Opinion ID: 765997
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Brown's Sentence

Text: 99 Brown raises a number of reasons why his sentence should be overturned. We disposed of most of these supra, in the margin. We deal more fully with two of them: 100 whether the District Court erred in attributing to him all of the drugs that were distributed by the conspiracy in the one-month period during which Brown acted as an enforcer; and whether the District Court properly increased Brown's offense level on the basis of Brown's possession of a firearm.
101 At sentencing, the District Court attributed twenty-seven kilograms of powder cocaine and nine ounces of crack to Brown. Relying on Collado, 975 F.2d at 995, Brown contends that his involvement with the conspiracy, if any, was limited to interactions with Gibbs, and that the District Court therefore should not have attributed to him amounts of drugs that were part of other transactions of the conspiracy. We review for clear error the District Court's findings of fact regarding the relevant quantities of cocaine and crack attributable to Brown, as well as the types of drugs at issue. See Miele, 989 F.2d at 663; Roman, 121 F.3d at 140. 102 Brown is correct that, under the Guidelines, a court may not sentence a defendant for the entire amount of drugs in a conspiracy merely because the defendant has been found guilty of the crime of conspiracy. The sentencing court can consider relevant conduct, including the conduct of others that was both in furtherance of, and reasonably foreseeable in connection with, the criminal activity jointly undertaken by the defendant. Price, 13 F.3d at 732. However, courts often have held enforcers for drug conspiracies responsible for the amount of drugs that pass through the conspiracy during the time the person acts as an enforcer. For the most part, courts have based their holdings on the ground that the role of enforcer implies a strong familiarity with the goings-on of the entire conspiracy. See, e.g., United States v. Cortinas, 142 F.3d 242, 250 (5th Cir. 1998) (holding enforcer responsible for all of the drugs handled by the conspiracy during the twenty months he was part of the conspiracy); United States v. Phillips, 37 F.3d 1210, 1214 (7th Cir. 1994) (affirming district court's finding that the defendant, who carried guns and enforced for the conspiracy, had an intimate relationship with the operation and could be held responsible for all the drugs handled by the conspiracy). 103 We think these decisions are correct. In our view, the role of enforcer is often central to the viability of the drug conspiracy, which perforce exists in a dangerous environment, and thus an enforcer who has engaged in more than peripheral enforcement activities ought to be chargeable for any drugs passing through the conspiracy during his enforcership--at least for those deals made within the geographic region in which he operated. We recognize that, just as there are different paradigms of conspiracies, there may be different types of enforcers in a conspiracy. Some enforcers may be close to the center of the conspiracy, while others may work on the periphery. One enforcer may enforce during the entire life of the conspiracy; another may perform one task for the conspiracy and then go his own way. One must therefore be careful to consider the scope of the putative enforcer's role. In this conspiracy, however, during the limited time in question, there was only one leader: Gibbs. As we discuss below, the government proved that Brown served directly as an enforcer for Gibbs, who was widely known to be a major drug dealer, and that Brown's job was to protect Gibbs by hurting or killing someone who Gibbs perceived as a threat, thus facilitating Gibbs's ability to deal drugs. We are therefore comfortable in denominating Brown an enforcer for the conspiracy throughout the time in which Brown worked for Gibbs. 104 We also acknowledge the danger of attributing to an enforcer the entire quantity of drugs that pass through a conspiracy when that enforcer has acted for only a short period time relative to the conspiracy's total length. Here, Brown was involved in the conspiracy for about a month as the enforcer for the head of the conspiracy, and the amount attributed to him at sentencing reflected only the amount of drugs that passed through the conspiracy during that month. We have thus avoided the referenced danger. 105 In sum, in light of the number of conversations between Brown and Gibbs and the District Court's specific finding that Brown was an enforcer for a major drug dealer, we do not think it was clearly erroneous for the District Court to conclude that Brown was sufficiently involved with the conspiracy, as a protector of the leader of a large trafficking organization, so as to be charged with the twenty-seven kilograms of powder cocaine and nine ounces of crack that passed through the conspiracy during the time he served as an enforcer. 17
106 In July 1996, while the investigation of the conspiracy was ongoing, an informant told the government that Brown had participated in an armed robbery during which a security guard was shot. The government searched Brown's apartment, discovered a shotgun, and prosecuted Brown under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), which criminalizes possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. The jury convicted him of this offense. At sentencing in the instant case, the government introduced as evidence the sawed-off shotgun, which was at the heart of his earlier conviction, on the ground that Brown had possessed this shotgun during the relevant time periods for which he was an enforcer for the instant conspiracy. 107 The District Court took Brown's possession of the shotgun into account in adding two points to his offense level, in accordance with U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1), which directs a district court to increase a defendant's base offense level by two points when a defendant possesses a firearm during a drug offense. Brown alleges that this two-level increase constituted double-counting and violated double jeopardy, since he had already been punished for possessing the shotgun. We review this argument, which he did not raise below, for plain error. See United States v. Coates, 178 F.3d 681, 683 (3d Cir. 1999). 108 The Supreme Court has made clear that the use of relevant conduct to increase the punishment of a charged offense does not punish the offender for that relevant conduct. See Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 395 (1995). That is, a court does not violate a defendant's protections against double jeopardy when it convicts a defendant for crime X, enhances his sentence for crime X because of conduct Y, and convicts him for conduct Y as well. In Witte, the defendant pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. In calculating Witte's offense level under the guidelines, the district court considered not only the amount of marijuana involved in the charged offense, but also an additional 1000 pounds of marijuana and 1091 kilograms of cocaine involved in uncharged criminal conduct. See id. at 393-94. Witte was later indicted for conspiring and attempting to import the 1091 kilograms of cocaine considered in the earlier sentencing. The Supreme Court rejected Witte's contention that his subsequent prosecution on the cocaine offense would subject him to double jeopardybecause the district court had considered that conduct in sentencing him on the marijuana charge. 109 The Court explained, [W]e specifically have rejected the claim that double jeopardy principles bar a later prosecution or punishment for criminal activity where that activity has been considered at sentencing for a separate crime. Id. at 398 (citing Williams v. Oklahoma, 358 U.S. 576 (1959)). 18 The Court also explained that it makes no difference in this context whether the enhancement occurred in the first or second sentencing proceeding. Id. at 399. In Brown's case, the two-point sentence enhancement occurred in the second proceeding--his conspiracy conviction--based on his possession of a firearm during a drug offense, the possession for which he earlier had been convicted. Under Supreme Court precedent, this does not create a double jeopardy problem. See also United States v. Street, 66 F.3d 969, 980 (8th Cir. 1995) (holding that use of defendant's earlier state conviction to enhance federal sentence for assaulting park rangers did not violate double jeopardy clause). Because Brown's possession of a weapon was the basis for an earlier conviction but a mandatory ground for enhancement in a separate offense with different requirements, the District Court did not violate Brown's double jeopardy rights and did not double count in reaching Brown's final offense level. We therefore will affirm Brown's sentence in its entirety.