Court Opinion

ID: 9483173
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:13:27.665786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:28.325843
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur m the judgment and join all but Part II.B of the court’s opinion. The parties’ debate about the enhancement for “recklessness” is academic for two reasons. First, by the time of Guadagno’s sentencing, that enhancement had been rescinded by amendment No. 330 and replaced by a base offense level of 20, producing the same outcome without regard to recklessness. Second, our opinion in United States v. Golden, 954 F.2d 1413, 1417 (7th Cir.1992), ordains the outcome of the controversy even if the old version of § 2K1.4 applied. Golden concluded that “[i]n this day and age, the arson of an urban structure — whether residential or commercial — is virtually a per se reckless endangerment of others.” Guadagno’s was an urban arson.
For reasons given in my separate opinion in United States v. Foutris, 966 F.2d 1158 (7th Cir.1992), also issued today, I question whether arson is so dangerous that it automatically displays reckless disregard of life. Those doubts do not undermine Gua-dagno’s sentence, however. He used accel-erants so plentiful and vigorous that their explosion blew out a wall, and the fire department deemed the site so hazardous that it withdrew all crews. Guadagno started this fire before the store’s normal closing hours, indifferent to the risk that a customer would arrive just in time for the blast. So we could, and should, affirm without regard to the principle of Golden.