Court Opinion

ID: 9492668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:46:48.896149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:25.301776
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Parts IV A, C, and D of the majority opinion, but not in Part IV B. I see no impermissible “double counting” in the calculation of defendant Farrow’s three-year sentence, and I would affirm the sentence in all respects.
Mr. Farrow’s sentence reflects the use— concededly an appropriate use — of the base offense level (15) called for by U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2(a) and a 4-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2(b)(2). The 4-level increase was mandated by the plain language of the guideline: “If a firearm was discharged, increase by 5 levels; (B) if a dangerous weapon (including a firearm) was otherwise used, increase by 4 levels.... ” The district judge simply applied the guideline as written- — -and no fewer than nine of our sister circuits would agree with his decision to do so. See United States v. Valdez-Torres, 108 F.3d 385 (D.C.Cir.1997); United States v. Garcia, 34 F.3d 6 (1st Cir.1994); United States v. Johnstone, 107 F.3d 200 (3d Cir.1997); United States v. Williams, 954 F.2d 204 (4th Cir.1992); United States v. Morris, 131 F.3d 1136 (5th Cir.1997); United States v. Sorensen, 58 F.3d 1154 (7th Cir.1995); United States v. Dunnaway, 88 F.3d 617 (8th Cir.1996); United States v. Reese, 2 F.3d 870 (9th Cir.1993); and United States v. Duran, 127 F.3d 911 (10th Cir.1997).
Our own court, in an unpublished opinion, has likewise held that the guideline means what it says and should be applied accordingly. See United States v. Couch, 59 F.3d 171 (6th Cir.1995). The defendant in that case was a police officer who had struck a suspect in the head with a metal flashlight. The officer was assigned a base offense level of 15 for “aggravated assault” and was given a 4-level increase under § 2A2.2(b)(2)(B) for use of a dangerous weapon. His claim that this constituted “double counting” was rejected out of hand:
“The language of the aggravated assault provision clearly provides for a calibrated adjustment of the offense level according to the use made of the dangerous weapon and, as such, does not double count.” Couch, 59 F.3d 171 (emphasis supplied).
Until today, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was the only circuit court to have gone on record as holding that in a situation where the dangerous weapon used by the defendant was something other than a firearm, the guideline should not be applied as written. See United States v. Hudson, 972 F.2d 504 (2d Cir.1992). The Second Circuit got it wrong in Hudson, I believe, and all of the other circuits *201that have addressed the issue — including ours, until now — have got it right.
The crux of the Second Circuit’s reasoning in Hudson is found in the two paragraphs immediately preceding the court’s statement of its conclusion:
“A defendant can not be guilty of assault with a non-inherently dangerous weapon (such as a chair or an automobile) unless the object is used (or its use is threatened) in a dangerous way. In such instances, it is the use or threatened use of the object which makes the assault aggravated, thereby increasing the base level offense, and, this same act also requires an upward adjustment of three or four levels under U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2.”
“The incremental adjustment schedule of § 2A2.2, see 2A2.2(b)(l)-(4), is, therefore, only appropriate for situations involving inherently dangerous weapons, because under the Guidelines a defendant could be sentenced at the base offense level for carrying a firearm while committing an assault. Where an ordinary object is implicated, as was the case here, it is the use of the object as a weapon that makes the offense an aggravated assault, and it is the use of this weapon which also requires a four-level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2(b). This twofold upward adjustment for the use of a weapon constitutes impermissible double counting. See, e.g., United States v. Campbell, 967 F.2d 20, 23-26 (2d Cir.1992).” Hudson, 972 F.2d at 507. (Italics in original, bold type supplied.)
The Second Circuit evidently thought that the use of an automobile as a weapon somehow “increasfed] the base” offense level so that the end result, after the imposition of a 4-level enhancement for use of the weapon, would constitute a “two-fold upward adjustment.” But, as other courts have pointed out, it is not correct to think of the sentencing court as “increasing” or making an “upward adjustment” in the offense level when the court invokes § 2A2.2(a) to fix the base offense level at 15. You have to start somewhere, of course, and the base offense level — which does not necessarily turn on the use of any weapon at all, whether “inherently” dangerous or otherwise — simply marks the starting point of the calculation. The guideline calls for only one upward adjustment, not two.
It is true that a lower starting level— one prescribed by U.S.S.G. § 2.A2.4— would have been called for under Appendix A of the guidelines if defendant Farrow’s violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111 had not constituted an “Aggravated Assault” as that term is defined in the guidelines. It is also true that the aspect of Mr. Farrow’s conduct which made his crime an aggravated assault in the first place, under the guidelines definition, was the fact that he committed his felonious assault with a dangerous weapon and with intent to do bodily harm. But so what? Mr. Farrow could have committed an aggravated assault without using any weapon at all — and if he had done so, his base offense level would still have been 15. The Sentencing Commission obviously wanted to distinguish between aggravated ássaults involving use of a dangerous weapon and aggravated assaults not involving use of a dangerous weapon.
The Sentencing Commission’s right to make such a distinction seems self evident. Surely the Second Circuit could have had no objection to a guideline saying that the base offense level for an aggravated assault in which any kind of dangerous weapon was used would be 19, if there was an intent to do bodily harm, while the base offense level for an aggravated assault not involving the use of a dangerous weapon would be 15. The Sentencing Commission happens to have used a different mechanism for distinguishing among aggravated assaults and calibrating the punishment therefor, but the mechanism chosen by the Commission as a calibration device seems entirely appropriate to me.
*202The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit made the point very cogently in Valdez-Torres:
“Section 2A2.2 applies to different types of aggravated assault, of which assault with a dangerous weapon is but one. The enhancement for use of a dangerous weapon thus does not duplicate an essential element of aggravated assault but instead is properly used to distinguish among sentences imposed pursuant to the section for different kinds of assaults.” 108 F.3d at 389 (Footnotes omitted).
What the Valdez-Torres court was suggesting, I believe, is that the Second Circuit fell into error in Hudson by ignoring the structure of the relevant guideline. U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2 applies to any aggravated assault, defined as any felonious assault that involved “(a) a dangerous weapon with intent to do bodily harm ..., or (b) [that involved] serious bodily injury, or (c) [that involved] an intent to commit another felony.” Application Note 1, U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2 (emphasis supplied). The perpetrator of any type of aggravated assault starts out with an offense level of 15, as we have seen, whether a dangerous weapon was involved or not. And within the aggravated assault universe, there is one type of assault — the type identified in Application Note 1(c) — for which, depending on the circumstances of the individual case, the perpetrator may receive no offense level increase at all. The Sentencing Commission has decided that there should be a 3-level increase if the perpetrator brandished or threatened to use any kind of dangerous weapon, a 4-level increase if he actually did use a dangerous weapon of any kind (or if he inflicted serious bodily injury), and a 5-level increase if the use of the weapon consisted of discharging a firearm.
The Hudson court acknowledged that this sort of “incremental adjustment schedule” is appropriate for situations involving firearms. Because of the court’s failure to focus on the fact that some types of aggravated assault do not involve weapons of any kind, however, Hudson rejected the incremental adjustment scheme as not “appropriate” for situations involving the use as a weapon of an “ordinary object” such as an automobile. I should have thought, I must say, that the appropriateness of establishing an incremental adjustment scheme applicable to the use of “ordinary” objects as weapons is precisely the sort of question that Congress expected the Sentencing Commission to decide.
In the case at bar, the end result of the process decided on by the Commission was a sentence — three years’ imprisonment— the length of which did not exceed the maximum that would have been permissible under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a) without regard to the enhanced penalty (“not more than ten years”) authorized in § 111(b) for situations where a deadly or dangerous weapon was used. The length of Mr. Farrow’s sentence happens to be identical to that of the sentence imposed in Valdez-Torres. And the particulars of the crime committed by the defendant in Valdez-Torres — assaulting an INS agent with an automobile — are identical to the particulars of the crime committed by Mr. Farrow. A three-year sentence is a punishment that fits this crime reasonably well, in my opinion. Accordingly, and on the strength of the reasoning employed by the D.C. Circuit in Valdez-Torres, I would reject the defendant’s double-counting argument.