U.S. v. Taylor

• Decision Date: 30 January 1998
• Docket Number: No. 96-2745,96-2745
• Citation: 135 F.3d 478
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Charles TAYLOR, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 478

135 F.3d 478

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Charles TAYLOR, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 96-2745.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 4, 1997.

Decided Jan. 30, 1998.

Barry Rand Elden, Chief of Appeals, Juanita Temple (argued), Office of the United States Attorney, Criminal Appellate Division, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Robert G. Clarke (argued), Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before CUMMINGS, DIANE P. WOOD, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge.

Charles Taylor's venture into bank robbery did not quite qualify him for a slot on the evening news shows that report crimes gone awry in some amusing fashion, but it is fair to say that his effort to rob the Elgin, Illinois branch of Bank One Chicago, N.A., was ill-fated Charles and his brother, Creston Taylor, robbed the bank, but Charles was arrested shortly thereafter and was ultimately charged with armed robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113. A jury convicted him, and Charles has appealed claiming that the district court erred in a number of respects in its application of the Sentencing Guidelines. Because we find that the court's interpretations of the Guidelines were correct and that its findings of fact were not clearly erroneous, we affirm the sentence.

On the evening of April 3, 1995, Charles and Creston Taylor cruised by the Bank One branch in Charles's green Chevrolet Monte Carlo to see if it would make a good robbery target. (To distinguish between the two brothers, we will refer to Creston Taylor as "Creston" and Charles Taylor as "Charles.") They decided it was and resolved to return the next day. In keeping with their plan, the next morning Creston entered the bank and began filling out a credit card application using the name and address "Melvin T. Genson, 1085 Bent Tree Court, Elgin, Illinois." Creston had a container of pepper spray in a canister that looked as if it contained mace; his role was to use the pepper spray as needed on people around the bank. After a few minutes, Charles arrived, walked over to teller Melissa Unruh, and said, "This is a stick up." He was carrying a large handgun (later shown to be a pellet gun), which he pointed at her while he ordered her not to push any buttons.

Handing Unruh a pillow case, Charles told her to begin putting money in it. As this was happening, Creston forced two other bank employees, Patricia Nelson and Melissa Rudin, to lie face down on the floor and he sprayed their faces with his pepper spray. Meanwhile, Charles became impatient with Unruh's progress filling the bag, and he leapt over the counter and started stuffing it himself. After the cash drawer was empty (and $18,595 had made its way into the bag), Charles ordered Unruh to open the safe inside the bank vault. She hesitated; Charles shoved the gun in her back and pushed her in that direction, and she then informed him that she could not open the vault without another person to help her, because the safe required the use of two separate keys. Charles then brought her to the lobby area towards Creston and the two employees on the floor. Creston sprayed her with pepper spray, at the same time as Charles grabbed Rudin to try to get her to help with the vault. Because Unruh had not left her key to the safe inside the vault, Rudin was also unable to open it. Frustrated, Charles told Creston to spray all three of them some more, which he did. The two brothers then slipped out through the back door, where Charles's wife Melody was waiting for them in the green Monte Carlo.

There matters might have stood for some time if Creston had been somewhat cagier in filling out the phony credit card application. Unfortunately for Charles, however, Creston had used an address much too close to home--literally. The application had said "1085 Bent Tree Court." Logically using that as an investigatory lead, it did not take the police long to reach 1062 Bent Tree Court, which happened to be Charles Taylor's residence. Officer Wood of the Elgin police searched the home with the consent of Melody, Charles's wife. He found an empty pepper spray canister in an upstairs closet.

On April 14, 1994, the Elgin police arrested Charles under an outstanding warrant. Once in custody, he voluntarily told the police about the bank robbery, but he did not identify Creston as his accomplice. Instead, he told them that the accomplice was a person called "G-Dog" whom he could not identify further. On June 29, 1995, Charles Taylor was indicted for armed bank robbery, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) and (d). After a jury trial, he was convicted as charged.

About a month later, Creston turned himself in to the FBI and admitted his participation in the robbery--although he claimed the robbery was his brother's idea. Creston was later charged and pleaded guilty under a plea agreement. Creston's confession became important at Charles's July 1996 sentencing hearing. Charles submitted a letter from Creston in which Creston asserted that he (Creston) had only said that the robbery was Charles's idea so that he would get a lighter sentence for himself. Nevertheless, Creston testified at Charles's sentencing hearing that the idea for the robbery originated with Charles.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the district court determined that Charles's final adjusted offense level was 33 and his criminal history category was V. In calculating the offense level, the court began with a base offense level of 20, under U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1. It then added two levels under § 2B3.1(b)(1)(A) because the property of a financial institution was taken, and another one-level enhancement under § 2B3.1(b)(6)(B), since recodified to § 2B3.1(b)(7)(B), because the value of the loss exceeded $10,000. The court also included four other enhancements to which Charles objected: (1) a two-level enhancement under § 2B3.1(b)(3)(A) for inflicting bodily harm on a victim of the robbery; (2) a four-level enhancement under § 2B3.1(b)(2)(D) for otherwise using a dangerous weapon during the robbery; (3) a two-level enhancement under § 3B1.1(c) for Charles's leadership role in the offense; and (4) a two-level enhancement under § 3C1.1 for obstructing justice. All of this resulted in a sentence of 222 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

On appeal, Charles challenges the same four enhancements to his sentence: first, he claims that the enhancement under § 2B3.1(b)(3)(A) for inflicting injury was wrong under the facts of this case; second, he argues that the evidence does not support the court's finding that a dangerous weapon was "otherwise used," and thus that the enhancement under § 2B3.1(b)(2)(D) was erroneously imposed; third, he claims that the court gave no reasons for its finding that he was a leader, which resulted in the enhancement under § 3B1.1(c); and finally, he claims that the court never found that anything he did constituted a materially false statement to a law enforcement officer that would have justified the obstruction enhancement under § 3C1.1. His first two arguments are essentially evidentiary in nature; we therefore review the district court's action only for clear error. To the extent in the last two points he is arguing that the court failed to follow procedures mandated by law, we review the court's actions de novo; for the underlying facts, the clear error standard is again the appropriate one.

1. Bodily Harm: § 2B3.1(b)(3)(A). Charles offers three reasons why the court should not have imposed the two-level enhancement of § 2B3.1(b)(3)(A) for the infliction of bodily injury on the victim bank tellers: he notes that he did not mace the workers and should not be accountable for the macing done by his brother; he asserts that the "quality of proof" of bodily injury was insufficient; and (to more or less the same effect) he argues that the evidence at the hearing was insufficient to support the court's finding of the requisite injury.

The Sentencing Guidelines define "bodily injury" to mean "any significant injury; e.g., an injury that is painful or obvious, or is of a type for which medical attention ordinarily would be sought." U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1, comment. (n.1(b)). In addition, the Guidelines specify when a defendant must be held accountable for the harm caused by the actions of his accomplice. In § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), comment. (n.2), the Guidelines state that "a defendant is accountable for the conduct ... of others that was ... reasonably foreseeable in connection with [jointly undertaken] criminal activity." On this record, the district court reasonably found that Creston was Charles's accomplice in the robbery. The record also contained evidence indicating that Charles knew that Creston carried the can of pepper spray into the bank and was present when Creston used the spray. The court's decision to hold Charles responsible, under the rule of § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), for Creston's conduct, was certainly not clearly erroneous--indeed, it is hard to see what else the court could have concluded.

With respect to the question whether the victims suffered "bodily injury" during the offense, the government called Janet Bell, a supervisor at the bank, to testify about the tellers' injuries. Bell reported that immediately after the robbery she saw paramedics administering oxygen to the tellers in an ambulance, flushing out their eyes, and checking for damage. Bell later learned that the tellers had been taken to the hospital and treated for burning and irritated skin in the face and mouth area, and that one had been placed on heart monitoring equipment because of a preexisting heart condition. Last, Bell testified that each teller spent from two to five hours at the hospital and missed periods of work ranging from five days to two weeks as a result of the trauma of the incident. The district court credited her account of their injuries and concluded that these facts warranted the ...