U.S. v. Pineda, 971
| Decision Date | 26 May 1988 |
| Docket Number | No. 971,D,971 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. William PINEDA, Defendant-Appellant. ocket 87-1452. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Michael M. Maloney, New York City, for defendant-appellant.
John Gleeson, Asst. U.S. Atty., Brooklyn, N.Y. (Andrew J. Maloney, U.S. Atty., Thomas P. Milton, Asst. U.S. Atty., Brooklyn, N.Y., of counsel), for appellee.
Before VAN GRAAFEILAND, PIERCE and ALTIMARI, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Leonard D. Wexler, Judge, following a guilty plea, convicting appellant Pineda on charges of distributing in excess of five kilograms of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(a)(1). Appellant was sentenced to a ten-year term of imprisonment and a five-year term of supervised release, which is the minimum sentence under Sec. 841(b)(1)(A), and a $50 special assessment. On appeal, Pineda challenges the validity of his sentence on the grounds, inter alia, that the mandatory minimum sentence provisions of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(b)(1) deprive him of his rights to due process and equal protection. In particular, appellant contends that the statute's classification of penalties based on quantity of narcotics has no rational basis since it does not account for the purity of the narcotics or whether the defendant had a "peripheral role" in distributing the narcotics, and does not require that a defendant know the amount of narcotics involved.
In United States v. Collado-Gomez, 834 F.2d 280 (2d Cir.1987) (per curiam), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 108 S.Ct. 1244, 99 L.Ed.2d 442 (1988), we rejected a similar challenge to the validity of the enhanced penalty provisions of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(b)(1). The appellant therein claimed that, by failing to require knowledge of the specific nature and amount of the controlled substance, the statute violated due process. In rejecting this claim, we noted first that Congress's purpose in enacting enhanced penalties was to deter particularly insidious drug transactions, including those involving "a particularly addictive form of cocaine base known as 'crack.' " Id. at 280-81. Second, the statute's enhanced penalty provisions did not in any way criminalize otherwise innocent activity or create a trap for the unwary, because the statute requires proof that a defendant knowingly and intentionally possessed a controlled substance. In light of Congress's clear and rational purpose, we concluded that it did not offend due process for narcotics defendants to bear the risk of enhanced penalties based on aggravating factors, such as the nature and amount of the controlled substance involved. Id. at 281.
In light of Collado-Gomez, we conclude that appellant's due process claim is frivolous....
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