Opinion ID: 2775518
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Heroin Possession

Text: Collins also alleges that his convictions for heroin possession in 2010 and 2011 should be considered relevant conduct to the instant offense. We begin with his 2011 arrest. According to 7 No. 13-4158 United States v. Collins the Youngstown police report, officers pulled over the car that Collins was riding in for having tinted windows. Police officers approached the vehicle and observed Collins sitting in the passenger seat with “a personal use amount of heroin near his lap.” R. 244 (PSR at ¶ 63) (Page ID #1227). These facts are consistent with the government’s contention that Collins was possessing heroin outside of his involvement in the instant heroin conspiracy—i.e., that he was possessing it for personal use. This conclusion is also supported by the indictment and plea agreement, which provide multiple instances where Collins sold heroin to a cooperating source. See R. 249 (Plea Agreement at ¶ 19) (Page ID #1280–81). Tellingly, none of these sales occurred in October 2011—none, in fact, occurred after June 8, 2011. Id. We also note that the district court offered Collins an opportunity to provide evidence on this matter at sentencing. Collins might have, at this time, offered an explanation of from whom he had bought the heroin and to whom he was planning to sell it. He declined. The facts here mirror those in United States v. Escobar, 992 F.2d 87 (6th Cir. 1993). In that case, Escobar claimed that “the district court committed error by including two prior State of Ohio sentences for cocaine possession in the computation of his criminal history score, because the conduct which formed the basis for the Ohio sentences was part of the continuing criminal enterprise on which his federal sentence [was] based.” Id. at 87–88. We rejected this argument. Although Escobar’s drug possession offenses did occur while he was also involved in a drug distribution conspiracy, “Escobar’s possession of cocaine on [a particular date] is simply not charged in the federal indictment, and the commission of this act need not have been proven as 8 No. 13-4158 United States v. Collins an element of any of the offenses therein to which he pled guilty.” Id. at 89. Both of Escobar’s state convictions involved a small amount of cocaine, with one count charging him with possession of 0.58 grams of cocaine found on his person and rolled up in a dollar bill—facts indicative of cocaine intended for personal use. Id. at 88. In federal court, however, Escobar was convicted of conspiring to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; one of the overt acts charged in his indictment involved his attempting to board a plane with approximately 2.5 kilograms of cocaine and $66,000 in cash. Id. Like Escobar, Collins was convicted in federal court for attempting to distribute a large amount of contraband, whereas he was convicted in state court for possession of a small amount of contraband likely intended for personal use. As in Escobar, we reject Collins’s unsupported assertion that this arrest for possession constituted relevant conduct to the instant offense. Id. at 90 (“We [could] think of no justification for concluding that any possession by Escobar during the three-year time span of the criminal enterprise must automatically be considered as having been committed by him as part of or in furtherance of his criminal enterprise.”). The district court properly overruled Collins’s objection. Our decision on the 2011 arrest makes it unnecessary for us to review the district court’s decision regarding Collins’s 2010 arrest for heroin possession. Under the Guidelines, convictions scored pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(c) are capped at four. Collins had five such convictions here, including the three at issue in this appeal. We have already determined that the district court did not plainly err in awarding Collins a criminal history point for marijuana possession in 2000 and did not err in awarding him a criminal history point for heroin possession 9 No. 13-4158 United States v. Collins in 2011. Thus, Collins’s criminal history score still would have been 11, regardless of the district court’s treatment of his 2010 arrest. Any error by the district court here would have therefore been harmless. After determining Collins’s criminal history score and his total offense level, the district court properly set forth its rationale for Collins’s sentence. We hold that Collins’s sentence was neither procedurally nor substantively unreasonable.