Court Opinion

ID: 9457355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:19:32.508026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:19.099214
License: Public Domain

JAMES M. CARTER, Circuit Judge
(concurring and dissenting).
I concur in that portion of the opinion holding that the evidence is sufficient to support the conviction. I dissent from that portion of the decision involving sentencing and the remand for further proceedings.
The majority attempts an end run around Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 69 S.Ct. 1079, 93 L.Ed. 1337 (1949), permitting a trial judge to consider hearsay information on sentencing, and the cases holding that sentences within statutory limits, will not be reviewed on appeal. The majority disclaims a repudiation of the rule of these cases, but in substance opens up Pandora’s box on procedures in the trial court in the use of a presentence report.
The majoriy remands the case for re-sentencing. I do not understand the majority opinion as prohibiting a new pre-sentence report developing the information in the areas described as (a), (b) and (c) set forth near the end of the majority opinion.
The trial court gave appellant’s retained counsel an opportunity to make an investigation and report the results thereof to the court. The areas listed in the opinion were fertile fields for investigation by the defense, but counsel refused to undertake any investigation, or to assist in any way in supplying information within such areas to the court. *635The defense counsel made no motion for modification of sentence which could have followed such an investigation. In view of this fact alone, the district judge was justified in rendering the sentence and in allowing it to stand after receipt of the supplemental report.
Moreover the supplemental report was more confirmatory of the matters set forth in the original report than the majority concedes. There was testimony at the trial that appellant told the agent that heroin in Mexico cost $300 per ounce. The supplemental report indicates that the informer stated appellant had paid $300 per ounce for the heroin in Mexico. As the majority states, the supplemental report referred to the search of the house of Jackson, the co-defendant, where 2 ounces of heroin and 2 ounces of cocaine were found. The informer stated that appellant was distributing heroin to Jackson for delivery. The search revealed the packages in Jackson’s house were identical to those seized in this case and received in evidence.
I would affirm both the conviction and the sentence.