Opinion ID: 2708559
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Javier Ramirez

Text: The last defendant whose appeal we must resolve is Ramirez. He too was an Inca, and like several others, he pleaded guilty to participating in the RICO conspiracy and the drug conspiracy. He was sentenced to 180 months for the former and 60 months for the latter, to run consecutively. Thus, his total sentence was 240 months. Ramirez adopted by reference two of the claims that King raised: that his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated by the court’s use of a preponderance of the evidence standard rather than a reasonable-doubt standard at sentencing to find that Oberia Pierce’s murder was a predicate act of the RICO conspiracy; and that the court violated sentencing guideline § 2A1.1 by relying on Pierce’s murder in calculating his guidelines range. For the same reasons we Nos. 11-3179 et al. 49 offered in our discussion of King’s appeal, we reject these arguments. Ramirez also raises several factual arguments about his sentence; our review of these points is for clear error only. First, he asserts that the facts did not show that he was involved with the Pierce murder. The PSR had calculated an offense level of 37 for him, which it reached by adding the base level of 33 provided by § 2A1.5 and a four-level enhancement because the murder was undertaken for pecuniary gain. The court, however, decided to rely on § 2A1.1, which is the first-degree murder guideline, and this had the effect of raising his base offense level to 43. It did so because undisputed evidence from the Zambrano trial showed that Pierce was murdered. The jury heard evidence that Ramirez discussed the shooting three days later with Shanna. During that conversation, Ramirez said that Pierce was shot by “some of [his] guys” because Milton and Pierce “tr[ied] to grow balls and sh one time.” The next time Ramirez’s underlings saw Milton and Pierce in the neighborhood, Ramirez noted that the gang members shot them. Ramirez also said that he was hiding the shooter near his house. Ramirez concedes that these events took place and that he was at least an accessory after-the-fact to the murder. He argues, however, that he should not be liable for these actions of his co-conspirators. During his plea colloquy, he argued that the Latin Kings had “concrete goals” and thus not all criminal activity in Little Village was in furtherance of the Latin Kings’ conspiracy. In particular, he contended that the Pierce murder was outside the scope of the conspiracy that he joined. He suggested that there is no evidence indicating 50 Nos. 11-3179 et al. why Pierce and Morgan were shot at, nor anything to show who actually pulled the trigger. Ramirez’s characterization of the evidence is not entirely accurate. The government presented evidence about why Pierce was shot; it also introduced evidence connecting the shooter to Ramirez in his capacity as a Latin King. Most damning are Ramirez’s own admissions, summarized in part above. Ramirez’s argument also suffers from a legal misunderstanding. There is no heightened standard of proof that applies to his sentencing proceeding. Nor did the court commit clear error when it found that the government proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the homicide was foreseeable to Ramirez, that it was done to further the conspiracy’s goals, and that it could be attributed to Ramirez under Pinkerton. See United States v. Morales, 655 F.3d 608, 638 (7th Cir. 2011) (attributing co-conspirators’ violent acts to defendants at sentencing under similar circumstances); see also United States v. Curtis, 324 F.3d 501, 506 (7th Cir. 2003) (even if defendant was a fringe member of the conspiracy, so long as he joined it and the violent acts were reasonably foreseeable to him, murder committed by a coconspirator could be attributed to him). Given our deference to the district court’s findings of fact, we see no reversible error in Ramirez’s sentence.