Opinion ID: 1025675
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Misreading Promise

Text: In addition, the majority fails to recognize that Collins misread Promise by concluding that Promise had not fully satisfied Apprendi 's requirements in the context of drug conspiracies under §§ 846 and 841. As noted, when this court, sitting en banc in Promise, applied Apprendi to § 841, we transformed the § 841(b) threshold drug quantities from mere sentencing factors into elements of three separate offenses under § 841(a): (1) a default offense corresponding to § 841(a) and § 841(b)(1)(C); (2) an aggravated offense corresponding to § 841(a) and § 841(b)(1)(B); and (3) a more aggravated offense corresponding to § 841(a) and § 841(b)(1)(A). See Promise, 255 F.3d at 156-57. The threshold drug quantities found in § 841(b) thus ceased to be sentencing factors for the district court and became elements of the crime to be found by the jury. This became true also for conspiracy offenses under § 846 when a § 841(a) offense was the object of the criminal agreement. See Promise, 255 F.3d at 153 & n. 3 (noting that Promise was convicted of conspiracy under § 846, but that § 846 takes on the same penalties as those prescribed for the object offense  here, § 841(a) and § 841(b)(1)). Therefore, by creating three separate offenses under § 841(a) and (b) and by requiring the government to charge and prove, and the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt, the threshold drug quantity of the conspiracy as a whole, Promise abrogated the portion of Irvin that required the sentencing judge to determine the applicability of § 841(b) on an individualized basis for each defendant. Similarly, because the conspiracy under §§ 846 and 841(a) now included as elements of the crime the threshold drug amounts specified in § 841(b), it was no longer necessary, nor even permissible, for the judge to determine the statutory range of punishment. Indeed, it was precisely the sort of judicial determination of which statutory range of penalty applied as called for in Irvin, that the Apprendi court held unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment. See Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 485-90, 120 S.Ct. 2348. Under the Promise scheme, the jury necessarily identified the proper range of punishment for all conspirators by virtue of its finding of a threshold drug quantity as part of its verdict. In other words, where Irvin required the sentencing judge to make findings of drug quantity to satisfy both § 841(b) and the Sentencing Guidelines, Promise removed the § 841(b) finding from the judge and gave it to the jury to find as an element of the offense. The sentencing judge was left to make only the findings necessary to apply the Sentencing Guidelines within the § 841(b) statutory range authorized by the jury's verdict. Collins failed to recognize this necessary consequence of Promise. Instead, it located language in Irvin instructing the district court to determine the accountability of each coconspirator for each object offense and the quantity of narcotics involved in each object offense, Irvin, 2 F.3d at 76, and concluded that Apprendi required this language to be altered by replacing a district court with the jury and inserting beyond a reasonable doubt as the burden of proof. Collins, 415 F.3d at 313-14. The Collins court reached this result apparently without comprehending the significance of our holding in Promise, which had already taken the § 841(b) determination away from the district court as a sentencing matter and had given it to the jury as an element of the offense. Compare id. at 313 n. 5 (acknowledging Promise 's holding that the jury must find the specific threshold quantity . . . as an element of an aggravated drug trafficking offense (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted)) with id. at 314 (holding nonetheless that the jury must make individualized § 841(b) findings for sentencing purposes). There was thus no reason for Collins to reach this question, let alone to hold in the manner that it did. Any Sixth Amendment problem had already been answered by our full court sitting en banc in Promise, and any language from Irvin instructing the district court to make the findings necessary to choose the proper statutory range under § 841(b) had already been nullified by Promise 's transformation of the threshold drug quantities in § 841(b) into elements of three separate offenses. Quite simply, there was no error left for Collins to find or to correct. Nor was it left open to Collins to decide whether the jury's finding of a threshold drug quantity in a conspiracy case under § 846 should focus on the conspiracy as a whole or the amount attributable to each individual defendant. We recognized in Promise, consistent with both the language of § 846 and the principles of conspiracy law described above, that the penalties for a conspiracy under § 846 are the same as those for the offense that is the object of the conspiracy. See 21 U.S.C. § 846; Promise, 255 F.3d at 153 n. 3. In Irvin 's day, the penalty for the single object offense described under § 841(a) was unrestricted by the jury's verdict, and it thus made sense for the district court's individualized sentencing determination to control the selection of the applicable provision of § 841(b) as well as the then-mandatory Guidelines range. But upon the creation in Promise of three distinct offenses under § 841(a), it became necessary for the jury to find the quantity attributable to the object offense, that is, to the conspiracy as a whole, in order for the aggravated penalty provisions of § 841(b) to apply and for the concept of a conspiracy as punishing only the entering into of a criminal agreement to retain any validity. If the jury were permitted or required to make individualized findings of threshold drug quantity, the existence of a conspiratorial agreement would become irrelevant. Thus, to remain faithful to both Promise and conspiracy law generally, see Whitfield, 543 U.S. at 212-14, 125 S.Ct. 687; Shabani, 513 U.S. at 15-16, 115 S.Ct. 382; Yearwood, 518 F.3d at 225-30, the jury's threshold drug quantity determination in a conspiracy case must make reference to the conspiracy as a whole. Therefore, when the majority in this case explains that we recognized in Collins that, under the Irvin precedent, `the subsection of § 841(b) applicable to an individual defendant is determined by a consideration of the amount of narcotics attributable to that defendant,' ante at 558 (quoting Collins, 415 F.3d at 313), it repeats Collins' error in failing to recognize that Promise had already altered the Irvin precedent on precisely this point. When the determination of which provision of § 841(b) applied to an individual defendant was part of the sentencing process, it made sense to apply sentencing principles, which at the time of Irvin (and continuing today) were based on relevant offense conduct individually attributable to the defendant. See Irvin, 2 F.3d at 73-74 & n. 2; U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3. But when Promise shifted the § 841(b) threshold drug-quantity determination to the jury as an additional element of the conspiracy offense, it required the government to charge and prove, and the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt, that the threshold drug quantity was an element of the object offense, subjecting each member of the conspiracy  i.e., each defendant who joined the agreement to distribute 50 grams of crack  to the same statutory range of penalties. Thus, in order to convict a conspiracy defendant of agreeing to distribute drugs at a level that constitutes an aggravated offense, the jury is required to find that the defendant knowingly joined the agreement and that the agreement involved the distribution of the threshold quantity of drugs specified in § 841(b)(1). Such a finding by the jury is all that is necessary to expose each and every member of the conspiracy to the aggravated statutory penalty range. What the member of the conspiracy actually did in carrying out the conspiracy is relevant only to calculate the advisory Sentencing Guidelines range and to determine the appropriate sentence within the § 841(b)(1) statutory range.