Court Opinion

ID: 9491522
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:16:26.009758+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:47.663248
License: Public Domain

ALAN E. NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority acknowledges that the district court has “wide latitude in considering facts at the sentencing stage” and that factual determinations, such as the one that now confronts us, are subject to reversal by this court only when we are “left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made.” After careful review of the record before us, I have no such firm conviction and therefore respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion dealing with the number of marijuana plants attributed to defendant.
The majority frames the issue before us in these terms: “[Wjhen the information contained in the return of a search warrant conflicts with information contained in an incident report, which should prevail?” My answer to this question would be simply, It depends upon the circumstances. Certainly if the two documents are equally detailed and have been compiled contemporaneously, the return would take precedence because, as the majority points out, it is a sworn document filed with a judicial official. However, as the district court observed, in this case the incident report contained considerably more detail and indicia of reliability than the return:
There are 31 lines indicating various items typed on this quote “Return and tabulation to consent search.” There is however, in the multi-page investigation report some 56 different items noted as being seized, far more than are listed in the return and tabulation. I would conclude that the return and tabulation that the defendant is relying upon here is a summary and not an accurate one at that.
The accurate report appears to me to be ... the lengthy and detailed investigation report ... and it clearly and consistently indicates 96 plants from the room area of that bedroom, 8 plants from the closet area of that bedroom, they’re called plants, they’re not called anything else.
There’s a lot here that was seized that’s not specifically delineated on this return and tabulation, so I think that there were 104 plants....
Under the Sentencing Guidelines, a calculation of the amount of drugs at issue for sentencing purposes involves a fact-based, case-by-case inquiry, which is precisely the kind of determination which our cases have consistently held to be the province of the district court. In this case, the district court engaged in just such an exercise, weighing the relative reliability of the evidence before it and finding that 104 marijuana plants were discovered at Russell’s residence. Given the care taken by the district court, and in light of the majority’s concession that “there [is] no evidence whatsoever of any bad faith on the part of the law enforcement officers regarding the discrepancy between the two tallies,” I cannot conclude that the factual finding as to the number of marijuana plants was erroneous, let alone clearly so.
In all other respects, I agree with the majority.