Court Opinion

ID: 9483775
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:31:10.287928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:49.902270
License: Public Domain

JON 0. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The sentencing of Nelson Frias is a stark example of the bizarre results that occasionally occur from a combination of the Sentencing Guidelines and the sentencing jurisprudence that was developed prior to the Guidelines and is now applied to the Guidelines regime. The key facts are: (1) Frias was charged with three offenses that affected his sentence — conspiracy to distribute heroin, possession of an unregistered firearm, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon;1 (2) he was acquitted of the heroin conspiracy and convicted of the two weapons offenses; (3) had he been convicted of all three offenses, his guideline range would have been 210 to 262 months or 17x/2 to 22 years; (4) though acquitted of the narcotics conspiracy, his guideline range is still 210 to 262 months or 17V2 to 22 years; (5) had his sentence been based solely on the conduct of which he was convicted, his guideline range would have been 12 to 18 months or 1 to llk years; (6) he was sentenced to 20 years, the maximum under the two firearms counts (sentenced consecutively).
Judge Kearse’s comprehensive opinion accepts, with a slight modification,2 the *394guideline calculation of the District Court, but sensibly permits amelioration of the result by authorizing a downward departure. I concur in her opinion because the Guidelines and our prior construction of them oblige me to do so, but I think it worth amplifying the extraordinary course that the Sentencing Commission and our case law have set us on in the hope that some revision may receive serious consideration.
The guideline calculation in this case results from a combination of decisions, few, if any, of which have been made under any other system of guideline sentencing. See Michael Tonry, Salvaging the Sentencing Guidelines in Seven Easy Steps, 4 Fed.Sent.Rep. 355 (May-June 1992). First, the Commission decided to forgo the “offense of conviction” approach, under which sentences would be determined only with regard to conduct resulting in conviction. Instead the Commission adopted a system of “modified real offense sentencing,” whereby “relevant conduct,”3 whether or not resulting in conviction, would be considered in calculating sentences.
Second, the Commission followed that debatable but defensible decision with the entirely unjustified decision to price relevant conduct at exactly the same level of severity as convicted conduct. Though the Supreme Court had ruled, prior to the Guidelines, that a sentencing court may consider misconduct of a defendant, whether or not resulting in a conviction, see Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 246, 69 S.Ct. 1079, 1082, 93 L.Ed. 1337 (1949), it was an open policy choice for the Commission whether to price such conduct the same as convicted conduct or at some lesser level of severity. For example, the Commission could have decided that “relevant conduct” should be priced at one-half the severity of convicted conduct, or, in the sentencing judge’s discretion, within a range of one-third to two-thirds of convicted conduct.
Third, the courts then had to decide what standard of proof to apply in determining whether the misconduct alleged to be relevant conduct had occurred. We have accepted the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, see United States v. Guerra, 888 F.2d 247, 251 (2d Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1090, 110 S.Ct. 1833, 108 L.Ed.2d 961 (1990), although a strong argument can be made that the “clear and convincing evidence” standard should be used, at least for substantial enhancements, see United States v. Kikumura, 918 F.2d 1084, 1103 (3d Cir.1990). The “preponderance of the evidence” standard was originally made applicable to sentencing decisions in the pre-Guidelines regime. See, e.g., United States v. Lee, 818 F.2d 1052, 1057 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 956, 108 S.Ct. 350, 98 L.Ed.2d 376 (1987). It is highly questionable whether it should have been imported so readily into the Guidelines regime, particularly in light of the Commission’s decision to price unconvicted conduct as severely as convicted conduct. The case for a higher standard is even stronger where, as here, the Guidelines require the “finding [of unconvicted conduct] to be a tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense [of conviction].” See McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 88, 106 S.Ct. 2411, 2417, 91 L.Ed.2d 67 (1986). See also United States v. Lee, 818 F.2d at 1058 (Oakes, J., concurring) (“[W]e may very well want to hold at some future time in some other context that proof by clear and convincing evidence is required_”).
Fourth, the courts then had to decide whether unconvicted conduct could be used to enhance a sentence even though the defendant had been acquitted of the alleged conduct. We have decided that acquitted conduct can be so used, see United States v. Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 899 F.2d 177, 181-82 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 844, 111 S.Ct. 127, 112 L.Ed.2d 95 (1990), and the Court today follows the inexorable logic of that decision even though the enhancement in Rodriguez-Gonzalez was two levels and the enhancement approved today is twenty-four levels. Again, the use of acquitted conduct to enhance a sentence came into our jurisprudence in the pre-Guidelines regime, see United States v. Sweig, 454 F.2d 181, 184 (2d Cir.1972), and it is highly questionable whether that technique belongs in a Guidelines regime. In *395Sweig, we merely approved a sentencing judge’s opportunity to “consider” evidence of misconduct notwithstanding an acquittal. Id. Under the rigor of the current Guidelines, the sentencing judge is required to assess evidence of relevant misconduct, notwithstanding an acquittal, and, if persuaded by a preponderance of the evidence that such misconduct occurred, must enhance the sentence according to the same scale of severity that would have applied had the defendant been convicted of the misconduct.
The combined result of these developments for Nelson Frias is astonishing. Had he been convicted of the narcotics conspiracy offense, he would have faced a guideline range of 210 to 262 months and could have been sentenced at the top of the range to 262 months (nearly 22 years) since the maximum sentence for the drug conspiracy would have been life imprisonment. Having been acquitted of the drug conspiracy offense, he remains subject to the same guideline range of 210 to 262 months, and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years, which is the result of consecutive sentencing on the two weapons offenses. Thus, after he was tried for the conspiracy offense and acquitted, he faces virtually the same sentence that he would have received had he been convicted! His twenty-year sentence is thirteen times higher than the top of the guideline range that would have been applicable had he been sentenced solely for the conduct of which he was convicted. When the Guidelines and the case law implementing them permit such a result, it is high time for both the Commission and the courts to give serious reconsideration to the decisions that underlie this outcome.
For now, the only opportunity to ameliorate the guideline result is for the sentencing judge to give sympathetic consideration to the downward departure that the Court’s opinion sensibly permits, since this surely is a case where a circumstance— enhancement of a sentence for acquitted conduct — is present “to a degree” not adequately considered by the Commission, 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b) (1988). In light of our precedents, I concur.
Order on Denial of Rehearing and Rehearing In Banc.
March 25, 1993.
A petition for rehearing containing a suggestion that the action be reheard in banc having been filed herein by counsel for the defendant-appellant Nelson Frias.
Upon consideration by the panel that decided the appeal, it is
Ordered that said petition for rehearing is DENIED.
It is further noted that the suggestion for rehearing in banc has been transmitted to the judges of the court in regular active service and to any other judge that heard the appeal and a poll of said judges having been taken, a majority of the court has voted not to reconsider the decision in banc. Judge Newman dissents from the denial of the rehearing in banc in a separate opinion.

. Frias was also charged with, and acquitted of, using a firearm in connection with a narcotics offense. Had he been convicted of this offense, his sentence would have been increased by a mandatory five-year consecutive sentence. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (1988).

. The District Court added a two-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1) for possession of a weapon in connection with a narcotics conspiracy, yielding an offense level of 38 and a guideline range of 262 to 327 months. The Court properly rules this adjustment to be dou*394ble counting in the circumstances of this case, resulting in an offense level of 36 and a guideline range of 210 to 262 months.

. The unconvicted conduct resulting in substantial enhancement of the guideline range in this case is not technically an application of section IB 1.3, the “relevant guideline" conduct, but rather of section 2K2.1(c), the cross-reference guideline for weapons offenses. My comments apply equally to enhancements under both sections, and it will simplify the discussion to refer to "relevant conduct.”