Court Opinion

ID: 9481425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:18:38.711585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:18.546429
License: Public Domain

BEEZER, Circuit Judge:
I respectfully dissent.
I concur in the court’s opinion except for part II, which approves a two-point sentencing enhancement for obstruction of justice. The enhancement is approved on the ground that
[f]or two weeks prior to his final arrest Mondello played a cat-and-mouse game of avoiding the authorities, though he knew he was expected to surrender himself voluntarily. Moreover, upon fleeing his car, Mondello forced the arresting officers to chase him for over forty minutes before they captured him.
These factors do not justify the enhancement, either separately or in combination.
A. The Three Week Hiatus Between Mon-dello ’s Original Detention and His Arrest
Reliance on United States v. Stroud, 893 F.2d 504 (2d Cir.1990), is misplaced. There the Second Circuit suggested that because “the word ‘willfully,’ as used in section 3C1.1, requires that the defendant consciously act with the purpose of obstructing justice,” obstruction could be found where there is “a deliberate pre- or post-ar*1472rest attempt to frustrate or impede an ongoing criminal investigation, as in the case of an individual who flees while being sought for questioning some time after the commission of a crime.” See id. at 507 (emphasis in original).
A careful reading of the Guidelines, however, reveals that obstruction of justice should not be found simply because a suspect refuses to surrender himself to law enforcement officials. The Guidelines deal explicitly with this issue, not by penalizing a suspect who does not turn himself in, but by rewarding one who does. Section 3E1.1 mandates a reduction of the offense level where the criminal accepts responsibility for his crime. U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1 (1990). Acceptance of responsibility includes “voluntary surrender to authorities promptly after commission of the offense.” Id. Application Note 1(d). The district court at sentencing properly noted that Mondello’s failure to surrender did not constitute obstruction, but that “the credit he would get for [initially contacting counsel and trying to make arrangements for his surrender] is negated by the subsequent conduct, that is, that he didn’t surrender and kept stretching it out.”
Additionally, the Application Notes in force since November 1, 1990, list “avoiding or fleeing from arrest" as an example of conduct that does not warrant application of the enhancement. U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1 Application Note 4(d).1 Avoiding arrest logically includes not surrendering to the authorities, and suggests that even doing so willfully does not constitute obstruction.2 It is irrelevant, therefore, that Mon-dello was detained during the drug sniff, knew he was suspected, or knew there was a warrant issued for his arrest.3
B. Flight from Arresting Officers
All circuits that have addressed this question have agreed that section 3C1.1 is intended to deal with “something different from the instinctive flight of a suspect who suddenly finds himself in the power of the police,” and that “[m]ere flight in the immediate aftermath of a crime” does not justify the enhancement. See United States v. Garcia, 909 F.2d 389, 392 (9th Cir.1990); United States v. Hagan, 913 F.2d 1278, 1285 (7th Cir.1990); Stroud, 893 F.2d at 507. However, there is no reason why an attempt to avoid arrest at some time after the commission of the crime is necessarily less instinctive or more willful than an attempt to escape the scene of a crime, nor any reason why the latter is less worthy of punishment.4 The Guidelines Commission recognized this when it included “fleeing from arrest” as an example of conduct that does not constitute obstruction of justice under section 3C1.1.
Whether or not the Second Circuit will continue the distinction between flight in the immediate aftermath of the crime and flight some time later, nothing in Garcia requires us to adhere to a similar distinction. By quoting the Second Circuit’s statement that “ ‘[m]ere flight in the aftermath of the crime’ does not justify the enhancement,” Garcia, 909 F.2d at 392 *1473(quoting Stroud, 893 F.2d at 507), we did not adopt any distinction between flight immediately following the crime and flight at any other time. Like Stroud, Garcia involved only flight in the immediate aftermath of discovery of the crime;5 the question of flight at a later time was neither before the court nor addressed by it.
Although the Second Circuit also suggested that there might be cases in which “instinctual flight, due to its duration or acts occurring in the course thereof, ripens into a willful attempt to impede or obstruct the administration of justice,” Stroud, 893 F.2d at 508 (citation omitted), recent clarification of the Guidelines refutes this proposition. Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that Mondello had any greater opportunity to make a conscious decision to obstruct justice while fleeing the police than the defendant in Stroud, who
made extraordinary efforts to flee after he realized that he was detected by the police. The defendant fled the bank, ran across rooftops, removed his jacket and hid under a boat. When apprehended by a police officer, he pulled loose twice, jumped a fence and was arrested only after he ran into traffic, blocks away, and was pursued by numerous officers and a police dog.
893 F.2d at 505.
C. The Totality of the Circumstances
Some circuits have upheld enhancement under section 3C1.1 where a suspect’s flight from arresting officers was combined with other obstructive conduct, usually an attempt to destroy evidence of crime. For example, in United States v. Galvan-Garcia, 872 F.2d 638, 641 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 164, 107 L.Ed.2d 122 (1989), the enhancement was affirmed where the defendant attempted to toss bags of marijuana out the window before being stopped by Border Patrol agents. See also United States v. Frances-Torres, 869 F.2d 797, 800 (5th Cir.1989) (defendant shot at agent chasing him and then threw the gun away to hide it from investigating officers). In each of these cases, the obstruction existed independent of the attempt to flee.6 In the present case, there is no evidence of any attempt to destroy evidence or to do anything other than avoid arrest.
For these reasons, I would reverse and remand for resentencing.

. The majority notes that the language of section 3C1.1 has changed slightly since Mondello's sentencing, but that the change is not relevant to this case. Likewise, although the Application Notes in force prior to November 1990 did not include examples of conduct that does not warrant enhancement under section 3C1.1, the substance of the language defining the enhancement was not changed by the November amendments. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the new Notes serve to clarify the manner in which the drafters intended the section to be applied even prior to the latest amendments.

. The district court did not base its enhancement decision on the time elapsed before Mon-dello was arrested, and thus did not consider whether he had an intent to obstruct justice during that time.

. In fact, Mondello’s attorney had been in contact with the police, and Mondello may have had a reservation to fly to San Diego the day after he was arrested, suggesting that rather than intending to obstruct justice, Mondello intended to turn himself in at some time.

. It is irrelevant that Mondello may have attempted “to escape justice and not just the scene of the crime.” Nothing in section 3C1.1 or the Application Notes draws any distinction between escaping from the scene of the crime and escaping from arrest elsewhere. Application Note 4(d) lists "avoiding ... arrest," which surely constitutes an attempt to escape justice, as conduct that does not warrant enhancement.

. Technically, Garcia presents a situation different from that of Stroud. In Garcia, the defendant fled when he was discovered to be carrying counterfeit money, 909 F.2d at 390-91, which is not quite an attempted escape from the "scene of the crime.” This highlights an inconsistency that results if the determinative factor is whether the flight is in the immediate aftermath of the crime. There is no relevant distinction between the flight of a defendant whose crime was committed continually for a period of time before it was discovered, but who flees as soon as the crime is discovered, such as the defendant in Garcia, and a defendant who completes a crime and then flees weeks later when he is finally located by the police, as happened in the present case. Cf. Hagan, 913 F.2d 1278 (7th Cir.1990) (the attempt of defendant, a marijuana cultivator, to flee his home when police pulled up in unmarked cars did not justify enhancement under section 3C1.1).

. In United States v. White, 903 F.2d 457 (7th Cir.1990), and United States v. Tellez, 882 F.2d 141 (5th Cir.1989), an obstruction enhancement was affirmed because in each case the defendant's attempted flight endangered the lives of arresting officers and innocent bystanders. A new ground for enhancement was added to the Guidelines in November 1990, allowing for a two level enhancement "[i]f the defendant recklessly created a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person in the course of fleeing from a law enforcement officer.” U.S.S.G. § 3C1.2 (1990). There was no evidence before the district court that Mondel-Io’s flight created any risk of injury.