Court Opinion

ID: 9494910
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:49:49.369912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:41.844130
License: Public Domain

McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because of the essentially uncontested and what I regard as overwhelming evidence of Zillgitt’s participation in a conspiracy to distribute significant amounts of cocaine, I would not find plain error in Zillgitt’s sentence. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
The majority gives short shrift to the “very stringent” standards that must be met before this Court will notice plain errors. United States v. Ramirez, 973 F.2d 102, 105 (2d Cir.1992). The Supreme Court has cautioned us to use Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) to correct “only particularly egregious errors.” United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985) (internal quotations omitted). Phrased differently, the Court has stressed that the plain error exception to the contemporaneous-objection rule should “be used sparingly, solely in those circumstances in which a miscarriage of justice would otherwise result.” Id. The Court has repeatedly warned against unwarranted expansion of Rule 52(b), because the “extension of this exacting definition of plain error would skew the Rule’s ‘careful balancing of our need to encourage all trial participants to seek a fair and accurate trial the first time around against our insistence that obvious injustice be promptly redressed.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 163, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982)).
Assuming that the majority is correct that the first three requirements of the plain error standard imposed by United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993), are satisfied here, I focus solely on Olano’s fourth element: plain errors will be noticed only when the error “seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Id. at 736, 113 S.Ct. 1770. The defendant bears the burden of *142persuading the court that this requirement is satisfied. United States v. Vonn, — U.S. -, 122 S.Ct. 1043, 1048, 152 L.Ed.2d 90 (2002).
This determination should not be made in isolation; rather, we must examine the record as a whole. Young, 470 U.S. at 16, 105 S.Ct. 1038. Notably, the Supreme Court has relied on the “overwhelming” evidence in the record to determine whether a plain error satisfies Olano’s final requirement. Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 469-70, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) (the district court’s failure to submit the issue of materiality to the jury in a perjury prosecution did not seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or reputation of the judicial proceedings in light of the overwhelming evidence supporting materiality in the record).1
We have recently had to address the fourth Olano requirement in several cases growing out of the Supreme Court’s decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000). However, as discussed in greater detail below, the circumstances in which this requirement was satisfied in the post-Apprendi cases are substantially different from those here. See, e.g., United States v. Thomas, 274 F.3d 655, 671-72 (2d Cir.2001) (,en banc) (the fairness and public reputation of the judicial proceedings were seriously affected because, inter alia, the judge’s determination of drug quantity discouraged defense counsel from vigorously contesting quantity during cross-examination of the Government’s witnesses).
The majority concludes that Zillgitt’s sentence of 109 months’ imprisonment satisfies Olano because the sentence was 49 months longer than the maximum Zillgitt would have received had he been sentenced just for the marijuana conspiracy, as United States v. Barnes and United States v. Orozco-Prada mandate. The majority concedes that Zillgitt forfeited this argument by failing to raise it below. See United States v. Miller, 263 F.3d 1, 4 (2d Cir.2001) (“Issues not raised in the district court, including sentencing issues, will be deemed forfeited on appeal and addressed only upon a showing that the court committed plain error.”). Nevertheless, invoking the plain error rule, the majority concludes that Zillgitt’s sentence — well below the maximum he could have received for the cocaine conspiracy2 —calls into question the fairness and public reputation of the judicial proceedings. Plain error analysis, however, requires more.
Under the majority’s reasoning, any sentencing error would seem to satisfy the fourth requirement of the plain error standard. The Supreme Court, however, has expressly cautioned against such a strict application of Rule 52(b). See Young, 470 U.S. 1, 16 n. 14, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (“A per se approach to plain-error review is flawed.”). Furthermore, by failing to examine the entire record to determine the effect of the plain error, the majority undermines the discretionary nature of plain error review. See Olano, 507 U.S. at 737, 113 S.Ct. 1770 (“[A] plain error affecting *143substantial rights does not, without more, satisfy the [fourth requirement of the plain error standard], for otherwise the discretion afforded by Rule 52(b) would be illusory”).
The majority correctly points out that this Court has not yet had an opportunity to review this precise sentencing issue on plain error review.3 However, one of our sister circuits has addressed this sentencing issue on a record remarkably similar to ours. In United States v. Bowens, 224 F.3d 302 (4th Cir.2000), the Fourth Circuit reviewed the sentence of a defendant who had been convicted of, inter alia, conspiracy to possess and distribute crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 846. Id. at 304. As in our case, the Bowens jury returned a general verdict of guilty without specifying the precise conspiracy that the defendant participated in. Id. at 314. The district court based Bowens’s sentence on its conclusion that the object of the conspiracy was to distribute crack cocaine, and therefore sentenced him to life imprisonment. Id. Bowens argued on appeal that when a jury returns an ambiguous verdict in a multiple-drug conspiracy, the defendant may only be sentenced according to the controlled substance with the most lenient statutory maximum. Id. According to Bowens, he could only be sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, the statutory maximum sentence for conspiracy to distribute the amount of heroin proven at trial (27.56 grams). Id.
While acknowledging that the district court erred when it sentenced Bowens based on the crack cocaine conspiracy, the Fourth Circuit declined to notice the forfeited error because it did not satisfy Ola-no’s fourth requirement. It failed to result in a miscarriage of justice. The Fourth Circuit noted that every Government witnesses who testified about the conspiracy described crack deals, the preparation of crack, and the delivery of either crack or powder cocaine to be cooked into crack. Id. at 315. The court found that the Government witnesses’ testimony was essentially uncontroverted, and Bowens’s defense was almost exclusively directed at impeaching the Government witnesses’ credibility. Id. Finally, the Fourth Circuit determined that the evidence of a crack cocaine conspiracy was so overwhelming that there was no question that the jury found Bowens guilty of a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. Id. Accordingly, the court declined to find that Bowens’s life sentence seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or reputation of the proceedings. It affirmed the district court’s sentence.
Here, Zillgitt’s trial was unquestionably about a cocaine conspiracy. The overwhelming and essentially uncontested evidence demonstrated that Zillgitt was a major participant in a sizeable cocaine conspiracy. Ten Government witnesses, including seven self-admitted drug dealers, testified to extensive cocaine transactions with Zillgitt. For example,
• Kenneth Ferro testified that he engaged in cocaine transactions with Zillgitt either as a purchaser, seller, or partner involving between two and three kilograms of cocaine.
• Ferro also testified to driving down to New York City with Zillgitt twice *144to buy substantial quantities of cocaine.
• Angelo Miele testified that he permitted Zillgitt to use his house to break up bulk quantities of cocaine into distribution quantities in exchange for Zillgitt providing him with free cocaine.
• James Andrews testified that he drove to New York City with Zillgitt at least ten times to purchase quantities of cocaine totaling twenty kilograms.
• Hector Gonzalez testified to buying cocaine from Zillgitt and to going to New York City with Zillgitt to purchase cocaine.
To be sure, as the majority notes, two of the Government’s witnesses also testified to buying marijuana as well as cocaine from Zillgitt and his co-conspirators. However, the gist of these two witnesses’ testimony confirmed that the central focus of the conspiracy was the distribution of cocaine and that the marijuana purchases were ancillary to the dominant cocaine transactions. The isolated references to marijuana in the record were inseparable from the overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Moreover, like the defense counsel in Bowens, Zillgitt’s trial strategy was to attack the general credibility of the Government’s witnesses. He did not call any witnesses to contradict the accounts of the extensive cocaine transactions described by the Government’s witnesses. Furthermore, Zillgitt does not now contend that he was hindered in preparing his defense by the purported sentencing error. This case, therefore, is substantially different from Thomas and United States v. Guevara, 277 F.3d 111 (2d Cir.2001), where we found Olano’s fourth requirement was satisfied because the district court’s determination of drug quantity had the effect of discouraging defense counsel from vigorously contesting drug quantity before the jury. Here, defense counsel was unfettered in his defense of Zillgitt.
I would follow Bowens here. I do not believe that the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial proceedings is seriously affected by Zillgitt’s sentence. While the majority is willing to overlook the overwhelming evidence of Zillgitt’s participation in a cocaine conspiracy, such a generous analysis weakens this Court’s plain error jurisprudence. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.

. The majority finds Johnson inapposite to the analysis of Olano’s third requirement — whether the plain error affected Zillgitt’s substantial rights. See supra, at 140. However, it is unclear whether the majority likewise believes Johnson inapposite to the analysis of Olano’s fourth requirement.

. When drug quantity is not set out in the indictment and presented to the jury, a defendant can be sentenced only to the maximum sentence allowable for an indeterminate quantity of drugs. Thomas, 274 F.3d at 660. Here, the maximum sentence for a conspiracy involving an indeterminate amount of cocaine is 20 years, or 240 months. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C).

. Despite acknowledging that this is an issue of first impression in this Court, the majority relies on Barnes and Orozco-Prada (as well as cases not subject to plain error review from other circuits) in its analysis of Olano's third requirement. Because none of these cases were subject to plain error review, their applicability to the majority’s plain error analysis is questionable.