Opinion ID: 198465
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Single Instance

Text: 7 We first consider Freeman's contention that his offense involved only a single instance. Although he made eight calls to the hotline, Freeman maintains that he only communicated a threat during the seventy-five minute phone call. The facts, however, demonstrate that he made at least two threatening communications. 8 The appropriate standard for determining if a defendant's communication constitutes a threat is  'whether [the defendant] should have reasonably foreseen that the statement he uttered would be taken as a threat by those to whom it is made.'  United States v. Whiffen, 121 F.3d 18, 21 (1st Cir.1997) (quoting United States v. Fulmer, 108 F.3d 1486, 1491 (1st Cir.1997)); see also United States v. Alkhabaz, 104 F.3d 1492, 1495 (6th Cir.1997) ([T]o constitute 'a communication containing a threat' under Section 875(c), a communication must be such that a reasonable person (1) would take the statement as a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm ... and (2) would perceive such expression as being communicated to effect some change or achieve some goal through intimidation....); United States v. Himelwright, 42 F.3d 777, 782 (3d Cir.1994) (holding that to establish violation of § 875(c), the government b[ears] only the burden of proving that [the defendant] acted knowingly and willfully when he placed the threatening phone calls and that those calls were reasonably perceived as threatening bodily injury). Freeman made a total of eight telephone calls. In his first call, he told the hotline operator that he had abducted his stepdaughter and sexually assaulted her. During his second phone call, which lasted seventy-five minutes, he graphically described the ways in which he had sexually tortured the girl since his first phone call and added that he can kill her and leave where she is now. Spiro Aff. at 1. Freeman concedes that this phone call constitutes a threatening communication. In each of Freeman's subsequent calls, he described in explicit detail the way in which he had supposedly tortured and sexually assaulted the girl since the immediately preceding phone call. In one of these later phone calls, he told the operator that he was abusing her and ... may just leave her to die in the basement. Id. at 2. Freeman should have reasonably foreseen that this call would also be taken as a threat. Indeed, Freeman should have reasonably foreseen that the hotline operator would take each of his calls updating the hotline operator about the ongoing sexual torture as at least an implicit threat to continue torturing the girl for an indefinite period of time and to later call again and describe the continuing torture. 3 The district court thus did not err in concluding that Freeman's conduct involved the transmission of more than one threatening communication. See United States v. Edgin, 92 F.3d 1044, 1047 (10th Cir.1996) (holding that defendant's conduct involved more than a single instance, notwithstanding fact that defendant pleaded guilty to only one count of making a threatening communication, when evidence showed that he made two threatening communications). 9 Perhaps recognizing that his conduct included more than one threatening communication, Freeman contends that the term single instance should be defined as single episode of threatening conduct rather than as single threat. See United States v. Sanders, 41 F.3d 480, 484 (9th Cir.1994) (holding that conduct involving several threats may constitute a single instance or episode within the meaning of § 2A6.1(b)(2)). Even if we were inclined to agree, we believe that the phrase  '[s]ingle instance' connotes [both] a temporal relationship [and] a 'single purpose' or 'single scheme.'  Id. Although Freeman may have had the ostensible single purpose or engaged in the single scheme of making a hotline operator believe that he was sexually assaulting a girl, would continue to do so for the indefinite future, and might eventually kill her, the district court did not err in concluding that Freeman's eight telephone calls to the hotline over the course of two days constituted more than a single instance. See id. (explaining that reduction might not apply where the defendant made a number of similar threats over an extended period of time); United States v. Bellrichard, 801 F.Supp. 263, 266 (D.Minn.1992) ([G]iven the volume and nature of defendant's written communications, the conduct ... could hardly be viewed as a 'single instance' under the guidelines.), aff'd, 994 F.2d 1318 (8th Cir.1993); cf. Edgin, 92 F.3d at 1047 & n. 3 (affirming no reduction where conduct involved threats made eleven days apart); United States v. Pacione, 950 F.2d 1348, 1356 (7th Cir.1991) (noting in passing that district court granted reduction where conduct involved threats made over the period of a few hours or less).