Court Opinion

ID: 9488405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:44:13.756191+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:52.089249
License: Public Domain

JOINER, District Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in part I of the majority’s opinion to the extent that it affirms the denial of Jones’ motion to suppress based upon his consent to search,1 consent that was open-ended and never revoked. The constitutionality of the search depends on whether it was objectively reasonable for the police to have believed that the consent extended from September 2 to October 1. Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 111 S.Ct. 1801, 114 L.Ed.2d 297 (1991) (search of container in car constitutional when it was objectively reasonable for police to believe that suspect’s consent to search car extended to container). Given the factors identified by the majority, the police acted reasonably here. United States v. Dorsey, 27 F.3d 285, 290 (7th Cir.1994), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 949, 130 L.Ed.2d 892 (1995).
I part company with the majority with respect to its analysis of the vulnerable victim enhancement. But for the fortuitous circumstance that the fuekair ratio was too high, the incendiary device Jones placed in the gas tank of his wife’s car could have killed not only his wife, but also his three minor daughters (ages 3, 10 and 14) who, as Jones knew, were frequent passengers in that car. If Jones’ bombing attempt had been successful when the children were in the car, there is no question but that they would have been victims of his offense.
The majority holds that Jones’ base offense level cannot be enhanced under the vulnerable victim provision, following what it interprets to be the mandates of United States v. Smith, 39 F.3d 119, 122-25 (6th Cir.1994). In Smith, the court was required to decide whether the vulnerable victim enhancement was appropriately applied to a fraud defendant who targeted her victims from pirated computer lists of people who recently had made certain purchases. These lists revealed nothing about the purchasers’ ages or infirmities, but it turned out that some of the people defrauded by the defendant were elderly, and that one had Parkinson’s disease. There was no evidence that the defendant possessed this information at the time of the crime, however. This court held that application of the vulnerable victim enhancement was improper, explaining that the “purpose of the provision is not to punish defendants who perpetrate crimes on victims who are coincidentally vulnerable in some way.” Id. at 124. Based on this view, the court concluded that the enhancement cannot be applied unless the evidence shows both that the defendant knew that his victim was unusually vulnerable, and that he perpetrated a crime on him because he was vulnerable. Id.
*855This court follows the admirable rule that the decision of one panel binds all other panels. This rule does not apply to dicta, however,2 and that is how I would construe Smith’s sweeping conclusion. Smith correctly observed that the guideline should not apply when the victim is coincidentally vulnerable, but it does not follow that coincidence is shown in every case in which the defendant is not demonstrated to have selected his victim because of the victim’s vulnerability. The word “coincidence” connotes that two events occur simultaneously through mere chance, and not through a defendant’s design, plan or other conduct which knowingly increases the likelihood that the events will occur. The operative fact in Smith was that the defendant did not know of her victims’ vulnerability, and it truly was a coincidence that persons harmed by the defendant’s fraud happened to be vulnerable. In a situation in which bomb is placed in a car and designed to ignite when the ear is started or driven, the word coincidence might apply if the bomb ignites when the car happens to be near a school yard or a day care center. The word has no application to the situation presented here, where Jones placed the bomb in a car which his wife drove, and in which his children were frequent passengers.
The facts in this case present an entirely different situation than that presented in Smith. There the defendant lacked knowledge that some of her victims were elderly or infirm. Here, the defendant knew that vulnerable minor children were regularly transported in the car and might be victims of his bombing attempt. Smith properly requires that the vulnerable victim enhancement not be applied unless the defendant has knowledge of his victim’s vulnerability. Smith’s additional requirement that the defendant have the “specific intent” to injure a vulnerable victim was unnecessary to the court’s conclusion, and, as applied in this case, is erroneous.
Three innocent children, uninvolved in the personal conflict that drove Jones to homicide instead of divorce, were deemed by him to be expendable. He knew they were vulnerable, and that they were potential victims of his offense. I therefore would affirm the district court’s application of the vulnerable victim enhancement.

. The search was not conducted as an inventory search. Moreover, the record does not reflect facts from which we can infer that the police had probable cause to search the car on the date that it was impounded, it appearing at that point that Jones' wife was a traffic accident victim, not a murder victim. Our disposition of the consent issue makes it unnecessary to decide if the search would have been constitutional absent consent, and I do not join in the majority's brief discussion of that issue.

. United States v. Jenkins, 4 F.3d 1338, 1345 n. 8 (6th Cir.1993), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 1547, 128 L.Ed.2d 197 (1994).