Court Opinion

ID: 9468299
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:11:37.798756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:48.743247
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the district court did not improperly rely on defendant’s previous acquittal in imposing a sentence on the cocaine smuggling charge. Although I recognize that a sentencing judge has broad discretion in making a sentencing determination and that his inquiry is “largely unlimited either as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come,” United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 446, 92 S.Ct. 589, 591, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972), I believe that there are limits to the type of information a sentencing judge may consider. Further, unlike the majority I cannot conclude that the district judge did not enhance the sentence based on his evaluation of the merits of defendant’s prior acquittal.
This court has never expressly decided the issue before us today, /. e., whether a trial judge may properly rely upon his own evaluation of the merits of a defendant’s prior acquittal in making a sentencing determination. In United States v. Cardi, 519 F.2d 309 (7th Cir. 1975), this court stated that “[an] acquittal does not preclude the district court from considering the information concerning [the defendant’s] association with these activities.” Id. at 314 n.3 (citing United States v. Haygood, 502 F.2d 166, 171-72 n.16 (7th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1114, 95 S.Ct. 791, 42 L.Ed.2d 812 (1975)).1 In Cardi, however, the district court relied upon independent evidence2 of defendant’s activities that were related to the prior indictment and acquittal. Further, unlike the case at bar, the court found that there was no indication that the district court based his sentencing decision on the information surrounding the prior acquittal. Id. at 314.
Other circuits have, however, expressly held that a sentencing judge may properly rely upon defendant’s prior acquittals. See United States v. Sweig, 454 F.2d 181, 184 (2d Cir. 1972); Billiteri v. United States Board of Parole, 541 F.2d 938, 944 (2d Cir. 1976); United States v. Bowdach, 561 F.2d 1160, 1175 (5th Cir. 1977); United States v. Morgan, 595 F.2d 1134, 1137 (9th Cir. 1979). Nevertheless, I believe that such a rule conflicts with well-established principles of due process and also with the analysis of the Supreme Court in Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 68 S.Ct. 1252, 92 L.Ed. 1690 (1948).
In Townsend v. Burke, supra, the trial court questioned the defendant at the sentencing hearing regarding his criminal record. The defendant stated that he had been found not guilty on one of the charges mentioned by the trial judge. Two of the other charges noted by the trial judge also resulted in acquittals, but no one provided the trial court with that information. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction on the ground that the defendant “was sentenced on the basis of assumptions concerning his criminal record which were materially untrue.” 334 U.S. at 741, 68 S.Ct. at 1255.
*930Although the case at bar is different from Townsend in that here the trial court knew that defendant had been acquitted of murder, the reasoning of Townsend nevertheless applies. In the instant case, the record indicates that the district judge may have based the sentence in part upon “materially untrue” assumptions. In his remarks at the sentencing hearing, the district judge stated that: “Even though [defense counsel was] able to successfully defend [defendant] in the murder charge, the fact that a person even gets into that situation, I think, is some evidence that he has some instability if not some proclivity to commit crimes.” As the majority noted, the report stated that the fatal incident occurred after the victim became “abusive and threatening.” I do not believe that the record supports the trial court’s conclusion that an acquittal of murder on the ground of self-defense is indicative of instability or a proclivity to commit crimes.
The trial judge went on to state that, “I am not thoroughly satisfied that [self-defense] is complete exoneration when a person is stabbed repeatedly about the face and body during a fight.” Such a statement is an insult to our criminal justice system. A jury in that case heard the testimony of the witnesses, saw the evidence, and returned a verdict of not guilty; it is not for the sentencing court in another unrelated case to reassess the evidence presented in a prior prosecution.3
In United States v. Johnson, 507 F.2d 826, 832 (7th Cir. 1974) (Swygert, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 949, 95 S.Ct. 1682, 44 L.Ed.2d 103 (1975), I argued that a pending charge should not be considered by a sentencing judge:
To do otherwise is to infringe upon the basic rights and safeguards we provide a defendant in a criminal case. A defendant is entitled to a jury determination if he so desires. We should not permit a procedure that could result in allowing a judge’s broad sentencing discretion to be used by prosecutors as a means for increasing a defendant’s sentence on the basis of a factual determination as to other alleged criminal activity for which a jury conviction might not be possible.
A fortiori, we should not allow a charge of which the defendant was acquitted by a jury to be used by the sentencing court to enhance his sentence in a later unrelated case.
I recognize that it is not improper for a presentence report to contain information regarding the defendant’s criminal record, including prior acquittals, pending charges, and arrests that did not reach the adjudication stage, see 18 U.S.C. § 3577 (1976); United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 92 S.Ct. 589, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972); Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 69 S.Ct. 1079, 93 L.Ed. 1337 (1949); United States v. Johnson, supra, 507 F.2d at 829 (maj. op.), but I believe that principles of due process require limits on the use that a sentencing judge can make of such information. As the court noted in United States v. Bailey, 547 F.2d 68, 71 (8th Cir. 1976), “[t]he sentencing judge may look at an arrest record for background information. The sentencing judge, however, must not equate arrests as evidence of prior wrongdoing.”
The district judge’s error in the instant case was not in possessing or even considering the information about defendant’s prior acquittal. Rather, his error was in attempting to make his own evaluation of defendant’s culpability in that earlier case and disregarding at least in part the verdict of the jury. I believe that to allow a sentencing judge to enhance a sentence based on the facts surrounding a prior acquittal, or even to reassess the facts presented in that case, violates constitutional guarantees of due process. Accordingly, I would remand the case for resentencing.

. United States v. Haygood, 502 F.2d 166 (7th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1114, 95 S.Ct. 791, 42 L.Ed.2d 812 (1975), is not relevant to the issue presented by the instant case. In Haygood, the defendant contended that her conviction violated the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution because the sentencing judge in an earlier case had relied on the pending charge in that case in imposing a sentence. Our affirmance was based upon the defendant’s failure to object to the trial judge’s reliance on the prior charge. We noted, but did not express any opinion regarding, the Second Circuit’s holding that a sentencing judge may rely upon a prior acquittal on the ground that, “ ‘Acquittal does not have the effect of conclusively establishing the untruth of all the evidence introduced against the defendant.’ ” Id. at 171-72 n.16 (quoting United States v. Sweig, 454 F.2d 181, 184 (2d Cir. 1972)).

. The trial court in Cardi had before it the affidavit of an FBI agent and the testimony in open court of the director of the Illinois Investigating Commission.

. Although the district judge went on to note that, “I can’t try that case” and “I really can’t go into the merits of it,” it is clear from the transcript of the sentencing hearing that he was making his own evaluation of the murder acquittal when he concluded that self-defense may not be a complete exoneration under the circumstances of that case. See p. 926, 927 n.2 (maj. op.).