Opinion ID: 1288101
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Addison II Trip

Text: Mr. Hollins claims that the district court erred in holding him criminally responsible for the amounts involved in the Addison II trip. The district court counted only those drug quantities attributed to Addison and Butler from this trip, both of whom were caught and whose bottles were tested. The only question, therefore, is whether these amounts were part of the scheme and were reasonably foreseeable to Mr. Hollins. Mr. Hollins submits that the court held him responsible without making the requisite finding that the cocaine involved in the Addison II trip was reasonably foreseeable to him. However, it is plain from the record that the framework of the entire drug quantity inquiry before the court was foreseeability, and, therefore, the court's ultimate conclusion that Mr. Hollins should be charged with the amounts involved in the Addison II trip encompassed a determination that these quantities were foreseeable. See R.365-4 at 94 (stating that the parties should address the question [of] what was foreseeable to [Mr. Hollins] by a preponderance of the evidence, what quantity of cocaine was foreseeable to him which relates to the conspiracy). Mr. Hollins further claims that, other than certain of Addison's contradictory statements, the evidence does not support a finding that Mr. Hollins had any involvement in this particular transaction. Even if this were the case, Mr. Hollins still could be liable for this amount. The Government's burden in attributing drug quantities to a particular defendant does not require that it show that the defendant is involved in or even have direct knowledge of a particular transaction; [r]easonable foreseeability refers to the scope of the agreement that [a defendant] entered into when he joined the conspiracy, not merely to the drugs he may have known about. United States v. Flores, 5 F.3d 1070, 1083 (7th Cir.1993). This question about the scope of Mr. Hollins' agreement is precisely the question that the district court answered when it stated, [t]he evidence is clear that Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hollins ran this thing. . . . The jury found that [Mr. Hollins] conspired with Mr. Wilson. R.365-4 at 103. Having credited Addison's statements and testimony to the extent that they establish that she did have a relationship with Mr. Hollins and also with this drug conspiracy, id. at 106, the district court noted that there is certainly enough evidence to conclude that the amounts brought in by Addison were part of this conspiracy, id. at 103. These comments indicate that the court was convinced of Mr. Hollins' central role in the conspiracy and of his continuing knowledge of Addison's role in it when the court concluded that Mr. Hollins reasonably foresaw the drug quantities on the Addison II trip. In short, these facts were relevant considerations in assessing the scope of Mr. Hollins' agreement and, therefore, the quantities of cocaine reasonably foreseeable to him in the ongoing conspiracy. We also conclude that the district court did not err in crediting certain portions of Addison's testimony and discrediting certain others without an explicit statement of reasons made on the record. Mr. Hollins relies on United States v. Beler, 20 F.3d 1428 (7th Cir.1994), in support of his argument that the district court was required to provide such an explanation. In Beler, we overturned a sentence in which the primary evidence of drug quantity was a statement by a witness that was at odds with the witness' own earlier quantity estimate. Id. at 1433-35. We faulted the district court for its conclusory determination relying on the witness' higher estimate without any reference to the fact that the witness also had stated that the transaction at issue involved a significantly lower amount. Beler is inapposite on its facts. Unlike the court in Beler, the district court here did not rely on one of two directly contrary factual statements. It sifted through the testimony of a difficult witness and distilled the barest of facts relating to her involvement in the conspiracy. This kind of evidence sifting is certainly not beyond the competence or authority of a sentencing court. It is at the heart of the district court's function, and we shall not second guess the determinations made by a judicial officer who has observed the testimony and made careful judgments about the witness' veracity.