Court Opinion

ID: 9482911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:04:44.894663+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:17.057460
License: Public Domain

VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
My colleagues’ entry into the field of judicial legislation undoubtedly will elicit huzzahs from those who traffic in illegal narcotics. However, I cannot join in this applause. With all due respect, I suggest that my colleagues have rejected universally accepted rules of statutory construction and, in the process, have arrived at a result that is both legally and factually wrong. I therefore dissent.
At the outset, I must take issue with my colleagues’ statements concerning alleged Government concessions. The Government did not, and could not, concede that before the cocaine could be “distributed” it would have to be distilled out of the liqueur. According to the statement of facts contained in Acosta’s own brief, “[h]e was paid a certain amount of money to carry the contraband past U.S. Customs and then deliver it to a location where he would be relieved of it by the real owners.” Br. at 4. This would be “distribution” under the statute. “The term ‘distribute’ means to deliver (other than by administering or dispensing) a controlled substance or a listed chemical.” 21 U.S.C. § 802(11). “The terms ‘deliver’ or ‘delivery’ mean the actual, constructive, or attempted transfer of a controlled substance or a listed chemical, whether or not there exists an agency relationship.” 21 U.S.C. § 802(8); see United States v. Workopich, 479 F.2d 1142, 1147 (5th Cir.1973). Had Acosta not been arrested with the liqueur and cocaine in his possession, he would have “distributed” it to the “real owners.” It is, of course, no defense that he might have been acting as the owners’ agent in smuggling the mixture through customs. See United States v. Swiderski, 548 F.2d 445, 450-51 (2d Cir.1977). “The agent who delivers to his principal performs a service in increasing the distribution of narcotics.” Id. at 451. Acosta falls squarely within the “ ‘market-oriented’ approach to punishing drug trafficking, under which the total quantity of what is distributed, rather than the amount of pure drug involved, is used to determine the length of the sentence.” Chapman v. United States, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 1925, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991).
My colleagues erroneously interpret the phrase “market-oriented approach” by emphasizing the final act of distribution. Prior to the enactment of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, a participant in an illegal drug transaction had to be punished as either a seller or a buyer. See United States v. Pruitt, 487 F.2d 1241, 1245 (8th Cir.1973) (quoting United States v. Moses, 220 F.2d 166, 168 (3d Cir.1955)). However, Congress, recognizing the well-known fact that narcotics such as cocaine often pass through at least five or six hands before reaching the ultimate purchaser, opted to view the transaction as a whole and to illegalize participation in all of its stages. As the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc in United States v. Palafox, 764 F.2d 558, 560 (9th Cir.1985), said: “Our examination of the statute and its history underscores the strong congressional intent to criminalize all aspects of drug trafficking, and it compels us to reject an approach which focuses on sales or commercial transactions.” Thus, any person who participates in any phase of the transaction from start to finish is punishable under the Act. Id.; see United States v. Brunty, 701 F.2d 1375, 1381 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 848, 104 S.Ct. 155, 78 L.Ed.2d 143 (1983); United States v. Wigley, 627 F.2d 224, 226 (10th Cir.1980). See also the following excerpt from a report of the House Judiciary Committee, H.R.Rep. No. 99-845, 99th Cong., 2d Sess. 12 (1986), as quoted in United States v. Bishop, 894 F.2d 981, 986 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 106, 112 L.Ed.2d 77 (1990):
After consulting with a number of DEA agents and prosecutors about the distri*558butions patterns for these various drugs, the Committee selected quantities of drugs which if possessed by an individual would likely be indicative of operating at such a high level. The Committee’s statement of quantities is of mixtures, compounds or preparations that contain a detectable amount of the drug — these are not necessarily quantities of pure substance. One result of this market-oriented approach is that the Committee has not generally related these quantities to the number of doses of the drug that might be present in a given sample. The quantity is based on the minimum quantity that might be controlled or directed by a trafficker in a high place in the processing and distribution chain. (Emphasis omitted)
Assuming for the sake of argument only that my colleagues’ interpretation of “distribution” is correct, their application of that term, even as they define it, to the facts of the instant case is not correct. Acosta pled guilty to violating 21 U.S.C. § 952(a) by importing cocaine into the United States. He did not admit to possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, which is a separate and distinct offense, see United States v. Ramirez-Amaya, 812 F.2d 813, 817 (2d Cir.1987). Acosta’s violation of section 952(a) was complete when he brought the cocaine into the country. See United States v. Muench, 694 F.2d 28, 32 (2d Cir.1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 908, 103 S.Ct. 1881, 76 L.Ed.2d 811 (1983); United States v. Pentapati, 484 F.2d 450, 451 (5th Cir.1973). As Judge McLaughlin himself said on another occasion:
Section 952(a) of the Act defines the crime. The entry of controlled substances onto American soil causes the harm and furnishes the jurisdictional basis for punishment of the offender.
United States v. Londono-Villa, 930 F.2d 994, 1001-02 (2d Cir.1991) (McLaughlin, J., dissenting). My colleagues’ discussion of the marketability and distributability of the mixture that Acosta imported is not only wrong on the merits, it is irrelevant. Section 2D1.1 of the Guidelines under which Acosta was sentenced applies to unlawful “importing” as well as other forms of trafficking.
My colleagues’ assertion that the Government “does not contest the defendant’s argument that the creme liqueur was not ingestible” also is wide of the mark. Defendant-appellant’s brief contains no mention whatever of lack of inges-tibility. To the extent that there was any argument against ingestibility, it was my colleagues, not appellant’s counsel, who made it, and a poor argument it was. Although 21 U.S.C. § 802(17) defines “[a]ny compound, mixture, or preparation which contains any quantity of [cocaine]” as a “narcotic drug”, cocaine was not always treated so harshly in either the courts of law or of public opinion. Indeed, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, cocaine appears to have received more praise than condemnation. Because cocaine was readily soluble, it became an ingredient in many patent medicines. It also was added to wines, cordials and soft drinks, because it increased their exhila-rative properties. A famous mixture of wine and cocaine, called Vin Mariani, is said to have received the endorsement of such notables as Charles Gounod, John Phillips Sousa, Thomas Edison, Sarah Bern-hart, Jules Verne, and Pope Leo XIII. See Gerald McLaughlin, Cocaine: The History and Regulation of a Dangerous Drug, 58 Cornell L.Rev. 537, 545-46 (1973); Chris-Ellyn Johanson, Cocaine: A New Epidemic, at 56, published as part of The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs (1986); Steven Wisotsky, Exposing the War on Cocaine: The Futility and Destructiveness of Prohibition, 1983 Wis.L.Rev. 1305, 1311 n. 34. Another liqueur mixture called Coca Cordial was widely sold. Wisotsky, supra, at 1311. As might be surmised from its name, the soft drink Coca Cola, as originally concocted, also contained cocaine. Johanson, supra, at 56. In short, my colleagues’ assertion that cocaine dissolved in a liqueur is not ingestible, and that the correctness of this assertion is not contested, is wrong.1
*559Having misstated the ingestibility of the bottled matter that Acosta imported, my colleagues compound their error by misinterpreting the words “mixture” and “substance” as used in Guideline 2D1.1:
Unless otherwise specified, the weight of a controlled substance set forth in the table refers to the entire weight of any mixture or substance containing a detectible amount of the controlled substance.
Contrary to my colleagues’ contention, these words have the same meaning in 21 U.S.C. § 841, i.e., their ordinary meaning. In United States v. Marshall, 908 F.2d 1312, 1317 (7th Cir.1990), aff'd sub nom. Chapman v. United States, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991), the court said:
It is not possible to construe the words of § 841 to make the penalty turn on the net weight of the drug rather than the gross weight of carrier and drug. The statute speaks of “mixture or substance containing a detectable amount” of a drug. “Detectable amount” is the opposite of “pure”; the point of the statute is that the “mixture” is not to be converted to an equivalent amount of pure drug.
The Supreme Court agreed:
Neither the statute nor the Sentencing Guidelines define the terms “mixture” and “substance,” nor do they have any established common law meaning. Those terms, therefore, must be given their ordinary meaning. See Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. -, - [111 S.Ct. 461, 468-70, 112 L.Ed.2d 449] (1990). A “mixture” is defined to include “a portion of matter consisting of two or more components that do not bear a fixed proportion to one another and that however thoroughly commingled are regarded as retaining a separate existence.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1449 (1986). A “mixture” may also consist of two substances blended together so that the particles of one are diffused among the particles of the other. 9 Oxford English Dictionary 921 (2d ed. 1989).
... The statutory language and structure indicate that the weight of a carrier should be included as a “mixture or substance containing a detectable amount” of LSD when determining the sentence for an LSD distributor.
111 S.Ct. at 1925-26.
Prior to Chapman, a number of lower courts found the terms “mixture” and “substance” to be plain, clear and unambiguous. See, e.g., United States v. Bishop, 894 F.2d 981, 985 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 106, 112 L.Ed.2d 77 (1990); United States v. Daly, 883 F.2d 313, 317 (4th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 496 U.S. 927, 110 S.Ct. 2622, 110 L.Ed.2d 643 (1990); United States v. Rojas, 868 F.2d 1409 (5th Cir.1989); United States v. Smith, 840 F.2d 886, 889 & n. 2 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 859, 109 S.Ct. 154, 102 L.Ed.2d 125 (1988). Chapman therefore simply confirmed what these courts already had held, i.e., that, for sentencing purposes, “the weight of a carrier should be included as a ‘mixture or substance containing a detectable amount’ of [the controlled substance].” 111 S.Ct. at 1926.
Neither Chapman nor the Act limits the meaning of the words “mixture” or “substance” to matters that are ingestible. Congress primarily was after the big-time trafficker in drugs2 and adjusted the statutory penalties according to the manner in which he, rather than the small-time street distributor, packaged and disposed of his product. Thus, it is largely irrelevant whether the substance or mixture that the big-time operator starts or moves along the chain of distribution is ingestible. Ingesti-bility has significance, if at all, only with respect to the last act of distribution, i.e., the sale to the consumer. Reading the unexpressed limitation of ingestibility into the statute generally would lead to results that Congress clearly did not intend. For *560example, Chapman involved a mixture of LSD and a rapidly evaporating solvent such as alcohol. Either the solution was sprayed onto blotters or blotters were dipped into the solution. 111 S.Ct. at 1923. Under my colleagues' interpretation of the statute, if the solution had been seized before the spraying or dipping occurred, the weight of the mixture could not have been used as the basis for sentencing. This just doesn’t make sense. As the Supreme Court stated in Chapman, Congress was justified in seeking to avoid arguments about the amount of pure drugs extracted from a mixture. 111 S.Ct. at 1928. A much more sensible answer was given by the Eighth Circuit in United States v. Brown, 921 F.2d 785 (8th Cir.1990), where the seized drug, PCP (phencyclidine), was in a mouthwash bottle, mixed with liquid ether. The proof in that case was that cigarettes would be dipped into the solution, dried and sold. Although liquid ether obviously is not an ingestible substance, the court used the entire weight of the ether mixture in imposing sentence. If my colleagues’ interpretation of the terms “mixture” and “substance” is adopted, the Government will be required to extract the pure drug from every non-ingestible mixture in order to charge a knowledgable offense. Congress avoided arguments concerning the purity and weight of the drug thus extracted by permitting the total mixture to be weighed.
My colleagues’ contention that adherence to the plain and ordinary meaning of the words “mixture” and “substance” would result in a lack of uniformity and proportionality in sentencing was rejected by the Supreme Court in Chapman, supra, 111 S.Ct. at 1927-29. Moreover, this argument has been rejected so often by so many courts as to have become almost threadbare. See, e.g., United States v. Bishop, supra, 894 F.2d at 985-96; United States v. Klein, 860 F.2d 1489, 1500-01 (9th Cir.1988); United States v. Whitehead, 849 F.2d 849, 859-60 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 983, 109 S.Ct. 534, 102 L.Ed.2d 566 (1988); United States v. Holmes, 838 F.2d 1175, 1177-78 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1058, 108 S.Ct. 2829, 100 L.Ed.2d 930 (1988).
The Second Circuit has not yet considered the issue of disproportionality and lack of uniformity with respect to the federal statute. It has, however, considered it with respect to former section 220.23 of New York’s Penal Law, which made it a crime to knowingly possess “a narcotic drug consisting of one or more preparations, compounds, mixtures or substances of an aggregate weight of sixteen ounces or more of ... cocaine....” In People v. Daneff, 30 N.Y.2d 793, 334 N.Y.S.2d 897, 286 N.E.2d 273 (1972) (mem.), cert. denied, 410 U.S. 913, 93 S.Ct. 977, 35 L.Ed.2d 276 (1973), the appellant had challenged the statute because “the standard provided for determining the degree of the crime was the quantity or weight of the mixture or compound containing the narcotic [cocaine] rather than the quantity or weight of the actual narcotic content of the mixture or compound.” Id. (summary headnote). After this challenge was rejected by the New York Court of Appeals and certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court, Daneff petitioned for habeas corpus relief in the Southern District of New York. In affirming the district court’s dismissal of the petition, we said that, in view of the fact that cocaine generally is marketed in mixtures or compounds, “it does not seem unreasonable or irrational for a legislature to deal realistically with the marketing of the mixture or compound rather than the handling of the pure narcotic.” United States ex rel. Daneff v. Henderson, 501 F.2d 1180, 1184 (2d Cir.1974). We said further that “[t]he State cannot be expected to make gradations and differentiations and draw distinctions and degrees so fine as to treat all law violators with the precision of a computer....” Id. New York has adhered to the ruling of its Court of Appeals in Daneff, see People v. LaPorta, 56 A.D.2d 983, 393 N.Y.S.2d 118 (1977) (mem.), and we have adhered to our ruling on the habeas corpus petition, see Carmona v. Ward, 576 F.2d 405, 408 n. 4 (2d Cir.1978), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1091, 99 S.Ct. 874, 59 L.Ed.2d 58 (1979). Many other states with *561similar statutes have reasoned in similar fashion.3
Most of the above-cited decisions, both state and federal, recognize the possibility of hypothesizing rare and unusual situations in which the statutes involved might become seemingly unfair in application. However, “this sort of attack on a criminal statute must be made on a case-by-case basis.” Schall v. Martin, 467 U.S. 253, 269 n. 18, 104 S.Ct. 2403, 2412 n. 18, 81 L.Ed.2d 207 (1984). Assuming that Acosta has standing to argue the possibility of such unusual applications, but see United States v. Kidder, 869 F.2d 1328, 1335 (9th Cir.1989), we “do not require that the means chosen by Congress to deal with a problem score a notable success in every application of the statute.” United States v. Agilar, 779 F.2d 123, 125 (2d Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1068, 106 S.Ct. 1385, 89 L.Ed.2d 609 (1986).
While Congress is continually increasing its efforts to halt drug smuggling into the United States, see, e.g., National Drug Interdiction Improvement Act of 1986, Pub.L. No. 99-570, 100 Stat. 3207, this court should not point its efforts in the opposite direction. We can avoid doing this in the instant case if we simply heed the following admonition of Justice O’Connor writing for the Court in United States v. Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 680, 105 S.Ct. 2897, 2902, 86 L.Ed.2d 536 (1985):
Courts in applying criminal laws generally must follow the plain and unambiguous meaning of the statutory language. Garcia v. United States, 469 U.S. 70, 75 [,105 S.Ct. 479, 482-83, 83 L.Ed.2d 472] (1984); United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 580 [,101 S.Ct. 2524, 2527, 69 L.Ed.2d 246] (1981). “[O]nly the most extraordinary showing of contrary intentions” in the legislative history will justify a departure from that language. Garcia, supra, [469 U.S.] at 75 [,105 S.Ct. at 482]. Any other conclusion, while purporting to be an exercise in judicial restraint, would trench upon the legislative powers vested in Congress by Art. I, § 1, of the Constitution. United States v. Locke, 471 U.S. 84, 95-96 [,105 S.Ct. 1785, 1792-94, 85 L.Ed.2d 64] (1985). Proper respect for those powers implies that “[s]tatutory construction must begin with the language employed by Congress and the assumption that the ordinary meaning of that language accurately expresses the legislative purpose.” Park ’N Fly v. Dollar Park and Fly, Inc., 469 U.S. 189, 194 [,105 S.Ct. 658, 661, 83 L.Ed.2d 582] (1985).
Because my colleagues have exceeded their authority by judicially legislating and have committed substantial error and created unnecessary confusion in the process, I respectfully dissent.

. A bottle of Acosta’s imported elixir poured into the punchbowl would add life to any party. *559Indeed, one could host a fairly gay soiree by adding only the liqueur, which my colleagues call “liquid waste."

. This is quite obvious from the drug quantities contained in the sentencing guidelines.

. See Velunza v. State, 504 So.2d 780, 781 n. 1 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1987); State v. Perry, 316 N.C. 87, 340 S.E.2d 450, 459-60 (1986); Lawhorn v. State, 452 N.E.2d 915, 917-18 (Ind.1983); Commonwealth v. Beverly, 389 Mass. 866, 452 N.E.2d 1112, 1114-15 (1983); Traylor v. State, 458 A.2d 1170, 1176-77 (Del.1983); Lavelle v. State, 250 Ga. 224, 297 S.E.2d 234, 235-36 (1982); People v. Lemble, 103 Mich.App. 220, 303 N.W.2d 191, 192-93 (1981); People v. Mayberry, 63 Ill.2d 1, 345 N.E.2d 97, 101, cert. denied, 429 U.S. 828, 97 S.Ct. 87, 50 L.Ed.2d 92 (1976).