Opinion ID: 779593
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Quantity of drugs attributed to Smith.

Text: 73 Smith claims the district court's drug quantity finding at sentencing was clearly erroneous. A district court's finding as to drug quantity for sentencing purposes is reviewed for clear error. See Westmoreland, 240 F.3d at 629-30; United States v. Bacallao, 149 F.3d 717, 719 (7th Cir.1998). 74 The thrust of Smith's argument is both simple and without merit. Smith asserts that the government put on evidence suggesting that he conspired to distribute several hundred kilograms of marijuana, yet the jury convicted him of an amount less than 50 kilograms. Smith maintains that this disparity between the amount alleged by the government and the amount found by the jury was inescapably a product of the jury having significantly discounting the credibility of Rivas, Petrow and Swick, who testified against Smith at trial. Since the district court's finding of 100 kilograms of marijuana rejected the collective wisdom of the jury and its implied credibility findings, Smith concludes that the district court committed clear error. 8 75 However, as noted earlier, the district court's relevant conduct findings for sentencing purposes, including drug quantities, are governed by a less demanding evidentiary standard than are determinations by the jury. This is a fact of federal criminal procedure that Smith (unlike Lowe) does not contest. Nonetheless, he contends that even under this more lenient standard, the testimony of the government's three witnesses simply cannot support a drug quantity finding larger than 50 kilograms because this is what the jury found. But credibility determinations by the district court using the preponderance standard cannot be challenged on appeal unless the court credited testimony that was essentially unbelievable as a matter of law. See United States v. Ray, 238 F.3d 828, 834 (7th Cir.2001). We give exceptional deference to district courts on issues of credibility in sentencing. See Amadeo v. Zant, 486 U.S. 214, 227, 108 S.Ct. 1771, 100 L.Ed.2d 249 (1988); accord United States v. Johnson, 227 F.3d 807, 813 (7th Cir.2000). 76 Smith fails to identify any factor in the record that would render the testimony of the government witnesses essentially unbelievable. While he does point out that some of this testimony was internally conflicting, the mere presence of such conflicts does not in itself amount to essential unbelievability nor support a finding of clear error. Deference to the finder of fact, with the opportunity to observe the witnesses, supports credibility findings even in the face of some internal conflicts. Thus, applying the preponderance standard, the findings of the district court, on which the sentence is based, are not clearly erroneous. 77