Opinion ID: 569213
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Determination of Base Offense Level Under Guidelines

Text: 47 For sentencing purposes, the district judge treated those defendants who pleaded guilty differently from those defendants who were tried and convicted. Defendants David Dora, Lawrence Bates and Ronald McMillen pleaded guilty and, in exchange for their admissions, were sentenced to 121 months under Guidelines § 2D1.1. Initially, the court set the base offense level of these three defendants at 34, corresponding to between 3 and 9.9 kilograms of heroin. Guidelines § 2D1.1(a)(3). However, the Court proceeded to lower the offense level two points to 32, and then sentenced each of the three to the statutory minimum corresponding to an offense level of 32-121 months. 48 The trial court held the six defendants who went to trial responsible for considerably more heroin--indeed, for all of the heroin which was distributed during the course of the Cole conspiracy. Estimating that the organization made a daily distribution of one ounce from 1986 through 1988, the cumulative amount of heroin which flowed through the veins of the conspiracy exceeded 10 kilograms per year. Looking then to Guidelines § 2D1.1, the district judge assigned a base offense level of 36 to defendants Jimmy Lee Coleman, Leda Martin, Olanrewaju Raji, Jackie Edwards, Andre Stover, C.C. Hampton, and Eric Bennett. Having arrived at a base offense level of 36, the district court proceeded to impose sentences within the applicable Guideline range--188 months to 235 months, departing upward or downward where appropriate. 49 This base offense level of 36 provided the basis for sentencing each of these defendants individually, providing the point of departure for the sentencing judge to adjust the penalty for offense characteristics and the criminal history of the individual defendant. However, the district judge accepted that the conspiracy distributed 10 or more kilograms of heroin and proceeded to sentence each of the convicted defendants according to this amount. 50 Before turning to the determination of the base offense level for each of the individual defendants' sentences, we consider a claim made in the joint brief and by several of the defendants individually. The claim is that sentencing on the basis of 10 or more kilograms of heroin was clearly erroneous because the three defendants who entered into plea agreements, Dora, McMillen and Bates, were only sentenced on the basis of 3 to 9.9 kilograms of heroin. In the Government's view, however, the error occurred not in the sentencing of the appellants, but in the sentencing of Dora, McMillen and Bates, who were incorrectly assigned a base offense level of 34, because they entered into a plea agreement with the Government. 51 As we demonstrated above, the appropriateness of the base offense level turns on the quantity of drugs that was reasonably foreseeable to each defendant. This determination depends upon the scope of the conspiracy that each defendant entered into. We need not determine whether the district court was correct in setting the base offense levels for Dora, McMillen and Bates, for the disparity between sentences does not provide a basis for resentencing. See Fazio, 914 F.2d at 959 n. 15; United States v. Cea, 914 F.2d 881, 889 (7th Cir.1990); Guerrero, 894 F.2d at 267. The import of these cases is best illustrated by an example. A sentence which is mistaken, too draconian or too lenient as to co-defendant A does not grant co-conspirator B the license to benefit from a lighter sentence nor does it impose the added burden of a tougher sentence. If the sentence imposed upon a particular defendant falls within the applicable Guideline, then it will not be overturned on the ground that another defendant was sentenced differently. Guerrero, 894 F.2d at 267. See also United States v. Rios, 893 F.2d 479, 481 (2d Cir.1990). Of course, our holding here does not impose a bar on resentencing in the event that a sentence has been imposed in violation of a defendant's constitutional rights, for example, if a higher sentence was imposed because exculpatory evidence was improperly excluded, or if a defendant was prejudicially affected by his lawyer's ineffective assistance. Cf. id. at 268 (considering whether defendant should be resentenced because of Brady violation where prosecution failed to introduce evidence favorable to the defendant).