Court Opinion

ID: 9487358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:14:37.335897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:13.560689
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
There are four reasons why I believe the majority’s bright line test for determining whether a gun has been “used” to commit a drug offense is wrong. First: Although I agree that “use” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) requires the government to show that the gun in some way “facilitated” the defendant’s commission of the underlying drug offense, see United States v. Jefferson, 974 F.2d 201, 205 (D.C.Cir.1992), the sticking point is what kind of evidence it takes to make that showing. The Bruce-Morris-Derr line of cases did not in that sense set forth any test or formula for making such a determination; rather, it provided only a list of potentially relevant factors, ie., the type of weapon involved, whether it was loaded, the presence of expert testimony to support the government’s theory of “use,” the proximity of the gun to the drugs, and the accessibility of the gun to the defendant. By focusing on only two of the factors — (1) proximity of guns to drugs, drug paraphernalia, or drug proceeds and (2) accessibility of the guns to the defendant from a place used to store drugs, drug paraphernalia, or drug proceeds — -to the exclusion of any other relevant factors, the majority in my view diminishes rather than enhances the prospect of accurate assessment on a case-by-case basis as to whether the gun was used to facilitate the drug offense. Congress, it should be noted, created no statutory presumption that “use” automatically would follow from the presence of any particular factors, and I can find no authority for courts to do so.
Rather than furnishing a clear and predictable guide for judges and juries, the majority’s new “proximity and accessibility” test offers only a straightjacket from which judges must inevitably strain to escape, as they are confronted with a steady stream of new fact situations. But the circumstances at which they must look to justify any exception will almost certainly be the very factors mentioned in the much-maligned Bruce-Morris-Derr cases, ie., United States v. Bruce, 939 F.2d 1053, 1055-56 (D.C.Cir.1991), United States v. Morris, 977 F.2d 617, 621-22 (D.C.Cir.1992), and United States v. Derr, 990 F.2d 1330, 1338 (D.C.Cir.1993) — the size and type of the gun, whether it was loaded, and the presence or absence of ammunition. Succumbing to “certainty’s siren call,” the majority would prohibit a reviewing judge from looking at any of these factors in deciding whether there was enough evidence in a particular trial record to justify an inference that the defendant used the guns to facilitate the drug offense.
*119Second: Because the majority’s ruling in this in banc decision will predictably be promptly reduced to new jury instructions, it seems passing strange to say that the proximity and accessibility test minimizes interference with jury discretion. See Opinion (“Maj.Op.”) at 111-12. What the majority is actually doing is artificially limiting the factors that the jury may legitimately consider when determining whether a defendant “used” a firearm during and in relation to the underlying drug offense. In so doing it is impermissibly curbing the jury’s discretion to consider the totality of circumstances that might be relevant to that fact-bound determination.
Third: The new test is not only unduly rigid, it is not even clear. I cannot fathom how the accessibility prong, as defined by the majority, will work, or what indeed it adds to the minimal proximity test. It seems that whenever the guns are located proximately to the drugs, they must also be potentially accessible to the defendant from the place the drugs are being stored. Op. at 115. Thus if the guns and drugs are found together in a locked strongbox and the defendant is miles away, under the majority’s test, the guns are arguably accessible to the defendant from the place where the drugs are stored and are being “used” to facilitate the possession of the drugs. To state the proposition is to reveal its illogic. Under the statute it is the defendant who must use the gun, so it is the accessibility of the gun to him at the time of the drug offense charged that is relevant, not the accessibility of the gun to a phantom defendant who is positioned where the drugs are. This latter definition of accessibility makes no sense whatsoever. Indeed, the majority’s peculiar definition of accessibility renders their “use” test much looser than that endorsed by several other circuits, which at least focus on whether the guns were proximate to the defendant as opposed to merely accessible from the place where the drugs, drug paraphernalia, or drug proceeds are stored. See, e.g., United States v. Theodoropoulos, 866 F.2d 587, 597-98 (3d Cir.1989) (guns located in trash can on back porch of apartment not proximate enough to defendant to fit within § 924(c)); United States v. McKinnell, 888 F.2d 669, 675 (10th Cir.1989) (“use” element of § 924(c)(1) met when defendant had “ready access” to firearm, which was located within easy reach of defendant).
Fourth: In those eases like Bailey’s that involve the distribution or actual possession of drugs, application of the new proximity and accessibility test or the old relevant factors approach of Bruce-Morris-Derr will not likely make much difference. But in the trickier cases where the crime being charged is possession with intent to distribute and the defendant himself is not in the immediate vicinity of the scene where the drugs and guns are found, the majority’s test can produce a ridiculous result. This was the situation in Derr and Robinson. In Derr, 990 F.2d at 1332, and Robinson, 997 F.2d 884, 885 (D.C.Cir.1993), the defendant was not even in the same room as the unloaded guns, which were secreted along with the drugs in a locked place (closet in Derr, footlocker in Robinson). The crime was possession (constructive) with intent to distribute and the issue in both cases was whether the gun was being used to facilitate that possession. Although the majority would presumably find sufficient evidence to convict under § 924(c)(1) in both cases because the guns were proximate to the drugs and would have been accessible to each defendant once he or she reached the place where the drugs were being stored, I do not see how this result can be right. A defendant cannot have been “using” a gun to protect drugs when he was nowhere near the gun. A robber or competitor drug dealer who broke into the apartment would have been able to force the lock open without an iota of fear from the gun within because no one was there to use it.
I agree with Judge Williams that we must honor the ordinary meaning of words used by Congress, see Perrin v. United States, 444 U.S. 37, 42, 100 S.Ct. 311, 314, 62 L.Ed.2d 199 (1979); section 924(c) requires us to ask whether the gun was used to commit the drug trafficking crime for which the defendant was convicted, not whether the gun might have been used at some past or future time to commit some other past or future drug trafficking crime. See Bruce, 939 F.2d at 1055. To answer the right question, the *120jury and a reviewing court needs access to all relevant information in order to replicate the real life scenario involving the guns, the drugs, and the defendant so that it can then decide if the defendant was in fact using the gun to facilitate the drug offense. The majority effectively leaves out the defendant altogether in its streamlined test; unfortunately, in so doing it distorts the plain meaning of the law, dispenses with logic, and invades jury discretion as well.
Finally, while I find Judge Williams’ narrower interpretation of “use” quite persuasive, I cannot go so far as to agree that an actor who has intentionally placed a gun within easy access of his person in order to guard or to distribute drugs is not using the gun to facilitate the drug offense unless he openly brandishes, displays, or makes verbal threats about the gun. Where evidence of ready access to a gun by the defendant guarding or distributing the drugs exists, I think the jury can fairly draw the inference that such access is an intrinsic part of the criminal drug trafficking act. But conversely, I do not, like the majority, think it a fair inference that where the defendant has no such ready access to the gun, but instead is shown merely to be in constructive possession of the drugs which are located near the gun but away from the defendant, he is nonetheless using the gun to facilitate his possession or distribution. That I believe to be the principal difference between the other dissenters and myself, since I agree with them that “use” involves activity of some sort by a defendant who is in the immediate vicinity of the weapon, and not mere placement of the weapon near the drugs. That difference, however, is of sufficient import so as not to allow me to subscribe to Judge Williams’ bright line rule any more than the majority’s. Bright lines have a place in our jurisprudence but primarily with respect to what third parties like policemen or citizens can do without running afoul of the law. They are distinctly less useful in telling juries or judges what kind of evidence will suffice to show that a defendant is guilty of a generic crime that can be committed against a thousand different factual backdrops.
Because I believe that there was sufficient evidence to support Bailey’s conviction for use in relation to actual possession of drugs with intent to distribute, i.e., the gun in the trunk of the car was readily accessible to protect the drugs in the passenger compartment, but not Robinson’s, i.e., there was proof only of drugs and an unloaded gun in a locked trunk in a bedroom closet, I would affirm the first conviction and reverse the second. I would not adopt the majority’s proximity and accessibility test but would instead continue to allow juries and judges to rely on all relevant factors to decide each case.