U.S. v. Carbajal

• Decision Date: 25 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-40363.,01-40363.
• Citation: 290 F.3d 277
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jesus CARBAJAL; Favian Ramos; Andres Milan, also known as "Cheque;" Julian Soliz Perez, also known as "Chico," Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

290 F.3d 277

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jesus CARBAJAL; Favian Ramos; Andres Milan, also known as "Cheque;" Julian Soliz Perez, also known as "Chico," Defendants-Appellants.

No. 01-40363.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

April 25, 2002.

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Heather Harris Rattan, Asst. U.S. Atty. (argued), Plano, TX, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Christian Thomas Souza (argued), Dallas, TX, for Jesus Carbajal.

Michael Dennis Samonek (argued), Olson, Gibbons, Wilbur, Nicoud, Birne & Gueck, Dallas, TX, for Favian Ramos.

Sydney Snelling Young, Paris, TX, for Andres Milan.

Bobbie J. Belzung-Peterson (argued), Sherman, TX, for Julian Soliz Perez.

Before GARWOOD, JOLLY and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:

The defendants in this case were indicted, along with twenty-eight others, for a conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin in the Dallas area. The jury found the defendants guilty of conspiracy and attributed at least one kilogram of heroin and at least five kilograms of cocaine to each defendant. On appeal, the defendants challenge the district court's interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines and the sufficiency of the evidence against them. We find no error and affirm.

I

Following a series of heroin overdoses in 1996 and 1997, police in Dallas and its surrounding communities enlisted the assistance of the FBI as part of an investigation of heroin distribution networks in the area. The resulting Collin/Denton Counties Drug Task Force identified several large heroin distributors operating in Dallas, including one led by defendant Jesus "Tony" Carbajal and one led by Rogelio Moreno. As part of this investigation, the task force monitored telephone conversations involving Carbajal, Moreno, and Carbajal's lieutenant, Rogelio "Oscar" Saenz. The recorded calls indicated that both Moreno and Carbajal obtained most of their heroin supplies from Caesar Rodriguez, a distributor from California. Based on information from these calls, police calculated that the Carbajal and Moreno organizations sold more than seventy-five kilograms of heroin between June 1999 and May 2000.

The task force also conducted ground and air surveillance of suspected conspirators, which revealed the procedures by which Carbajal and Moreno resold the drugs to individuals in the Dallas area.¹ Customers would call Carbajal or Moreno to place orders for heroin and/or cocaine. The customers would be directed to meet a runner at one of several standard locations in and around Dallas. At the designated meeting place, the runner would instruct the customer to follow him to another location to complete the transaction. Some of these customers lived in Plano, Texas, a community north of Dallas in the Eastern District of Texas, and would return home after purchasing the drugs.

In October 2000, a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of Texas returned a superseding indictment against thirty-two defendants connected with the Carbajal and Moreno organizations.² The indictment alleged that each defendant participated in a conspiracy to distribute at least one kilogram of heroin and at least five kilograms of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846. Twenty-eight of the defendants pleaded guilty, and many of these testified against the four remaining defendants: Carbajal, Andres Milan, Julian Soliz Perez, and Favian Ramos. According to the indictment, each defendant played a distinct role in the overall conspiracy: Carbajal was a leader within the distribution network, Milan was Carbajal's alternate heroin supplier, Perez was an intermediary between the Dallas distributors and their California supplier, and Ramos purchased heroin from the same California supplier.

After a three-day trial in December 2000, a jury found all four defendants guilty of participation in a conspiracy to distribute heroin and cocaine. In response to special issues submitted by the court, the jury specifically attributed one kilogram of heroin and five kilograms of cocaine to each defendant. The district court sentenced Carbajal to life in prison followed by ten years of supervised release.³ Milan received a sentence of 140 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release. Perez received a sentence of 170 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release. Ramos received a sentence of 148 months in prison followed by four years of supervised release.

On appeal, each defendant raises various issues concerning the propriety of their sentences and the sufficiency of the evidence against them. We now turn to address those issues.

II

Carbajal's primary argument concerns the district court's application of Sentencing Guideline § 2D1.1(a)(2) to enhance his sentence. Section 2D1.1(a)(2) establishes a base offense level of 38 if the defendant is convicted of drug trafficking under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b) "and the offense of conviction establishes that death or serious bodily injury resulted from use of the substance." Based on its finding "beyond a reasonable doubt" that two overdose deaths resulted from the use of heroin sold by Carbajal's organization, the district court concluded that § 2D1.1(a)(2) applied to Carbajal and sentenced Carbajal accordingly.⁴ On appeal, Carbajal challenges the district court's determination on two grounds. First, Carbajal argues that the district court employed too lenient a standard of causation in determining whether the deaths "resulted from" heroin purchased from Carbajal's organization. Second, he contends that the government did not present sufficient evidence connecting Carbajal with the deaths to warrant application of § 2D1.1(a)(2). We review the district court's interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo and the district court's factual findings for clear error. See United States v. Paul, 274 F.3d 155, 161 (5th Cir.2001).

A

Carbajal first argues that the sentence enhancement established in § 2D1.1(a)(2) applies only if the government can show that drugs attributable to him were the proximate, reasonably foreseeable cause of a death. The government responds, and the district court agreed, that the guidelines impose no such causation requirement. As a consequence, the district court determined that Carbajal could be held responsible for overdose deaths if the government could show a reasonable medical probability that heroin supplied by Carbajal caused the deaths.⁵ For the reasons set out below, we agree and hold that § 2D1.1(a)(2) is a strict liability provision that applies without regard for common law principles of proximate cause or reasonable foreseeability.

It is well established that our interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines is subject to the ordinary rules of statutory construction. See United States v. Boudreau, 250 F.3d 279, 285 (5th Cir.2001). If the language of the guideline is unambiguous, our inquiry begins and ends with an analysis of the plain meaning of that language. See id. Although we have not found any cases that specifically decide the standard of causation required by § 2D1.1(a)(2), we are not without guidance on this issue.⁶ A number of courts have had occasion to interpret similar language in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C), which prescribes a minimum twenty year prison term "if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of [drugs sold by the defendant]." These courts have uniformly held that § 841(b)(1)(C) applies "without regard for common law proximate cause concepts."⁷ Relying on the plain language of the statute, the courts determined that the statute does not explicitly impose a "reasonable foreseeability" requirement and found no reason to create such a requirement. Because the guideline at issue here employs essentially the same language as § 841(b)(1)(C), the government argues that the guideline should be interpreted in accordance with these cases.

Carbajal contends that, rather than adopting the reasoning of the cases interpreting § 841(b)(1)(C), we should interpret the plain language of the guideline provision independently. In Carbajal's view, common law proximate cause and foreseeability principles should apply under § 2D1.1(a)(2) because the plain meaning of the term "resulted from" requires the drugs sold by the defendant "to be a direct cause of death, not a possible or remote cause." Carbajal therefore argues that § 2D1.1(a)(2) effectively subsumes traditional causation principles like foreseeability and proximate causation.

Like § 841(b)(1)(C), however, the plain language of § 2D1.1(a)(2) does not impose any sort of explicit causation requirement. Nor can we find a basis to infer that the term "resulted from" incorporates these principles.⁸ The Sentencing Commission could have expressly limited the sentencing enhancement to cases in which the drugs sold by the defendant foreseeably caused a death, but it chose not to do so. We therefore hold, in accordance with our sister circuits' interpretation of § 841(b)(1)(C), that § 2D1.1(a)(2) is a strict liability provision and does not require proof of proximate causation or reasonable foreseeability.⁹

In the alternative, Carbajal urges us to adopt the proximate cause test applied by the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Swiney, 203 F.3d 397 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 530 U.S. 1238, 120 S.Ct. 2678, 147 L.Ed.2d 288 (2000). The court in Swiney held that, before the district court may enhance a defendant's sentence under § 841(b)(1)(C) based solely on the conduct of a coconspirator, the court must find that the coconspirator's conduct was (1) in furtherance of the conspiracy and (2) reasonably foreseeable. See id. at 403 (applying U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B)). The court in Swiney, however, addressed a situation in which the defendant played no direct role in distributing or manufacturing the drugs that allegedly caused the deaths.¹⁰ In the present case, by contrast, the government presented...