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

Heading: Gibbs's Sentence

Text: 119 The government presented two witnesses at Gibbs's sentencing hearing: Agent Coleman and Charles Wilkes, a self-proclaimed contract killer facing the death penalty who struck a deal with the government. Gibbs contends that the District Court erred in reaching its totals of 150 kilograms of powder cocaine and 1.5 kilograms of crack based on this testimony. 22 We review the District Court's determination of the drug quantities attributable to Gibbs for clear error. See Miele, 989 F.2d at 663. 120 Agent Coleman testified that the conspiracy received 111 kilograms of powder cocaine in the four-month period in which the government wiretapped Gibbs's phone. From that number, the government asserted that the conspiracy must have handled at least 150 kilograms over the life of the conspiracy, which ran from the summer of 1992 through April 1995 (approximately thirty-one months). The government notes that Agent Coleman's estimate of 111 kilograms was a conservative one: the electronic surveillance did not cover every day between November 1994 and April 1995; Gibbs used other phones that the government did not wiretap; and if the conversation involved a multi-kilogram transaction but Agent Coleman could not determine the specific number of kilograms under negotiation, he attributed one kilogram to the conversation. 121 Agent Coleman described his attribution method as follows: 122 [W]hen I reviewed . . . the tape recordings of the conversations, after conducting the wire, I was able to determine a pattern of speech where kilograms . . . of cocaine were discussed. And most of these conversations were between Terrence Gibbs and Juan Arana or Juan Arana and Domingo Arana or others. And I would take my analysis of either the money that was discussed referring to kilograms of cocaine or the kilograms of cocaine and determine how many were discussed in each conversation. Some conversations . . . discussed, what I believe to be crack cocaine. 123 He compiled a list of fifty-two phone conversations and the amounts he believed were discussed in each conversation. 124 As we discussed supra, it is appropriate for a district court to base its quantity calculations on intercepted conversations. The government can base its calculations on the amount of drugs under negotiation, see United States v. Raven, 39 F.3d 428, 432 (3d Cir. 1994), and it need not prove that the amounts under negotiation were actually distributed, see United States v. Layeni, 90 F.3d 514, 522 (D.C. Cir. 1996). A district court may carefully estimate the total drug quantities involved in a conspiracy based on evidence of average drug transactions during the conspiracy. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 application note 12. In addition, a leader of a drug conspiracy is responsible for drug quantities transacted by his subordinates in furtherance of the conspiracy. See, e.g., United States v. Russell, 134 F.3d 171, 184 (3d Cir. 1998) (attributing to defendant, who was the conspiracy's organizer, the total quantity of drugs for which defendant's co-conspirators had taken responsibility); United States v. Magana , 118 F.3d 1173, 1206 (7th Cir. 1997) (holding that defendant is liable for entire quantity of drugs attributable to conspiracy in circumstances where defendant is one of conspiracy's central figures). 23 125 While the conversations and amounts calculated there from are too lengthy to recount here, the District Court did not clearly err in finding that the government had proved the quantities of powder attributable to Gibbs by a preponderance. In fact, it appears that Agent Coleman was conservative in Gibbs's favor in his calculations. 126 The government must also prove by a preponderance that the substance involved is crack. See United States v. Holman, 168 F.3d 655, 658 (3d Cir. 1999) (noting that [i]t is the serious duty of the district court to hold the government to the preponderance standard, particularly because of the impact the identity determination has on sentencing). Agent Coleman testified that twelve kilograms of crack were sold during the life of the conspiracy. First, agents seized baking soda and cooking equipment from the apartment in which Gibbs allegedly cooked powder into crack. Second, Agent Coleman interpreted Discussions involving cocaine that was hard or done as Discussions about cocaine that had been cooked into crack. Third, Collier, Ellis, Parks, and Wilkes all testified that they personally had seen crack processed and distributed while they were members of the conspiracy. In fact, Ellis testified that he helped Gibbs process kilograms of crack five or six times. Coleman testified that the process these witnesses had seen would indeed produce crack. Finally, to avoid double counting when calculating Gibbs's sentence, the District Court subtracted these twelve kilograms of crack from the 111 kilograms of powder, since the crack had been processed from the powder. 127 We conclude that the government proved by a preponderance that Gibbs was responsible for producing at least 1.5 kilograms of crack. In fact, it arguably proved that Gibbs had produced much more than that, in light of the taped conversations and Ellis's testimony that he had been present when Gibbs cooked five or six kilograms of cocaine into crack. The government does not need to perform chemical analysis on the seized substances in order to prove that a substance was crack, see United States v. Dent, 149 F.3d 180, 190 (3d Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 833 (1999); Roman, 121 F.3d at 141, and other courts have held that the government may rely on the testimony of co-conspirators who distributed crack or who observed its manufacture to establish that the substance at issue was crack, see United States v. Hargrett, 156 F.3d 447, 451 (2d Cir.) (holding that testimony of co-conspirator that he cooked cocaine into crack for defendant was reasonable basis on which to charge defendant with that amount of crack), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 607 (1998); United States v. Cantley, 130 F.3d 1371, 1378-79 (10th Cir. 1997) (multiple police officers and lay witnesses who purchased substance from, or sold substance to, defendant testified that substance was crack), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 1098 (1998); United States v. Taylor, 116 F.3d 269, 273-74 (7th Cir. 1997) (drug supplier, purchasers, and assistants testified that substance was crack). 128 In sum, based on the amount of drugs discussed in intercepted conversations and on the reasonable estimate that if the conspiracy handled 111 kilograms of cocaine in four months, it handled 150 kilograms over thirty-one months, we conclude that the District Court did not clearly err in attributing 150 kilograms of powder cocaine and 1.5 kilograms of crack to Gibbs as a leader of the conspiracy. 129 The judgments of the District Court will be affirmed.