Court Opinion

ID: 9486772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:59:34.341549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:55.515991
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Hunn (falsely) told five banks’ tellers that he had a gun. Was any of his notes and gestures “an express threat of death”? U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(2)(F). My colleagues answer yes, but it is not clear to me that Hunn made a “threat of death” at all, let alone an “express” threat of death.
It is tempting to ask: Why would a robber claim to have a gun, unless he wanted the victim to fear for his life? Claiming to have a gun implies a threat to use it; and threatening to use a gun portends death, the argument goes. Variations on “I have a gun” are designed to create fear, all right, but not necessarily fear of death. Robbers with real guns may create fear by shooting into the air or by shooting to wound; they may use guns as bludgeons (McLaughlin v. United States, 476 U.S. 16, 18, 106 S.Ct. 1677, 1678, 90 L.Ed.2d 15 (1986)). Thieves want cooperation and money, not dead tellers.
The Sentencing Commission set out to distinguish degrees of threats. Saying that you have a gun does not invariably induce a fear of death. To separate ordinary references to guns, and the apprehension they produce, from the terror that a threat of death yields, the Sentencing Commission provided that only an “express threat of death” justifies the two-level increase. An implication from words and gestures is not enough. Only what the bandit says or conveys in signs, not what the victim reads into shadings of “I have a gun,” is an “express” threat. Anything else dissolves the difference between posturing and genuine threats of death.
The majority believes that this is a “cramped” reading of the Guidelines. So it would be, if the function of § 2B3.1(b)(2)(F) were to distinguish bona fide threats from idle chatter. Hunn’s notes, words, and gestures would have created fear in reasonable persons. But putting the victim in fear is an element of the crime of robbery, see United States v. Ray, 21 F.3d 1134 (D.C.Cir.1994), and using ordinary degrees of fear for enhancement is double counting. Instead the Sentencing Commission’s objective was to separate the sort of fear that accompanies most bank robberies from the panic that accompanies an express threat of death: “The ... intent of the underlying provision is to provide for an increased offense level for cases in which the offender(s) engaged in conduct that would instill in a reasonable person, who is a victim of the offense, significantly greater fear than that necessary to constitute an element of the offense of robbery.” U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1 application note 6 (emphasis added). A literal reading of the Guideline then is not “cramped” but is the only way to ensure that the text serves its function.
Threats lie along a continuum of seriousness and gravity. Yet the Sentencing Commission did not compose a multi-factor ap*1000proach or ask the courts^to balance objectives. It created a dichotomy between “express” and “implied” threats of death. The application note offers five examples: “Give me the money or I will kill you”; “Give me the money or you are dead”; “Give me the money or I will shoot you”; and two threats not involving guns. One is a threat to set off a hand grenade (fatal to all nearby) and the other is a mimed threat to slit the victim’s throat. Hunn’s threats do not come close. The one the majority emphasizes is a note stating: “Give me all the money now. I have a gun. No tricks, I’m watching.” When the teller inquired whether this was a joke, Hunn replied “I mean it” and put his finger in his pocket to simulate a gun. This feigning is ordinary for a bank robbery. It may have placed the teller in fear of harm, but harm is not death, and an inference from the announcement of a weapon is not an “express” threat. The application note shows that the Sentencing Commission believes that a conditional threat can be “express”; if, as the majority holds, an implied conditional threat also qualifies, then “express” has been read out of the Guideline.
The eleventh circuit tries to enforce the express-implied distinction, elusive though it be. United States v. Canzater, 994 F.2d 773 (11th Cir.1993); United States v. Moore, 6 F.3d 715 (11th Cir.1993). The eighth circuit, recognizing that threats do not fall naturally into these categories, has thrown up its hands and authorized a two-level increase whenever statements or gestures imply a serious threat. United States v. Smith, 973 F.2d 1374 (8th Cir.1992); United States v. Bell, 12 F.3d 139 (8th Cir.1993). I recognize that an earlier opinion of this circuit, United States v. Robinson, 20 F.3d 270, 276-77 (7th Cir.1994), uses the eighth circuit’s elastic approach, but that panel did not need to choose sides: the issue had not been preserved for appellate decision, and one of Robinson’s notes made an express threat by any standard, so there could not have been plain error. Today the panel comes down squarely with the eighth circuit. I would follow the eleventh — and the text of the guidelines.