Court Opinion

ID: 9484429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:53:35.870974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:14.778105
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent. The sentencing decision in this case is unsupported by the evidence and rests on surmise and conjecture. In calculating Smiley’s sentence, the district court judge included a kilo of heroin which Smiley never produced, delivered or possessed and for which, as the majority observes, supra, at 481-82, he never negotiated a price or delivery date.
How did the additional kilo enter into the sentence? The determination to include the kilo in sentencing derives from the following recorded conversation between Smiley and DEA Agent Ciarletta:
CIARLETTA: Yeah. Humph. Well uh, woul-, I guess you don’t know about how much? You gonna be able to, able to give me at time? You don’t anything about that, huh.
SMILEY: I don’t know anything.
CIARLETTA: Yeah. Well, shoot, I guess I ...
(interrupts)
SMILEY: As it stands right now what do you think you want?
CIARLETTA: Well, I’ll tell ya, uh, I don’t know what uh, I was just gonna guess on what kind of price you’re gonna charge, but I, I know I could handle half of a case or a whole case. I, I’m confidant that I think ...
(overlapping conversation)
SMILEY: What’re you callin’ a case?
CIARLETTA: Two point two.
SMILEY: Oh, okay.
CIARLETTA: So uh, an I uh, I’m uh confidant of that, and uh, like say cus as far as uh, ya know, the Cain business goes, I mean that’s uh, that’s normally *483the, we be doing case lots, at least one or two. Between my cousin and mine we, we try to get two to four and that’s how you make money, you gotta get ‘em, ya know.
SMILEY: Hell, the margin’s there’s a lot different I understand that ya gotta ...
CIARLETTA: Yeah. I know, I know I can afford it, four, ya know.
SMILEY: You’re talkin’ about a higher price product than you are with ...
CIARLETTA: Oh hell yeah. That’s uh, that’s uh, I’m pretty confident I can do one and ya know, you, you’ll have to get with me and we’ll have to discuss exactly what, how much and everything. But I’m ...
SMILEY: I don’t know that either.
CIARLETTA: Yeah. Well we’ll, ya know, there’ll be time, so ... whenever.
SMILEY: I’m assuming, ya know if everything, uh, ahh ... ya know, I’m trying to guess, because there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.
CIARLETTA: Yeah.
Addendum to Appellee’s Br. at A20-21 (Govt. Exhibit 40-A). The only agreement I can decipher from this garbled conversation is that a “case” is “two point two.”
To include the kilo in calculating Smiley’s sentence, the district court needed to determine Smiley intended to produce and could produce “the weight under negotiation in an uncompleted distribution.” U.S.S.G. § 2D1.4, comment, (n. 1) (Nov. 1991); see also United States v. Brown, 946 F.2d 58, 61 (8th Cir.1991). Ciarletta’s statement that he thought Smiley agreed to supply one kilogram is not proof of the fact, particularly when the actual words of the conversation belie any such subjective conclusion. In my opinion, the district court lacked a reasonable basis to find Smiley had an intent to produce the additional kilo.
The effect of including the extra kilo in sentencing Smiley is substantial. Following the probation officer’s recommendation, the sentencing judge sentenced Smiley based on 1,268.75 grams of heroin, calculating a base offense level of 32 plus 2 for his role in the offense. He sentenced Smiley to 168 months, at the bottom of the 168 to 210 month sentencing range. If Smiley had been sentenced based on 268.75 grams, his base offense level would have been 26 plus 2 for his role in the offense, for a sentencing range of 87 to 108 months. Assuming a new sentence at the bottom of the range, Smiley would have received a sentence of eighty-seven months rather than 168 months, or nearly half the time of the sentence he received.
This case presents another example of what I perceive to be the unfairness that can arise from guideline sentencing in which no rules of evidence apply and in which the sentencing judge often summarily approves the sentencing recommendations of the probation officer.
In the past, this writer has suggested that sentences imposed under the guidelines often seem to come from an Alice in Wonderland world where “up is down and down is up.” United States v. Galloway, 976 F.2d 414, 438 (8th Cir.1992) (Bright, J., dissenting), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1420, 122 L.Ed.2d 790 (1993). When it comes to proof of facts undergirding guideline sentences, the principle courts often apply is that “Anything Goes.”1
In the instant case, a statement to Smiley that a “case” is “two point two” should not imply an agreement by .Smiley to supply that *484quantity. In my opinion, it was clearly erroneous to find otherwise.
Accordingly, I dissent from the sentence;2

. The title song of the Broadway musical "Anything Goes,” music and lyrics by Cole Porter, observes, in part:
The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
*484And day’s night today,
Anything goes.

. I can find no proof of a conspiracy unless the government agent is an unindicted conspirator— a claim not made by the prosecutor. Nevertheless, I do not further discuss the issue because the conspiracy conviction without a proven quantity will add no additional prison time to the guideline sentence applicable to the distribution count, which is unchallenged on appeal.