Court Opinion

ID: 9480736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:56:52.242313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:52.453981
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority’s holdings that the district court properly admitted the out of court statements of Joe Zalesky and Jeff Wiley, that Meggers failed to show a punishable violation of the sequestration order, and that the district court did not abuse its discretion in sentencing Meggers to a term of imprisonment longer than that received by co-conspirator Eric Wayne. My sole concerns are with the method used to determine relevant conduct for purposes of sentencing and the government’s failure to charge Meggers with all drug quantities of which it had knowledge at the time of the indictment.
The district court gave substantial weight to the presentence investigation report (PSI) in determining the amount of cocaine to be included in Meggers’ base offense level. Such a practice is inappropriate when a full trial at which the sentencing judge presided has taken place. The trial court, having heard all the testimony, is best able to judge its credibility and should rely on its own recollection of that testimony to determine the defendant’s base offense level. The probation officer who prepares the PSI has neither the time nor the resources to conduct an independent investigation, and frequently relies solely on information obtained from the government’s offense conduct statement and trial notes in compiling the PSI.
In this case, for example, the prosecutor twice apologized for inaccurately paraphrased trial testimony and a typographical error in the PSI that resulted from mistakes in the prosecutor’s notes and offense conduct statement. A thorough review of the record nonetheless persuades me that the trial testimony fully supports the district court’s determination of the drug quantities relevant to Meggers’ sentence.
Notwithstanding the Guidelines and the opinions of this court to the contrary, however, I continue to believe that it is a violation of due process to sentence a defendant for offense conduct which was known to the prosecution before trial but was not charged in the indictment. Here, counts four and five of the indictment charged Meggers with possession with intent to distribute and distribution of five or more kilograms plus four ounces of cocaine. Meggers’ base offense level was calculated using twenty kilograms of cocaine. This use increased Meggers’ sentence by more than five years of real time (from 275 to 340 months). The twenty kilogram quantity arose from the testimony of co-conspirators Newland and Hoffman, both of whom had been cooperating with the government for some time prior to Meggers’ indictment. The government's failure to charge this quantity in the indictment deprived Meggers, with respect to the amounts not charged but included at sentencing, of the procedural protections guaranteed by the Constitution to a defendant in a criminal trial. It does little good to give a defendant the benefits of the Constitution before and during trial only to ignore them at the critical stage at which a defendant has his sentence significantly increased by conduct *252neither charged nor proved beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury.