United States v. Woodside

• Decision Date: 18 July 2018
• Docket Number: No. 17-5125,17-5125
• Citation: 895 F.3d 894
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Rashad WOODSIDE, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

895 F.3d 894

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Rashad WOODSIDE, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 17-5125

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: March 8, 2018

Decided and Filed: July 18, 2018

ARGUED: Dustin M. Blake, BLAKE LAW FIRM CO., LLC, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Ahmed A. Safeeullah, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Dustin M. Blake, BLAKE LAW FIRM CO., LLC, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Brent A. Hannafan, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: GILMAN, ROGERS, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.

ROGERS, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which GILMAN and STRANCH, JJ., joined. STRANCH, J. (pp. 903–04), delivered a separate concurring opinion.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

Rashad Woodside, a Florida resident, participated in a 24-person conspiracy to distribute pain pills in Middle Tennessee. After pleading guilty, Woodside appealed his sentence, which we vacated so that the district court might better explain the quantity of drugs attributable to him. On remand the district court, without further hearing, imposed the same sentence and explained its reasoning—including the drug quantity on which it based Woodside’s sentence—in a written amended judgment. Woodside again appeals, arguing that the district court erred by not affording him a new sentencing hearing, and moreover violated 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c) by not stating the new explanation for his sentence "in open court." These and other procedural arguments do not warrant reversal.

Woodside supplied two of his co-defendants, Kenneth Stafford and Angela Breeden, with prescription pills, which Woodside would ship from Florida to Tennessee. Early in the conspiracy, Fredrick McGregor was a key part of the enterprise. At that time, the scheme worked like this: Woodside and others would go to a doctor and obtain prescription pills for McGregor, who would then sell them to Stafford and Breeden. Woodside eventually decided to go into business for himself and contacted Stafford with an offer to undercut McGregor. For around eighteen months, Stafford and Breeden continued to purchase from both men, but eventually Stafford and McGregor had a falling out, at which point—around "[l]ate 2011, early 2012," according to Stafford—Woodside became the sole supplier of Stafford and Breeden.

The conspiracy’s dealings eventually attracted the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Based on information obtained through wiretapped phone conversations and seizures of shipped drugs, a grand jury returned a single-count indictment charging Woodside and 23 codefendants—including Stafford and Breeden—with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute oxycodone and other prescription medications, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846. Woodside pleaded guilty.

The Probation Office prepared a Presentence Report (PSR), which recommended holding Woodside responsible for 343,000 30-milligram oxycodone pills,¹ each containing 27 milligrams of actual oxycodone. That figure included the drugs that McGregor had sold to Stafford and Breeden. Based on the drug-equivalency table in the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which equates 1 gram of actual oxycodone to 6,700 grams of marijuana, the report recommended holding Woodside accountable for approximately 62,000 kilograms of marijuana equivalent, for a base-offense level of 36. Woodside objected to that drug-quantity calculation.

At Woodside’s sentencing hearing, the government put on three witnesses: DEA Agent David Lewis, Stafford, and Breeden. Each testified about the number of pills attributable to Woodside. Agent Lewis testified that "10- to 15,000 pills" was a "conservative estimate" of the pills Woodside sold "[d]uring the six-month period leading up to [his] arrest." Agent Lewis estimated that Woodside sold "closer to 70-, 80-, 90-, hundred thousand" pills throughout the course of the "whole conspiracy." Stafford testified that at first he bought about 1,000 pills per week from McGregor, that he initially bought 400 to 500 pills a week from Woodside, and that he eventually received about 1,000 pills per week from each of Woodside and McGregor, an arrangement that continued for about 18 months. Stafford further testified that he stopped buying from McGregor in late 2011 or early 2012, but continued to purchase about 1,000 pills per week from Woodside, which he continued to do until the last eight months of the conspiracy, during which he received only 300 to 600 pills per week. Stafford also acknowledged an intercepted conversation in which he said, "I used to get 2,000—two, three thousand a week, man. And that’s like I had my two connects," referring to Woodside and McGregor. Finally, Breeden testified that McGregor supplied about 1,000 oxycodone pills per week, that she and Stafford purchased from McGregor for "at least six months" or longer before beginning to purchase from Woodside, and that once they began purchasing from both, which they did for about six months, they would receive about 1,500 pills per week. Breeden testified that after they stopped purchasing from McGregor, Woodside initially was "able to send more, but then over time the numbers decreased," to the point where they were receiving about 500 pills per week during the last six months before Breeden was arrested.

After hearing that testimony, the district court found that Woodside was responsible for 28,000 kilograms of marijuana equivalent, for a base-offense level of 34, assigned by the guidelines to those responsible for 10,000 to 30,000 kilograms of marijuana equivalent. According to the PSR, each 30-milligram oxycodone pill contains 27 milligrams of actual oxycodone. According to the guidelines, each gram of actual oxycodone is equivalent to 6.7 kilograms of marijuana for sentencing purposes. See USSG § 2D1.1 comment. (n.8). Thus, each 30-milligram oxycodone pill is equivalent to .1809 kilograms of marijuana. The district court’s estimate of 28,000 kilograms of marijuana equivalent, then, corresponded to roughly 154,781 oxycodone pills.

The transcript did not make clear exactly how the district court calculated the 28,000-kilogram quantity, but the court discussed the testimony of both Stafford and Breeden before apparently relying primarily on Breeden’s testimony to estimate the quantity of drugs attributable to Woodside. The district court imposed a four-level enhancement for Woodside’s being a leader or organizer of the conspiracy and deducted three levels for his accepting responsibility, resulting in a final offense level of 35. After calculating a guidelines range of 168 to 210 months of imprisonment, the district court sentenced Woodside to 170 months’ imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release.

Woodside appealed his sentence, arguing that the district court’s factfinding with respect to the drug quantity attributable to him was inadequate. We agreed and vacated Woodside’s sentence, explaining:

[T]he absence in the record of the numbers the district court used renders its methodology totally opaque, and compels us to vacate Defendant’s sentence and remand for a better explanation of the district court’s calculation, or for recalculation of the quantity of drugs for which Defendant is to be held accountable.

United States v. Woodside , 642 F. App'x 490, 496 (6th Cir. 2016). We also noted that the district court did not make clear whether it held Woodside responsible for the drugs sold by McGregor, so we instructed the district court to "make ... findings of fact in the first instance" regarding both the scope of Woodside’s agreement with McGregor and the foreseeability of McGregor’s conduct before holding Woodside responsible for drugs sold by McGregor. Id. at 497. We thus remanded Woodside’s case to the district court "for a recalculation of the drug quantity attributable to [him]." Id. at 498.

On remand, the district court estimated that Woodside was responsible for 28,568 kilograms of marijuana equivalent. After recounting witness testimony from the prior sentencing hearing, the district court made findings of fact and explained its drug-quantity calculation as our remand asked. This time around, the court relied primarily on Stafford’s testimony to establish drug quantity. After reapplying the four-level leader-or-organizer enhancement and the three-level acceptance-of-responsibility reduction, the district court found that Woodside’s final offense level remained at 35, which resulted in the same guidelines range. The court thus reaffirmed its prior judgment and imposed the same 170-month sentence.

Woodside again appeals, and now presses four arguments. He argues that the district court (1) was required by our remand to grant Woodside a new sentencing hearing, and (2) was required by 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c) to state the reasons for his sentence in open court. He also argues that his sentence was procedurally unreasonable because the district court (3) erroneously attributed to him drugs sold by McGregor, and (4) failed to "err on the side of caution" when choosing which of Woodside’s coconspirators’ testimony to credit as establishing drug quantity. Ultimately none of Woodside’s arguments is persuasive.

First, the district court did not commit any procedural error when it denied Woodside’s request for a new sentencing hearing and resentenced him through a written amended judgment. Our prior panel had issued a limited remand, the language of which did not entitle Woodside to a new sentencing hearing, and in accordance with that remand, the district court imposed the same sentence based on the same record.

Our remand in Woodside’s prior appeal was a limited one. Woodside argues that the remand was general, and that accordingly, under United States v. Garcia-Robles , 640 F.3d 159, 166 (6th Cir. 2011), it required an unlimited resentencing procedure. It is true that a remand is presumptively general as opposed to limited, and that to...