher standard for multiple-object conspiracies found in application note 5 to U.S.S.G. § 1B1.2. 11 The district court held Anthony responsible only for those five substantive counts of extortion for which he was convicted — Counts 13 (Yaldoo), 20 (Yatooma), 23 (Abraham), 24 (Sophiea), and 21 (Martin) — rather than for all of the extortion victims (nine) alleged in Count 6 and the specific counts of which he was not convicted. The district court held that, as a trier of fact, he would not convict Anthony of conspiring to commit those four offenses for which he was not convicted. See J.A. at 1192 (Count 10 — Monro), 1193-94 (Count 12 — Wierzba), 1195 (Count 11 — Morales), 1196 (Count 17 — Johns). 12 88 In previously remanding this case, we also instructed the district court to make factual findings with respect to whether Anthony Corrado should be accountable for specific offense characteristics associated with particular acts of extortion committed by his coconspirators, pursuant to U.S.S.G. §§ 1B1.3(a)(1)(B) (relevant conduct), 2B3.2(b)(1), 2B3.2(b)(3)(A)(i), and 2B3.2(b)(2) (specific offense characteristics). See Corrado II, 2000 WL 1290343, at -5. At resentencing, the district court found that none of these specific offense characteristics were reasonably foreseeable to Anthony and thus did not enhance his sentence on the extortion conspiracy on the basis of any of these characteristics. The district court made this finding in one sentence. See J.A. at 1201-02. On this new remand, we again instruct the district court to make adequate factual findings regarding the specific offense characteristics that the government alleges apply to the substantive acts of extortion for which Anthony was convicted. For purposes of appellate review, the district court must provide some explanation for why these acts were or were not reasonably foreseeable to Anthony. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 32(c)(1); Corrado I, 227 F.3d at 540-41.