Court Opinion

ID: 9885750
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:14:46.084412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:56.875778
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The facts here show that Jackson was involved in a drug conspiracy in Indianapolis in 2005. These facts cannot be stretched, as the majority attempts, to speculate that Jackson joined that same conspiracy a year earlier or was part of some other undefined conspiracy with drug runners in Gary. Neither the sentencing judge nor the preparers of the PSR made any findings with regard to the scope of the defendant’s activity. While I agree with the majority that plain-error is the correct standard to apply to Jackson’s appeal, I disagree with the analysis that concludes that Jackson’s purported importance in the conspiracy or statements regarding his so-called criminal history can provide a reasonable inference supporting a finding that he joined the conspiracy at least a year earlier than 2005. Further, these arguments have no bearing on the overall scope of the conspiracy and therefore cannot provide justification for attributing an additional 42 kilograms of cocaine to Jackson. The inclusion of these drug amounts resulted in a much higher sentencing guidelines range for Jackson, and thereby affected Jackson’s substantial rights and impacted the fairness of the proceedings. In light of these deficiencies, I would vacate and remand for resentenc-ing.
Neither the district court nor the PSR addressed plausibly how Jackson was connected to the crack and additional cocaine amounts. Thus, the PSR, without reference to evidence, notes that “[t]he defendant is responsible for the entire amount.” (PSR ¶ 31.) The district court did not explicitly incorporate or explain the probation officer’s calculation and instead the court relied on “a pro forma checking of a box on a preprinted form.” Cf. United States v. Salem, 597 F.3d 877, 888 (7th Cir.2010).1 This lack of explanation by the district court is frustrating, especially because the two drug amounts involved required the district court to make two distinct findings. In order to attribute the crack to Jackson, the district court had to determine Jackson’s extent of involvement in the conspiracy — specifically, whether Jackson was a member of the conspiracy during the 2004 drug buys. In order to *579attribute the 42 kilograms of cocaine to Jackson, the district court had to determine the overall scope of the conspiracy— whether the extra 42 kilograms were even attributable to the present conspiracy, much less to Jackson as a member of that conspiracy. The district court seems to have touched lightly on the first matter and largely ignored the second question.
The majority’s attempts to explain away these omissions are unconvincing. The majority relies on two arguments to make the case that the district court could reasonably infer that Jackson was involved in the conspiracy before he was caught on wiretap in February 2005 and that the 42 kilograms resulting from the June 2005 seizure were within the scope of Jackson’s jointly undertaken activities. First, the majority notes vaguely “that Jackson had considerable involvement in the conspiracy” and second, “that he admitted that his criminal history [of undefined content] began in 2003 when he moved from Gary to Indianapolis, where he met the other members of the conspiracy.” I do not see how these ill-defined “reasons” reasonably support a finding of earlier involvement or how they relate at all to the overall scope of the underlying conspiracy.
I.
The government argued, and the district court agreed, that Jackson was a great help to the conspiracy from February 2005 onward. The government supported this with references to tapped telephone calls from 2005, specifically on Feb. 26, April 10, 11, 21, 24, and 29. These phone calls did not contain any reference to Jackson’s purported involvement in 2004. The majority seems to endorse the government’s speculation that Jackson might well have participated in the conspiracy even before “his first documented overt act,” but speculation is not evidence. I do not see why his assistance in 2005 reasonably infers the scope of his involvement in 2004. The drug ring in this case did not exhibit a clear hierarchy of membership or ranks through which members had to rise, so substantial involvement in 2005 cannot be contorted into evidence of experience accrued in 2004.
Indeed, if we credit the government’s assertion that Jackson was the primary enforcer and the “right hand man” to Howard in this conspiracy, we naturally wonder why law enforcement agents did not observe Jackson at any of the 2004 buys or catch reference to him during that time. At trial the government’s witnesses conceded that no one observed Jackson during any of the eleven 2004 transactions, and the government identified no other evidence linking him to that stage of the conspiracy. (Trial Tr., Doc. 17-1 at 55-57.) It seems unlikely Jackson could be a stealth coconspirator for an entire year while simultaneously filling such an outsized role in the conspiracy.
The majority makes much of the fact that Jackson stated that “my criminal history didn’t start until 2003, till I got to Indianapolis. I did not know [the cocon-spirators] in Gary. I met them when I got here.” (Sentencing Tr. at 20.) This statement is a country mile from an admission that Jackson was involved in the present conspiracy in 2004. The literal interpretation of the statement is that Jackson had a clean record until 2003. The majority seems to argue that the statement supports an inference that Jackson immediately joined the present conspiracy upon his arrival to Indianapolis or that because Jackson admitted that his “criminal history” began in 2003, he joined the present conspiracy soon after. But this is an exceptionally strained reading of the statement and does not line up with other evidence. The presentence report shows that Jack*580son incurred four convictions for crimes committed in Indianapolis before his 2005 arrest, but none were for drug offenses. (PSR ¶¶ 49-51.) Nothing in the presen-tence report indicates a link between these crimes and Jackson’s coconspirators in this drug case, and no fair reading of his statement during allocution would allow for the conclusion that he was confessing to being involved in the drug ring before 2005.
II.
The district court also attributed an additional 42 kilograms of cocaine to Jackson, although this amount seems to have been destined for unknown buyers who were not even customers of the present conspiracy. Jackson contends that these drugs were instead an element of some other undefined conspiracy and are therefore outside the scope of his jointly undertaken activity under scrutiny here. The majority does not seriously address this contention. Instead, it confusingly offers arguments that have no rational relationship to this additional drug haul and it ignores all available evidence that this amount was unknown to Jackson and not destined for distribution by the present conspiracy.
Thus, I take issue with the reasonableness of the majority’s arguments with respect to the 510 grams of crack. Beyond that, I do not believe there are any inferences, reasonable or otherwise, drawn from the record that would link Jackson to the 42 kilograms of cocaine. The majority claims that Jackson’s importance in the conspiracy and his statement regarding his criminal history support a finding of apparently unlimited breadth of scope of jointly undertaken conduct. But these arguments really address only the scope of Jackson’s role in the present conspiracy headed by Howard and do not speak to the scope of some broader activities going beyond that.
As for the 42 kilograms of cocaine, there is no evidence that they were connected to Howard or to any of his cohorts in Indianapolis, including Jackson. The government’s wiretaps provided irrefutable proof that Howard wanted 3 kilograms of cocaine, not 45 kilograms, and 3 kilograms is what Howard received before the couriers from Gary departed. The record does not reveal the intended recipients of their remaining stock, but the drug runners were stopped on their way out of Indianapolis, also heading away from Gary south on I-465,2 and therefore traveling away from any of the identified members of the conspiracy. If the 42 kilograms were not even part of the present conspiracy headed by Howard, this weight cannot be attributed to Jackson based on inferences flowing from Jackson’s importance or supposed earlier involvement with that conspiracy.
Both of the district court’s errors — involving the 510 grams of crack and the 42 kilograms of cocaine — affected Jackson’s substantial rights and impacted the fairness of the proceedings. Without the 510 grams of crack and 42 kilograms of cocaine, Jackson’s guideline range would have been 262 to 327 months, instead of 360 months to life.3 (Appellant’s Br. at 25-26.) “A sentencing based on an incorrect Guidelines range constitutes plain er*581ror and warrants a remand for resentenc-ing, unless we have reason to believe that the error in no way affected the district court’s selection of a particular sentence.” United States v. Farmer, 543 F.3d 363, 375 (7th Cir.2008); see also United States v. Garrett, 528 F.3d 525, 527 (7th Cir.2008); United States v. Wallace, 32 F.3d 1171, 1174 (7th Cir.1994). In selecting what it thought was an appropriate sentence, the district court placed great emphasis on the “45 kilos of cocaine and cocaine base,” which it described as an amount rarely seen attributed to a single person. (Sentencing Tr. at 22.) That “awful” amount of drugs would not have been considered in this ease at all if the quantity had been calculated correctly.
I respectfully dissent.

. I note in passing that the district court's failure to define the scope of jointly undertaken activity and the PSR’s sole declarative sentence on the issue restrict the ability of this court to conduct meaningful appellate review. The majority correctly notes that Salem provides that a district court "may draw reasonable inferences from information in a PSR to make a finding as to the scope of the joint criminal activity undertaken by a defendant.” 597 F.3d at 889. But Salem also counsels that "unstated inferences do not provide an adequate relevant conduct analysis so as to allow for meaningful appellate review.” Id. The closest the district court comes to explaining its reasoning is a finding that the events of the trial "reveal a very hostile and a very violent individual who was of great assistance to this conspiracy.” (Sentencing Tr. at 26.) I recognize that this case involves a more deferential standard of review than Salem, but even with the majority's assistance, the record does not bear out the finding of broad jointly undertaken activity advanced by the government. The error in this case is obvious and likely resulted in Jackson receiving nearly an additional decade on his sentence.

. Officers made it clear that they stopped the drug runners heading away from Gary on the reasoning that "[i]f they got on the interstate and headed anywhere but back to Gary ... there's probably more narcotics in the vehicle; that this wasn’t just one trip and going home.”

. If the court had considered only the crack or only the additional 42 kilograms of cocaine as relevant conduct, Jackson's base offense level would be lowered by two and would yield a reduced guideline range of 324 to 405 months.