Opinion ID: 809227
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Two-Level Enhancement for Obstruction

Text: of Justice The district judge ordered a two-level enhancement of Mayfield’s sentence for obstruction of justice because he found that Mayfield perjured himself at trial. U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(14)(D). Specifically, the judge found that Mayfield lied about his plan to rob Gomez, stating, [Mayfield] testified, which would have been a defense to the indictment. Now, he testified that he committed a different crime or he intended to commit a different crime, but it was a defense, and the jury didn’t buy it, so it’s clear that—in my mind, anyway—that he did not testify truthfully, so I’m going to enhance two for that. For the enhancement to stand, the defendant must have wilfully provided false testimony about a material 20 Nos. 10-3725, 10-3726, 11-2262 & 11-2439 matter. United States v. Johnson, 612 F.3d 889, 893 (7th Cir. 2010). Mayfield argues that his testimony was not false and that it did not even concern a matter material to the case. First, materiality. There is no doubt that the subject on which Mayfield testified—who he planned to steal from—was material. It went to the heart of the case. We have already explained that if jurors had accepted his testimony, they could not have found him guilty of conspiracy, since it is legally impossible to conspire with a government informant alone. So any false testimony on the subject was certainly material. Likewise, we needn’t linger on whether the testimony was false. For reasons we have already discussed at length, Mayfield’s defense about a secret plan with Potts to rob Gomez was full of holes. His story directly conflicted with the testimony of others and with the recordings that suggested a conspiracy to rob the fictitious stash house. But we are not quite finished, because Mayfield also claims the judge failed to adequately explain a finding of perjury. It is true that to apply an enhancement for obstruction of justice, “the district court must make independent findings necessary to establish all of three factual predicates for a finding of perjury.” United States v. Savage, 505 F.3d 754, 763 (7th Cir. 2007). But this requirement is not as stringent as Mayfield suggests. We have only reversed obstruction enhancements for inadequate findings when the sentencing judge presented a bare-bones explanation, such as, “I thought your testimony Nos. 10-3725, 10-3726, 11-2262 & 11-2439 21 was riddled with inaccuracies and lies.” United States v. McGiffen, 267 F.3d 581, 591 (7th Cir. 2001). Such a thin explanation leaves a defendant with a very poor idea of how exactly he perjured himself. So although some specificity is required at sentencing, “separate findings are not strictly necessary so long as the court determined that the defendant lied to the judge and jury about matters crucial to the question of the defendant’s guilt.” United States v. White, 240 F.3d 656, 662 (7th Cir. 2001). And that is exactly what the court did in this case. The judge clearly stated that the perjury involved Mayfield’s defense, and as we have already noted, that defense went to the heart of Mayfield’s case; it dealt directly with the question of his guilt. We thus find no error in the two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice.