Court Opinion

ID: 9475122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:17:59.747034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:31.570345
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent from Parts I and III of the majority opinion. First, the sentencing proceedings in this case raise the unrebut-ted inference that the district court abused its sentencing power by penalizing Carter, Daly and Carson for rejecting a plea agreement and standing on their right to trial. Therefore, under our clear precedent, we should reverse and remand for resentenc-ing. Second, the charging scheme in this case is multiplicitous. As the government has chosen to organize the acts for charging purposes, Counts III to VI, each of which alleges a number of shipments to Chicago, constitute a single violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2314. Carter, Daly and Carson’s convictions and sentences on three of those four counts should be vacated.
A. Vindictive Sentencing
The majority’s approval of the sentencing proceedings in this case flies in the face of our decisions, and those of other circuits, prohibiting the use of the sentencing power *1467to punish defendants for having stood trial. While paying lip service to the principle established by the relevant cases, the majority proceeds to undermine it entirely by its reliance on the purely semantic distinction between ‘crediting’ and ‘punishing’, or ‘penalizing,’ defendants for their decisions whether to waive the right to trial. The majority also confuses justification of the length of the sentence itself with justification of an increase in the length of a sentence once deemed to be appropriate. Given the record before us, I believe we are required to vacate Carter, Daly and Carson’s sentences and remand for resentenc-ing.
Carter, Daly and Carson decided to reject the negotiated plea agreement and to stand trial when the district court demanded that restitution be included in the plea agreement. During the sentencing hearing, defense counsel suggested that the court should not sentence appellants in excess of the sentences contained in the plea agreement which the court had approved, since with the exception of the defendants’ assertion of their constitutional right to trial no new information regarding the defendants had emerged subsequent to their rejection of the plea. In response, the district judge stated that he was entitled to give credit in sentencing to defendants who, by pleading guilty, save the government and the taxpayers money.
If the facts are all established and the Government obviously has a good case and the Defendants plead guilty, the Court is entitled to give them credit for doing just exactly that.
... The Court says those who plead guilty under the facts save the Government a lot of money, all the taxpayers of the United States, and those people, those Defendants would be given credit for that fact.
Later in the sentencing proceedings, the judge referred to Daly’s history of prior convictions and read from Carter and Carson’s criminal record. Appellants’ full criminal records were included in the pre-sentence report available to the court when it approved the plea bargain. The up-dated pre-sentence report at trial contained no new information about any of the appellants.
The majority correctly states the well-settled law of this and other circuits that a criminal defendant may not be subjected to more severe punishment for asserting his right to stand trial. United States v. Medina-Cervantes, 690 F.2d 715, 716 (9th Cir.1982); United States v. Stockwell, 472 F.2d 1186, 1187 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 948, 93 S.Ct. 1924, 36 L.Ed.2d 409 (1973); United States v. Hutchings, 757 F.2d 11, 14 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 3511, 87 L.Ed.2d 640 (1985). This sentencing rule has two rationales: it avoids chilling the exercise of a constitutional right, Stockwell, 472 F.2d at 1187, and it acknowledges that in sentencing a defendant, a court should look solely to considerations personal to that defendant, Stockwell, 472 F.2d at 1188; see also ABA Standards For Criminal Justice § 14-1.8 and history of standard at 14.41 (1980) (the standard on consideration of plea in final disposition was revised “to emphasize that concessions should be predicated on reasons personal to the defendant rather than on explanations that are necessarily shared by all defendants who plead guilty”).
The costs of conducting a trial, Medina-Cervantes, 690 F.2d at 716, and the congestion of the court docket, Stockwell, 472 F.2d at 1187, are impermissible factors in a court’s sentencing decision since those factors are wholly unrelated to the defendant’s personal circumstances.
In order to avoid the chilling effect that would arise from even the appearance that a judge had punished a defendant for having stood trial, Medina-Cervantes, 690 F.2d at 717, an appellate court is required to vacate and remand for resentencing in at least two situations. First, where a statement by the district court gives rise to the inference that a defendant is being penalized for asserting his right to trial, and the court does not explicitly rebut that inference by stating on the record legitimate reasons for its sentencing decision, the re*1468viewing court must vacate and remand. Id., 690 F.2d at 716-17. Second, where the district court itself was involved in unsuccessful plea negotiations, imposes a higher sentence after trial than it deemed appropriate prior to trial, and fails to state on the record legitimate reasons for increasing the sentence, we must vacate and remand, regardless of whether the district court made any statements suggesting that it was influenced in its sentencing decision by the defendant’s decision to stand trial. Stockwell, 472 F.2d at 1187-88.
Stockwell requires the court to justify the increase in the sentence; it is not enough that the court justify the appropriateness of the sentence itself on grounds that might have been sufficient had the court imposed the sentence as an initial matter rather than subsequent to a defendant’s rejection of a plea agreement. Only reasons that have emerged after the rejection of the plea bargain can justify the increase in the post-trial sentence.
The majority correctly states, see majority opinion at 13, that there may be legitimate reasons for sentencing a defendant more severely after trial, Capriola, 537 F.2d at 320; Stockwell, 472 F.2d at 1187, —reasons based on considerations specific to the defendant, or to the crime, that the judge has become aware of or observed subsequent to the rejection of the plea bargain. A trial often brings forth negative information concerning a defendant that a judge might otherwise remain unaware of. The judge may well form a different view of the defendant’s degree of involvement in the offense, or even of his general character, after hearing testimony from and observing the defendant, or listening to the detailed evidence offered by others. There are also legitimate reasons for a court to grant sentence concessions after a plea, such as genuine contrition. See Standards for Criminal Justice § 14-1.8(a) (listing reasons). However, information that was known to the court when it approved a lesser sentence at the time of plea bargaining cannot later serve as the basis for an increase in the length of the sentence when it is imposed after trial.
In the present case, the court’s statement that it was entitled to give defendants who plead guilty credit for having saved the government and the taxpayers money raises the inference that the court took the costs of trial into account in its sentencing decision and therefore penalized Carter, Daly and Carson for their decision to stand trial. The majority attempts to avoid the rule prohibiting the punishment of a defendant for exercising the constitutional right to trial by drawing a distinction between “crediting” and “penalizing” or “punishing” that is both logically untenable and precluded by law. A disparity between the sentences of a defendant who has pled and a defendant who has stood trial may be characterized either as a “credit” or as a “penalty,” depending upon whether the shorter sentence is compared to the longer or the longer to the shorter. The relationship between the two sentences, however, is identical under either characterization. Moreover, the exercise of the right to trial is chilled equally whether a defendant regards the differential treatment as a “credit” for having pled or as a “penalty” for having stood trial. Likewise, “crediting” a defendant for having saved the public money is no more based on considerations personal to that defendant than is “penalizing” or “punishing” a defendant for having cost the public money.
Our law prohibits a “disparity in sentences” based on a defendant’s exercise of his right to stand trial, United States v. Capriola, 537 F.2d 319, 321 (9th Cir.1976) (emphasis added). We have not heretofore distinguished a “credit” from a “penalty,” because the distinction is entirely meaningless. See Stockwell, 472 F.2d at 1187 (“courts must not use the sentencing power as a Carrot and stick to clear congested calendars, and they must not create an appearance of such a practice”) (emphasis added). Neither has any other federal appellate court.1
*1469Here, we are required under both Stock-well and Medina-Cervantes to vacate appellants’ sentences and remand, so that the court may either ameliorate the increased sentences or state valid reasons for reimposing them. Capriola, 537 F.2d at 321. The district court was involved in the plea negotiations, see majority opinion at 11 n. 5, (Stockwell) and made a statement giving rise to the inference that Carter, Daly and Carson received substantially higher sentences because they stood trial {Medina). Nevertheless, the court articulated no valid reason for increasing the sentences. The majority’s reliance on the court’s references during sentencing to the appellants’ records as justification for its affirmance, see majority opinion at 13 and n. 7, is legally inadequate. To so rely is to equate, mistakenly, justification of a sentence with justification of an increase in a sentence. Although the appellants’ records might well have justified ten-year sentences had the sentences been imposed as an initial matter, those records cannot justify the increase in the sentences following appellants’ rejection of the plea, for two reasons; first, because all of the information was known at the plea bargaining stage of the proceedings and second, because the judge did not state that he was relying on the information as a basis for increasing the sentence. In fact, the court offered no reasons that were pertinent to the increase in sentence other than its alleged right to “credit” defendants who plead. Under such circumstances, Stockwell and Medina require us to vacate and remand. Our failure to do so is an invitation to district judges to ignore the principle the majority opinion purports to espouse. The opinion will also, unfortunately, create widespread confusion and uncertainty as to what the rule in our circuit actually is.
B. Multiplicitous Indictment
The majority’s approval of a charging scheme under 18 U.S.C. § 2314 in which the jurisdictional amount provides the sole rationale for creating multiple substantive counts from a series of shipments to a single destination turns the rule of Schaf-fer v. United States, 362 U.S. 511, 517, 80 S.Ct. 945, 948, 4 L.Ed.2d 921 (1960), on its head. According to the majority, every time the total value of a series of shipments of stolen property passes a multiple of $5,000, a bell rings and a new federal crime is committed. I believe the majority confuses jurisdictional requirements with the substantive elements of an offense.
*1470The Supreme Court held in Schaffer that “where the shipments [of stolen goods] have enough relationship so that they may properly be charged as a single offense [under section 2314], their value may be aggregated.” Id., 362 U.S. at 517, 80 S.Ct. at 949. Two principles regarding the constitution of a substantive offense under section 2314 may be derived from Schaffer’s rule of aggregation. First, a series of shipments may be charged as a “single offense” only z/the shipments have some logical relationship independent of their aggregate value. In Schaffer, that relationship was provided by the fact that a single defendant received all the shipments in each count. Id. at 518 n. 11, 80 S.Ct. at 949 n. 11. Second, if a series of shipments is sufficiently related so as to be aggrega-ble and the government elects to aggregate a number of the shipments in the series, the series then must be charged as a “single offense” rather than as multiple offenses. The logical relationship which allows the combination of a number of related shipments also requires the combination of all shipments so related. Once having relied upon a logical relationship between shipments as a basis for combination, the government must apply that logic consistently. It cannot exclude other identical shipments from the same count merely in order to multiply the number of offenses it may charge.
The rule of Schaffer is equally clear that aggregation of value is a permissible consequence of the constitution of a substantive offense from a related series of shipments; it does not itself provide the rationale for constituting a substantive offense. The five thousand dollar minimum limits the jurisdiction of the federal court to cases of a certain magnitude; it does not define the crime over which the court has jurisdiction.
Our cases have expressly followed the first principle underlying Schaffer’s rule of aggregation — that a series of shipments must have some logical relationship independent of their aggregate value in order to be charged as a single offense. In dictum in United States v. Bell, 742 F.2d 509, 511 (9th Cir.1984), we said that aggregation of value across counts in a particular indictment was appropriate, “since the indictment subdivide^] one overall scheme (the interstate transport by Bell of stolen money orders) into its constituent parte (interstate transport on four different days).” Id. (citing Schaffer, 362 U.S. at 517-18, 80 S.Ct. at 948-49). We assumed that each count of the indictment should be constituted independently of the jurisdictional amount, and in fact declared that each count need not even meet the jurisdictional amount. Although I believe that to dispense with the jurisdictional requirement for each count would incorrectly construe the statute and the case law, and that we should follow the Eighth and the Third Circuits in requiring that each count of a multiple count indictment satisfy the jurisdictional minimum, see United States v. Lagerquist, 724 F.2d 693, 694-95 (8th Cir.1984), appeal after remand, 758 F.2d 1279, 1281-82 (1985); United States v. Markus, 721 F.2d 442, 444 (3d Cir.1983), our premise in Bell that a count must consist of a logical unit was correct.
In United States v. Belmont, 715 F.2d 459, 462 (9th Cir.1983), we held that “[b]ecause there was only one overall conspiracy, the district court properly aggregated the value of all shipments in determining whether the jurisdictional amount required by § 2314 had been satisfied” (citing Schaffer, 362 F.2d at 517). Again, we assumed both that the basis for combining a series of shipments into one offense was provided by the logical relationship among the shipments — specifically, that they constituted “only one overall conspiracy” — and that a court should determine whether the jurisdictional requirement has been met after finding a violation of the statute, rather than finding a violation of the statute on the basis of the jurisdictional amount.
Finally, in Gilinsky v. United States, 368 F.2d 487, 489 (9th Cir.1966), we held that “the allowable unit of prosecution” for the interstate transportation of forged securities under section 2314 was defined in that case by the “repeated coincidence of time *1471and place at the inception, during the intermediate stages and at the conclusion of the transportation.” Id. We based our holding on the so-called “rule of lenity” set out in Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 83, 75 S.Ct. 620, 622, 99 L.Ed. 905 (1955), which requires that where “ ‘Congress does not fix the punishment for a federal offense clearly and without ambiguity, doubt will be resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses.’ ” Gilinsky, 368 F.2d at 490 (quoting Bell, 349 U.S. at 83, 75 S.Ct. at 622). Although the prohibition in section 2314 on the interstate transportation of forged securities does not contain a jurisdictional amount, our implicit requirement in Gilinsky that “transportation” under section 2314 be coherently defined applies equally to the prohibition on the interstate transportation of stolen goods. The mere addition of a jurisdictional requirement to the prohibition on the transport of stolen goods does not mean that the jurisdictional amount can take the place of a logical definition of the “unit of prosecution.”
Other circuits have acknowledged the principle that a series of shipments must be logically related in order to constitute a single offense. See United States v. Markus, 555 F.Supp. 375, 378 (D.N.J.1983), aff'd, United States v. Markus, 721 F.2d 442 (3d Cir.1983) (“it is permissible to aggregate a series of related transactions described in a single count so long as the series is alleged to constitute a single offense”); United States v. Lagerquist, 758 F.2d 1279, 1282 (8th Cir.1985) (the facts that all the fraudulently induced shipments were received, and the checks in payment issued within a two-week period, that the same pair of business partners were defrauded by each shipment and that the defendant sold each shipment to the same buyer provided “enough relationship among the transactions so that they were properly charged as a single offense”).
The charging scheme presently on appeal is consistent with the first Schaffer principle. However, it clearly violates the second principle that, once having combined a series of shipments into a single count on the basis of some logical relationship among them, the government must combine all shipments having that same relationship. Although no court has previously been required to expound upon this second principle, its logic is irrefutable. Counts III to VI all charge shipments to Chicago; each count includes a number of such shipments. The common destination of the shipments within each count provides a proper basis for combining those shipments into a single count.2 However, in the absence of some rational basis for distinguishing among the various shipments, the government cannot, merely in order to multiply the number of offenses charged, exclude from a count other shipments in the same series sent to the same destination. Here, no basis exists for distinguishing among the shipments in the four counts; any one of its shipments could have been charged in any of the counts. The boundaries of each count are defined solely by the aggregate value of the shipments included within them, which value meets the minimum jurisdictional requirement. To thus convert the jurisdictional requirement into the substantive definition of the crime subverts the second Schaffer principle and violates the “rule of lenity by ‘turning a single transaction into multiple offenses.’ ” Gilinsky, 368 F.2d at 490 (quoting Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. at 83, 75 S.Ct. at 622).
The government could have properly charged two substantive counts in addition to the conspiracy count — one count consisting of the shipments to Boston, the other consisting of the shipments to Chicago. The remaining three counts are multiplici-tous. The convictions and sentences on three of the four counts in Counts III to VI should be vacated. Although the district court set the sentences on those counts to *1472run concurrently, vacation is nevertheless required. See United States v. DeBright, 730 F.2d 1255 (9th Cir.1984) (en banc).

. The majority’s selective quotation from the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice to support *1469its distinction between "crediting" and "punishing” indefensibily distorts that authority. Standard 14-1.8 unambiguously states that a court may not ‘credit’ a defendant for the mere decision to plead, but may do so only for reasons specific to that defendant. Under the Standard, cost or cost-saving is clearly not a permissible consideration. The very Standard relied on by the majority precludes the decision it announces. The Standard states in its entirety:
(a) The fact that a defendant has entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere should not, by itself alone, be considered by the court as a mitigating factor in imposing sentence. It is proper for the court to grant charge and sentence concessions to defendants who enter a plea of guilty or nolo contendere when consistent with the'protection of the public, the gravity of the offense, and the needs of the defendant, and when there is substantial evidence to establish that:
(i) the defendant is genuinely contrite and has shown a willingness to assume responsibility for his or her conduct;
(ii) the concessions will make possible alternative correctional measures which are better adapted to achieving protective, deterrent, or other purposes of correctional treatment, or will prevent undue harm to the defendant from the form of conviction;
(iii) the defendant, by making public trial unnecessary, has demonstrated genuine consideration for the victims of his or her criminal activity, by desiring either to make restitution or to prevent unseemly public scrutiny or embarrassment to them; or
(iv) the defendant has given or offered cooperation when such cooperation has resulted or may result in the successful prosecution of other offenders engaged in equally serious or more serious criminal conduct.
(b) The court should not impose upon a defendant any sentence in excess of that which would be justified by any of the protective, deterrent, or other purposes of the criminal law because the defendant has chosen to require the prosecution to prove guilt at trial rather than to enter a plea of guilty or nolo contendere.
Standards for Criminal Justice § 14-1.8 (1980).

. Had each count consisted of shipments to several cities, the charging scheme would probably have violated the first Schaffer principle.