Court Opinion

ID: 9487380
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:15:06.229485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:14.153361
License: Public Domain

WIGGINS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the opinion to the extent that it affirms Mathews’s conviction, but I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that Mathews was incorrectly sentenced. The majority rejects the district court’s conclusions of fact where the evidence requires us, under the proper standard of review, to affirm.
While the district court finds facts for sentencing purposes by a preponderance of the evidence, United States v. Restrepo, 946 F.2d 654 (9th Cir.1991) (en banc), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1564, 118 L.Ed.2d 211 (1992), this court reviews the district court’s factual findings for clear error. United States v. Notrangelo, 909 F.2d 363, 364 (9th Cir.1990); United States v. Carvajal, 905 F.2d 1292, 1295 (9th Cir.1990); United States v. Christman, 894 F.2d 339, 342 (9th Cir.1990).
In this case the question is whether Mathews had the intent required for first degree murder, so as to be liable to sentencing under the guideline for attempted murder, U.S.S.G. § 2A2.1(a)(l). Application note 2 to that guideline refers one to the following definition of first degree murder.
Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing; or committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, escape, murder, kidnaping [sic], treason, espionage, sabotage, aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse burglary, or robbery; or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed, is murder in the first degree.
18 U.S.C. § 1111(a). The specific intent required for attempted murder is not, of course, described by the two clauses describing felony murder and transferred intent. Therefore, the appropriate question is whether the district court clearly erred by finding that Mathews, with premeditation, wilfully, deliberately and maliciously attempted to kill someone.1 The majority, however, inverts the inquiry on review by insisting that the fact found be at least “clear by a preponderance of the evidence ...,” opinion at 823, before it survives review.
The real evidence of intent in this case is on the side of finding an intent to kill. The bomb was packed with ball bearings that would act as shrapnel. That fact alone is highly probative of the intended effect of the bomb. The majority seems to think that this feature could have been intended to cause damage to property, as well as to injure persons. As any soldier can tell you, pre-fragmented shrapnel is the hallmark of antipersonnel munitions because the projectiles penetrate soft human tissue and kill by internal injuries, giving smaller explosive charges a much more lethal effect against human beings.2 Any increase in property damage is incidental and minimal, such as the breaking of windows. An incendiary or percussion device is more in line with an intent to damage property. The district court was within its rights to view the addition of pre-fragmented shrapnel as evidence of the intent to kill.
That intent is further supported by the connection between the bomb and a victim whom Mathews had a motive to murder. The bomb was placed in a location where a likely victim would be James Rivera, a known enemy of Mathews. Rivera had threatened *825Mathews’s life. A reasonable inference therefrom is that Mathews intended the bomb as a preemptive attack, and the most reasonable purpose of such an act is to eliminate, rather than merely to frighten or wound, the target. Any lesser attack would just invite retaliation. Finally, the district court recognized that Mathews’s extreme antisocial inclinations, including a prior first-degree murder, supported the conclusion that Mathews was capable of an intent to do more than just annoy.
What evidence of an intent other than to murder demands the conclusion that Mathews did not intend to kill Rivera? Only the majority’s speculations that maybe Mathews intended the bomb to do something other than kill. The majority opinion does not list a single fact that militates against finding the intent to kill. It only opines that various bits of evidence were equivocal, and then proceeds improperly to weigh the evidence and come to a conclusion opposite to that reached by the district court.
Simply put, the district court could easily have concluded that a preponderance of the evidence indicated that Mathews intended to kill someone because there was significant evidence that Mathews did so intend, and none that he did not. The district court’s factual determination, therefore, is not clearly erroneous.3 It is not our place to reweigh the evidence. This court is obliged to affirm the sentence, and I dissent from its failure to do so.

. I note that there probably is also a substantial legal argument that an attack by time-bomb is, like that by poison, necessarily a "kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing” for which no further specific evidence of the perpetrator’s actual mental state is required to prove the mens rea for first degree murder.

. An expert witness testified at trial that "[t]he purpose of additional shrapnel to [sic] the interi- or of the device is — is for anti-personnel purposes. Add more shrapnel and fragmentation to your device, increase your chance of killing or injuring personnel.”

. In fact, the evidence might well be sufficient even to sentence for first degree murder itself under a felony murder theory. The question would be whether the death of the victim, James Wilson, which occurred seven months after the accident, was proximately caused by the explosion. On remand, should the district court, as finder of fact, conclude by a preponderance of the evidence that Wilson died as a result of the blast, it may sentence Mathews for first degree murder, subject (of course) to the statutory maximum for the crimes of conviction and double jeopardy limitations.