Court Opinion

ID: 9488924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:59:54.471615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:11.569737
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent.
I address for the third time the district court’s failure to make proper foreseeability findings in this case. In Montanye’s original direct appeal, this dissenting judge wrote the majority opinion joined in by United States Senior District Judge Henry Woods and Judge Fagg dissented. We concluded that Montanye could not be sentenced for the *232methamphetamine his co-conspirators “produced” because the amount was not reasonably foreseeable to him; that is, the activities of his co-conspirators did not fall within the scope of his agreement with them. See United States v. Montanye, 962 F.2d 1332, 1347 (8th Cir.1992) (Montanye did not know how much or how little methamphetamine co-conspirators would produce, he never participated in process of manufacturing or distributing methamphetamine, and district court possessed insufficient evidence to find Montanye responsible for all methamphetamine produced).
That decision was later vacated by the grant of an en banc hearing. The en banc majority then decided that Montanye forfeited the foreseeability issue by failing to raise it in the district court. United States v. Montanye, 996 F.2d 190, 192-93 (8th Cir. 1993) (reasoning this court lacked authority to consider question in any event because district court is not required to make foreseeability findings unless defendant objects to PSR and Montanye did not show prejudice). In a dissent joined by Judges McMilli-an and Morris S. Arnold, we stated that Montanye’s thirty-year sentence for delivering glassware was grossly unfair because “the record before us does not show that Montanye knew the quantity of methamphetamine to be produced by his co-conspirators.” Id., at 195. The en banc case left open the possibility of a post-conviction remedy.
Montanye then brought this 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, arguing his counsel was ineffective in failing to raise the issue of foreseeability at sentencing. The record shows that in the course of an extensive two-year conspiracy, Montanye in effect took one long distance telephone call, bought some glassware, transported it interstate, got paid $6,000, and went home. This appears to have been his only contact with the conspiracy, despite the government’s attempts at this late date to dredge up statements Montanye made during the trip about the possibility of distributing methamphetamine for the conspiracy. The government itself claims the methamphetamine was already an ongoing-operation before the additional flasks were acquired by Montanye, and he was not even then in the State of Missouri. For this, he was held accountable not for the entire amount his co-conspirators produced but instead for the entire amount they might have produced had the lab not been seized. At sentencing, Montanye’s counsel failed to raise the foreseeability issue and indeed conceded Montanye should be held accountable for the full amount the laboratory was capable of producing.
The district court in rejecting the incompetency of counsel contention did so by giving a crabbed and narrow reading to United States v. Edwards, 945 F.2d 1387 (7th Cir.1991) and United States v. North, 900 F.2d 131 (8th Cir.1990). I believe this reading was wrong. See, e.g., United States v. Valencia-Lucena, 988 F.2d 228, 234 (1st Cir.1993) (“criminal conspiracy net is often east widely. Individuals may be involved who know that the agreement they have entered is illegal but have no way to foresee the magnitude or ambition of the enterprise, as in the case of an individual hired to remedy an unexpected complication in the main conspirators’ plot”).
The majority here relies in part on Judge John R. Gibson’s concurrence for its affir-mance. In that concurrence, Judge Gibson calculated the assumed productive capacity of a methamphetamine laboratory that never operated in the manner projected by the prosecution. These speculations have nothing to do with foreseeability. Indeed, no court has yet made any proper foreseeability findings as a basis to support Montanye’s thirty-year prison sentence. This omission flows directly from counsel’s ineffective assistance at sentencing in failing to raise the foreseeability issue which was then well known. See U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3, comment, (n. 1) (November 1989) (in case of jointly undertaken criminal activity, defendant accountable for others’ conduct where it was “reasonably foreseeable by the defendant.... [wjhere it is established that the conduct was neither within the scope of the defendant’s agreement, nor was reasonably foreseeable in connection with the criminal activity the defendant agreed to jointly undertake, such conduct is not included in establishing the defendant’s offense level under this guideline”).
*233While I adhere to the views previously stated by this writer, Montanye, 962 F.2d at 1347; Montanye, 996 F.2d at 195-96, that the thirty-year sentence imposed on Monta-nye is improper, nevertheless the learned district judge has imposed this sentence under the guidelines and the majority has approved. By any ordinary measure outside the guidelines, I would think this sentence would be considered draconian, unnecessarily harsh and unreasonable. The defendant’s thirty years of incarceration for furnishing glassware to the conspiracy, a conspiracy which incidentally never delivered one gram of drugs to any consumer, will cost the public $21,995 per year based on 1995 figures 13 and approximately over $650,000 for the full thirty-year sentence.
This result suggests that I should repeat what I previously wrote in United States v. Eiveley, 61 F.3d 1358 (8th Cir.1995). I commented on the sentencing guidelines as follows:
Federal judges who sentence offenders know the problem. 86.4% of district judges support changing the current sentencing rules to increase the discretion of the judge; 70.4% support repealing most of all mandatory minimum sentencing and 82.8% of all district judges feel that federal judges would be appropriate decision makers about the nature and severity of sanctions to be imposed in criminal cases. More than half would eliminate sentencing guidelines. Federal Judicial Center, Planning for the Future: Results of a 1992 Federal Judicial Center Survey of United States Judges (1994).
These are not “soft headed judges.” They serve on the front lines of the criminal justice system and know of what they speak. They represent appointees of every president from Eisenhower to Clinton. But the law makers and law enforcers, Congress and the administration, seem to turn a deaf ear to the problem and to the unnecessary, immense cost to the taxpayer of unnecessary lengthy incarceration of drug offenders.
I think it can be said that judges are vitally concerned with the drug problem in America. Reason, not emotion, must be brought to bear on the subject. What are judges to do about these unreasonable sentencing rules which we must apply? I suggest that we must try to make our views known loudly and clearly.
As for this writer, I intend to cite to this opinion and its addendum in every drug case where I believe the present system requires the sentencing judge to impose an unreasonable sentence. I would urge my fellow judges, similarly, to speak out and to write opinions on this subject. The public needs to know that unnecessary, harsh and unreasonable drug sentences serve to waste billions of dollars without doing much good for society. We have an unreasonable system.14
The message judges, district and circuit, can send Congress and the President is this: If you want to save billions for the country without harming anyone, take a look at and change the rules of sentencing now in the federal courts. If we speak with a united voice perhaps they, and the public, will listen.
Id., at 1365-1366.
Accordingly, I dissent.

. In Fiscal 1995, wc estimate the average cost per day per inmate will be $60.26, with an average annual amount of $21,995.
Letter from Kathleen M. Hawk, Director, United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, to the Honorable Myron H. Bright (July 6, 1995) (on file with Judge Bright).

. I have written other commentaries on the guidelines. See, e.g., United States v. Griffin, 17 F.3d 269, 273 (8th Cir.1994) (Bright, J., dissenting) (addressing the myth of consistency in sentences under the Guidelines and commenting on the obvious unfairness of mandatory minimum sentences); United States v. Goebel, 898 F.2d 675, 679 (8th Cir.1990) (Bright, J., concurring) (observing that the Sentencing Guidelines produce disparate and unfair sentencing results among similar offenders); United States v. O’Meara, 895 F.2d 1216, 1221 (8th Cir.) (Bright, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 943, 111 S.Ct. 352, 112 L.Ed.2d 316 (1990) ("This case opens the window on the sometimes bizarre and topsy-turvy world of sentencing under the Guidelines.”).