Opinion ID: 1352691
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Terrorism Enhancement

Text: Section 3A1.4 of the Sentencing Guidelines provides that [i]f the offense is a felony that involved, or was intended to promote, a federal crime of terrorism, the offense level will be increased by 12 levels (and be no lower than level 32) and defendant's criminal history category shall be Category VI. U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4. The commentary to that section provides that `federal crime of terrorism' has the meaning given that term in 18 U.S.C. [§ ] 2332b(g)(5). Id. n. 1. In turn, 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5) provides that the term Federal crime of terrorism means an offense that (A) is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and (B) is a violation of [certain enumerated sections, including 18 U.S.C. § 1114]. In its sentencing opinion, the district court found that Defendant's attack on Officer Pepe was in furtherance of his intent to affect or influence Judge Sand's decision about substitution of counsel, and was in retaliation for judicial conduct denying Defendant's applications for substitution of counsel, Salim I, 287 F.Supp.2d at 303, and rejected Salim's claim that there was no evidence of these facts on the record. Id. at 323. It also noted that Defendant was convicted of an offense enumerated at 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B). Id. Despite its finding that Salim's offense met both elements of the § 2332b(g)(5) definition, the district court nonetheless refused to apply the terrorism enhancement because it discerned a third requirement. The district court held that it is apparent that a `Federal crime of terrorism' is one that meets the requirements at § 2332b(g)(5) and involves `conduct transcending national boundaries.'  Id. at 339 (emphasis added) (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(a)(1)). Because Salim's offense did not satisfy this third requirement, the district court concluded that the terrorism enhancement was inapplicable. The district court opined that [t]his definition of a `Federal crime of terrorism' incorporating a transnational conduct element reconciles the textual directives of the different subsections of 18 U.S.C. § 2332b, as well as the specific and broad context in which the term `Federal crime of terrorism' occurs. Id. We disagree, and conclude that the district court's interpretation is irreconcilable with the text of both subsection (g)(5) in particular and section 2332b as a whole. Apart from its appearance in subsection (g), which defines the terms used elsewhere in section 2332b, the term Federal crime of terrorism is used only once in the statute. Section 2332b(f) provides in relevant part: In addition to any other investigative authority with respect to violations of this title, the Attorney General shall have primary investigative responsibility for all Federal crimes of terrorism,..., and the Secretary of the Treasury shall assist the Attorney General at the request of the Attorney General. 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(f) (emphasis added). The district court concluded that, unless a Federal crime of terrorism only referred to crimes involving transnational conduct, subsection (f) would be meaningless because other sections of Title 18 already give the Attorney General broad authority to investigate violations of that Title. Salim I, 287 F.Supp.2d at 338. Thus, in order for subsection (f) to convey authority [i]n addition to the Attorney General's existing authority, the extended authority must be in areas not before authorized. Id. Because the Attorney General already had investigative authority over purely intra-national offenses under Title 18, this section could not convey any additional authority (despite its obvious intent to do so) unless Federal crimes of terrorism covered only crimes involving conduct transcending national boundaries. This argument cannot be reconciled with the statutory text of subsection (g)(5), in which a transnational conduct requirement is nowhere to be found. The district court erred in deriving such a requirement from its reading of subsection (f). Subsection (f) does not give the Attorney General additional authority to investigate Federal crimes of terrorism, it gives that officer primary investigative responsibility for such crimes. 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(f) (emphasis added). Whatever the exact meaning of primary investigative responsibility, it is plainly distinct from investigative authority because it envisions an authority expressly superior to that possessed by another actor. It is not meaningless to give an executive officer primary investigative responsibility over a certain category of crimes, even if he has pre-existing authority to investigate the same crimes. Prior to the passage of section 2332b, we presume, both the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury had certain investigative authority with respect to violations of Title 18. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1030(d)(1) (giving the Secret Service, a division of the Treasury Department, authority to investigate offenses involving computer fraud). When subsection (f) became effective, the Attorney General was given primary investigative responsibility with respect to certain Title 18 crimes (specifically, those offenses that constituted Federal crimes of terrorism) over the Secretary of the Treasury. The district court overlooked the fact that one official's authority may be enhanced by making it superior to that of another official, and not just by increasing the number of crimes to which it extends. As a result, subsection (f) is coherent on its face, and thus undercuts any perceived need to read an extra-textual transnational conduct element into the definition of Federal crimes of terrorism. The district court also asserted that its transnational conduct element harmonizes the definition of Federal crime of terrorism with the focus of section 2332b as a whole, which is `Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.' Salim I, 287 F.Supp.2d at 339 (quoting the title of 18 U.S.C. § 2332b). We recognize that the offenses punished by section 2332b are those involving conduct transcending national boundaries, 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(a)(1), but Salim was not charged with or convicted of violating that statute. Our focus is only on subsection 2332b(g)(5), the particular subsection of section 2332b that the Sentencing Commission cross-referenced in the commentary to U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4. The sentencing enhancement for a federal crime of terrorism is not limited to conduct that constitutes an offense under section 2332b; it applies to any conduct that meets the definition of subsection (g)(5). Congress could have defined Federal crime of terrorism to include a requirement that the offense conduct transcend national boundaries, but it did not. Instead, it defined two distinct terms, Federal crime of terrorism and conduct transcending national boundaries, and neither term references the other. 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(1),(5). [C]ourts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there. When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: the judicial inquiry is complete. Conn. Nat'l Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). [2] Our refusal to incorporate a transnational conduct element in the definition of Federal crime of terrorism accords with the judgment of our sister circuits. See United States v. Harris, 434 F.3d 767, 773 (5th Cir.2005) (The definition of a `federal crime of terrorism' ... encompasses many offenses, none of which has an element requiring conduct transcending national boundaries.); United States v. Hale, 448 F.3d 971, 988 n. 1 (7th Cir.2006); see also United States v. Dowell, 430 F.3d 1100, 1105, 1110-12 (10th Cir.2005) (assuming without deciding that the terrorism enhancement applied to domestic terrorist acts involving the destruction of an IRS office in Colorado Springs); United States v. Graham, 275 F.3d 490, 496, 513-19 (6th Cir.2001) (applying the domestic terrorism enhancement to conduct by domestic militia that was planning to attack government targets on an unspecified future date). Salim contends that the district court's refusal to apply the enhancement was correct for a separate reason: the rulings of a judge do not constitute government conduct under 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(A). This argument is patently meritless. As the district court properly observed, it is hardly a novel construction ... to conclude that the `conduct of government' embraces judicial rulings, such as the substitution of assigned counsel. Salim I, 287 F.Supp.2d at 329. Salim cites no case reaching a contrary conclusion. If a federal judge is a government official, United States v. Adelman, 168 F.3d 84, 86 (2d Cir.1999), it follows that a magistrate judge's recommendations regarding, and a district judge's ruling on, requests to substitute counsel constitute government conduct for the purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5) and, by reference, U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4. As we have noted, Salim also argues that while his planned attack on his lawyers may have been calculated to influence the conduct of government, his actual attack on Pepe was not. We reject this myopic view of the purpose of the attack. And even if it were correct, this argument provides no basis for upholding the district court's refusal to apply the enhancement, because of the district court's alternative finding: that the attack on Pepe was calculated to retaliate against judicial recommendations and orders denying Defendant's applications for substitute counsel. Salim I, 287 F.Supp.2d at 304. As noted previously, see supra Part I.C, Salim has failed to demonstrate that this finding, a second basis for applying the terrorism enhancement, was clearly erroneous. Because the district court fell into legal error by holding that a Federal crime of terrorism must involve conduct transcending national boundaries, we conclude that the sentence imposed was unreasonable based on the procedural failure to calculate the appropriate Guidelines range. See Gall, 128 S.Ct. at 597. As a result, we need not reach the question of whether the district court appropriately departed upward from the applicable Guidelines range under U.S.S.G. § 5K2. We have considered the remaining arguments made by Salim and his counsel and find them to be without merit.