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Court Opinions ›› Edwards v. United States (1998)
VINCENT EDWARDS, REYNOLDS A. WINTERSMITH, HORACE JOINER, KARL V. FORT, AND JOSEPH TIDWELL, PETITIONERS v. UNITED STATES
No. 96-8732 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 523 U.S. 511; 118 S. Ct. 1475; 140 L. Ed. 2d 703; 1998 U.S. LEXIS 2963; 66 U.S.L.W. 4293; 98 Cal. Daily Op. Service 3137; 98 Daily Journal DAR 4333; 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 2015 February 23, 1998, Argued April 28, 1998, Decided PRIOR HISTORY: ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT. At petitioners' trial under 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846 for "conspiring" to "possess with intent to . . . distribute [mixtures containing two] controlled substances," namely, cocaine and cocaine base (i.e., "crack"), the jury was instructed that the Government must prove that the conspiracy involved measurable amounts of "cocaine or cocaine base." (Emphasis added.) The jury returned a general verdict of guilty, and the District Judge imposed sentences based on his finding that each petitioner's illegal conduct involved both cocaine and crack. Petitioners argued (for the first time) in the Seventh Circuit that their sentences were unlawful insofar as they were based upon crack, because the word "or" in the jury instruction meant that the judge must assume that the conspiracy involved only cocaine, which is treated more leniently than crack by United States Sentencing Guidelines § 2D1.1(c). However, the court held that the judge need not assume that only cocaine was involved, pointing out that, because the Guidelines require the sentencing judge, not the jury, to determine both the kind and the amount of the drugs at issue in a drug conspiracy, the jury's belief about which drugs were involved -- cocaine, crack, or both -- was beside the point.
Because the Guidelines instruct the judge in a case like this to determine both the amount and kind of controlled substances for which a defendant should be held accountable, and then to impose a sentence that varies depending upon those determinations, see, e.g., Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 132 L. Ed. 2d 351, 115 S. Ct. 2199, it is the judge who is required to determine whether the "controlled substances" at issue -- and how much of them -- consisted of cocaine, crack, or both. That is what the judge did in this case, and the jury's beliefs about the conspiracy are irrelevant. [...] Petitioners' statutory and constitutional claims could make a difference if they could argue that their sentences exceeded the statutory maximum for a cocaine-only conspiracy, or that their crack-related activities did not constitute part of the "same course of conduct," etc., but the record indicates that such arguments could not succeed.
...[T]he Guidelines instruct a sentencing judge to base a drug-conspiracy offender's sentence on the offender's "relevant conduct." USSG § 1B1.3. And "relevant conduct," in a case like this, includes both conduct that constitutes the "offense of conviction," id., § 1B1.3(a)(1), and conduct that is "part of the same course of conduct or common scheme or plan as the offense of conviction," id., § 1B1.3(a)(2).
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