Court Opinion

ID: 9415586
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 19:01:27.327711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:07:19.348680
License: Public Domain

BARKETT, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
I join the Court’s opinion. I write only to emphasize the need for a case by case analysis in applying section 3B1.4. I also *1289believe that United States v. Butler, 207 F.3d 839 (6th Cir.2000) supports our holding today. Butler requires “affirmative use” of a minor. See id. at 848. In this case, it is clear that a member of the conspiracy “affirmatively used” a minor. Butler does not answer the further question of whether other members of the conspiracy can be held responsible for this use. In answering this question, the majority opinion concludes that “[i]f use of a minor in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity was not foreseeable to certain defendants, those defendants will not receive the two-level enhancement.” Thus, I do not see much distinction between this approach and that of Butler as it may relate to co-conspirators. Section 3B1.4 was properly applied to McClain in this case since the record indicated he was directly, if not personally, involved in a co-conspirator’s solicitation, recruitment, and use of a minor in implementing his criminal scheme. McClain organized the bank fraud and played a leadership role in the conspiracy, including supervising Tucker’s practice of recruiting specifically young females to negotiate counterfeit checks. In this particular instance, McClain supervised Tucker’s recruitment of a minor to cash the fraudulent checks and, on the day of his arrest, McClain had traveled with Tucker, the minor, and three additional young females to Macon, Georgia, to oversee the commission of the crime. I believe Butler supports our holding, therefore, that where evidence suggests the defendant did not personally involve a minor in a conspiracy to commit crime, proper application of section 3B1.4 is dependent upon whether the defendant nonetheless played a broader affirmative role in the minor’s solicitation since the use of a minor was a reasonably foreseeable act of co-conspirators in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity.