Court Opinion

ID: 9442050
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:30:16.332428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:28:53.140581
License: Public Domain

N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I do not necessarily “agree” that the ■amount of methamphetamine from the August 13, 2008 transaction should be two, rather than three, ounces.
Application Note 12 provides that “[i]n an offense involving an agreement to sell a controlled substance, the agreed-upon quantity of the controlled substance shall be used to determine the offense level unless the sale is completed and the amount delivered more accurately reflects the scale of the offense.” USSG § 2D1.1 (emphasis added). We have previously applied “the agreed upon quantity” in eases in which the sale was not completed; there we affirmed sentences calculated on the amount the defendant agreed to deliver. E.g., United States v. Lopes-Montes, 165 F.3d 730, 730-31 (9th Cir.1999) (defendant delivered half of the amount negotiated before he was arrested). We have not, however, applied Application Note 12 to a case in which the transaction was completed and more drugs were delivered to the buyer than were agreed to be sold. Here, three ounces were actually delivered. Under the plain language of Application Note 12, three ounces “more accurately reflects the scale of the offense.” USSG § 2D1.1.
I agree that the intent of Palma would be relevant to the inquiry of whether the sentencing court should have used two or three ounces. See United States v. Kipp, 10 F.3d 1463, 1466 (9th Cir.1993) (the amount of drugs possessed cannot be used to sentence for intent to distribute without findings of the amount intended for distribution). However, that is not the only issue in the necessary analysis here.
Yet, we do not need to engage in this analysis in this case. As the Memoran*60dum Disposition correctly concludes, any error was harmless due to the omission of an ounce of methamphetamine from a later transaction that could be used by the district court on remand to impose the same sentence. United States v. Garcia-Guizar, 234 F.3d 483, 489-91 (9th Cir.2000). I therefore concur in the Memorandum Disposition, except the second paragraph.