Opinion ID: 613517
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: United States v. Houston, 406 F.3d 1121 (9th Cir. 2005)

Text: In Houston, the Ninth Circuit concluded that proximate cause is not a required element of § 841(b)(1)(C)'s enhanced penalty. Houston, 406 F.3d at 1122-23. The jury convicted defendant Houston of distributing methadone to Bradford, who died. Id. at 1121. The district court instructed the jury that the Government was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that `the defendant's act was a proximate cause of ... Bradford's death.' Id. at 1123. The Ninth Circuit determined that [t]o the extent that this instruction suggested that Bradford's death had to have been a foreseeable result of [defendant] Houston's act, the instruction required the Government to prove more than the statute requires, and was therefore in error. Id. (footnote omitted). The Ninth Circuit reasoned that [t]he addition of proximate cause as an element necessary for invoking the twenty-year minimum sentence described in § 841(b)(1)(C) is inconsistent with the statutory language, our circuit's related precedent, and the conclusions of every other federal court of appeals to consider the issue. Id. The Ninth Circuit cited Patterson, McIntosh, and Robinson to support its conclusion that neither foreseeability nor proximate cause is required to support the enhanced penalty in § 841(b)(1)(C). See Houston, 406 F.3d at 1124. The Ninth Circuit added that, (1) [a]ll that is necessary under the statutory language is that `death ... results' from the offense described in § 841(a)(1), and (2) [c]ause-in-fact is required by the `results' language, but proximate cause, at least insofar as it requires that the death have been foreseeable, is not a required element. Id. at 1125. The Ninth Circuit determined that the district court erroneously instructed the jury that proximate cause was a required element of § 841(b)(1)(C), but found the error harmless and upheld defendant Houston's conviction and sentence. Id. at 1125-1126. With this background, we turn to the jury instructions at Webb's trial.