Court Opinion

ID: 9484558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:57:05.823603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:19.046830
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join in the result reached by today’s majority, reversal of the sentence imposed upon Mr. Johnson. I write separately to emphasize that we are only called upon to consider a case in which the defendant is charged with possession with intent to distribute narcotics.
After careful analysis of Chapman and its progeny, the majority focuses upon the passage in Chapman that discusses the “market-oriented” approach to punishing drug trafficking. See Chapman, — U.S. -,-, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 1925, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991); Majority Op. at 1194-95. I believe that this part of the Chapman analysis clearly supports the majority’s conclusion that “when the mixture is not ingestible and therefore not marketable, there is no rational basis to a sentence based on the entire weight of a useless mixture.” Majority Op. at 1196. As the majority has acknowledged in passing in footnote 7 of its opinion, we need not reach whether there would be any rational basis for a sentence based upon the entire weight of a non-ingestible mixture that is the by-product of a drug manufacturing process, if manufacturing of the drug had been charged in the original indictment. Although possession with intent to distribute and manufacturing are proscribed by the same section of the United States Code, they are separate offenses composed of separate elements. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(a) (1988); United States v. Goodman, 605 F.2d 870, 883-85 (5th Cir.1979) (sentencing court did not err in imposing separate, consecutive sentences for manufacturing a controlled substance and for possessing with intent to distribute that same controlled substance); see also United States *1199v. Lendmann, 757 F.2d 916, 918 (7th Cir.1985) (under § 841(a), Congress clearly intended to punish manufacturing of narcotics irrespective of an individual’s intent to distribute the narcotics). I believe it particularly appropriate to circumscribe narrowly our holding when, as here, the circuits are divided on the issue. See Walker v. United States, — U.S. -, -, 113 S.Ct. 443, 443, 121 L.Ed.2d 362 (1992) (White, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (acknowledging a split of authority in the circuits over whether weight of an inconsumable by-product of the manufacturing process can be considered for sentencing purposes). I therefore join the judgment and the opinion on the understanding that the opinion ought not be read as addressing the issue of whether the “waste water” recovered in the present circumstances could properly have been weighed had Mr. Johnson been charged with manufacturing crack cocaine.