Court Opinion

ID: 9439965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 07:02:54.302014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:51.602091
License: Public Domain

LYNCH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the well-crafted majority opinion, joining instead the reasoning of the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Tuck, 964 F.2d 1079 (11th Cir.1992), of the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Alexander, 88 F.3d 427 (6th Cir.1996), of Judge Easter-brook, dissenting in United States v. Hunn, 24 F.3d 994 (7th Cir.1994), of Judge Becker, dissenting in United States v. Figueroa, 105 F.3d 874 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 117 S.Ct. 1860, 137 L.Ed.2d 1061 (1997), and of Judge Arnold, dissenting in United States v. Cadotte, 57 F.3d 661 (8th Cir.1995). Given the forceful and clear expressions of the rationale in those opinions, I add only a few words.
The issue is whether a note, handed by the defendant bank robber to a teller, constitutes an “express threat of death.” The note read: “I have a gun! Don’t make me use it.” No gun was seen or otherwise gestured to, so the issue entirely turns on the words of the note. If the note is an express threat, then an additional two levels, or a range of 14 to 18 months, were properly added by the district court to the sentence.
The common definition of an “express” threat is a threat which is “definitely and explicitly stated,” The American Heritage Dictionary (2d College ed.1985), or “distinctly stated or expressed rather than implied or left to inference,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 803 (1993), or “clear; definite; explicit; unmistakable; not dubious *87or ambiguous,” Black’s Law Dictionary 691 (4th ed.1951). By any common understanding of the term “express threat of death,” this note was not such a threat.
Nevertheless, the majority and several other circuits are persuaded by the commentary to the Guidelines, as the majority opinion skillfully explains. But the Commission in the guise of commentary is not free to change the meaning of the Guidelines, see Stinson v. United States, 508 U.S. 36, 43, 113 S.Ct. 1913, 123 L.Ed.2d 598 (1993), and that, on the facts of this case, is what is happening here. As Chief Justice John Marshall said almost one hundred and eighty years ago: “Where there is no ambiguity in the words, there is no room for construction. The case must be a strong one indeed, which would justify a Court in departing from the plain meaning of words, especially in a penal act, in search of an intention which the words themselves did not suggest. To determine that a case is within the intention of a statute, its language must authorize us to say so.” United States v. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 76, 95-96, 5 L.Ed. 37 (1820).
What harm is there in this? The harm to Burns is concrete — more time in prison. There is harm to the law as well. One harm is that articulated by Judge Easterbrook— that this Guideline is part of a series of sanctions meant to gradate degrees of threats, and this result “dissolves the difference” in degree. See Hunn, 24 F.3d at 999 (Easterbrook, J., dissenting). The intent of this particular law is thus perverted.
Another harm is even more fundamental and is to the structure of the law. The law should mean what it says. The Supreme Court has weighed the constitutional effects of laws by taking them to mean what they say, finding that the appropriate measure. See Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 374, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 12 L.Ed.2d 377 (1964) (invalidating state-mandated oath of office and replying to state’s contention — that people would not decline to take the oath out of fear because there was little reason to fear prosecution' — by saying that “[t]his contention ignores not only the effect of the oath on those who will not solemnly swear unless they can do so honestly and without prevarication and reservation, but also its effect on those who believe the written law means what it says.”). If the law does not mean what it says, as has happened here, then it has failed to meet one of the most basic requirements for any fair and just legal system.