Opinion · Supreme Court of the United States
Witte v. United States
515 U.S. 389
- Type
- Opinion
- Court
- Supreme Court of the United States
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
- Date
- 1995-06-14
- Topic
- bankruptcy
recognizing that sentencing courts may consider defendant’s misconduct “even if no conviction resulted from that behavior” | holding that a multiple punishments double jeopardy claim is ripe for appellate review even where the claimant has yet to have been convicted a second time | holding that a multiple punishments double jeopardy claim is ripe for appellate review even where the claimant has yet to have been convicted a second time | concluding that consideration at sentencing of un charged criminal conduct did not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause and was permissible under the sentencing guidelines | holding that relevant conduct can be considered in sentencing and form the basis for a subsequent prosecution without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause | holding that relevant conduct provisions merely enhance the punishment for the offense of conviction and do not violate double jeopardy principles | holding that a crime passing the Blockburger test may be charged successively even if considered at sentencing in earlier 2 prosecution | explaining that the Guidelines range "still falls within the scope of the legislatively authorized penalty" | explaining that the Guidelines range “still falls within the scope of the legislatively authorized penalty” | holding that consideration of uncharged but related drug activities to impose a higher sentence within the statutorily authorized range does not constitute punishment for double jeopardy purposes | holding that consideration of uncharged but related drug activities to impose a higher sentence within the statutorily authorized range does not constitute punishment for double jeopardy purposes | holding that the Double Jeopardy Clause was not violated when a defendant was convicted and sentenced for a crime when the conduct underlying that offense had been considered in determining the defendant's sentence for a previous conviction | holding that the Double Jeopardy Clause was not violated when a defendant was convicted and sentenced for a crime when the conduct underlying that offense had been considered in determining the defendant’s sentence for a previous conviction | holding that use of evidence of related criminal conduct to enhance a defendant’s sentence for a separate crime does not constitute punishment for that conduct within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause | holding that the Double Jeopardy Clause did not bar a prosecution for conduct that had provided the basis for an enhancement of the defendant’s sentence in a prior case | concluding that “consideration of information about the defendant’s character and conduct at sentencing does not result in ‘punishment’ for any offense other than the one of which the defendant was convicted” | noting that the Court had correctly held in Williams v. Oklahoma, 358 U.S. 576, 79 S.Ct. 421, 3 L.Ed.2d 516 (1959 | explaining that defendant is not punished under Double Jeopardy analysis for uncharged conduct when relevant conduct finding produces sentence within statutorily authorized punishment range | holding that a sentencing court could, consistent with the Double Jeopardy Clause, consider uncharged cocaine importation in imposing a sentence for marijuana offenses that was within the statutory range, without precluding the defendant's subsequent prosecution for the cocaine offense | noting that a defendant “is punished, for double jeopardy purposes, only for the offense of which the defendant is convicted” | holding that a court does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause “by convicting and sentencing a defendant for a crime when the conduct underlying that offense has been considered in determining the defendant’s sentence for a previous conviction.” | holding that a court does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause “by convicting and sentencing a defendant for a crime when the conduct underlying that offense has been considered in determining the defendant’s sentence for a previous conviction.” | holding under the previo
Citator
- Cited by
- 380 opinions
delivered the opinion of the Court.†
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits successive prosecution or multiple punishment for “the same offence.” This case, which involves application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, asks us to consider whether a court violates that proscription by convicting and sentencing a defendant for a crime when the conduct underlying that offense has been considered in determining the defendant’s sentence for a previous conviction.
I
In June 1990, petitioner Steven Kurt Witte and several co-conspirators, including Dennis Mason and Tom Pokorny, arranged with Roger Norman, an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to import large amounts of marijuana from Mexico and cocaine from Guatemala. Norman had the task of flying the contraband into the United States, with Witte providing the ground transportation for the drugs once they had been brought into the country. The following month, the Mexican marijuana source advised the conspiracy participants that cocaine might be added to the
Agent Norman next spoke with Witte in January 1991 and asked if Witte would be interested in purchasing 1,000 pounds of marijuana. Witte agreed, promised to obtain a $50,000 down payment, and indicated that he would transport the marijuana in a horse trailer he had purchased for the original 1990 transaction and in a motor home owned by an acquaintance, Sam Kelly. On February 7, Witte, Norman, and Kelly met in Houston, Texas. Norman agreed to give the drugs to Witte in exchange for the $25,000 in cash Witte had been able to secure at that time and for a promise to pay the balance of the down payment in three days. Undercover agents took the motor home and trailer away to load the marijuana, and Witte escorted Norman to Witte’s hotel room to view the money. The agents returned the vehicles the next morning loaded with approximately 375 pounds of marijuana, and they arrested Witte and Kelly when the two men took possession of the contraband.
In March 1991, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas indicted Witte and Kelly for conspiring and attempting to possess marijuana with intent to distribute it, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§ 841(a) and 846. The indictment was limited on its face to conduct occurring on or about
In calculating Witte’s base offense level under the Sentencing Guidelines, the presentenee report prepared by the United States Probation Office considered the total quantity of drugs involved in all of the transactions contemplated by the conspirators, including the planned 1990 shipments of both marijuana and cocaine. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, the sentencing range for a particular offense is determined on the basis of all “relevant conduct” in which the defendant was engaged and not just with regard to the conduct underlying the offense of conviction. USSG §1B1.3. The Sentencing Commission has noted that, “[w]ith respect to offenses involving contraband (including controlled substances), the defendant is accountable for all quantities of contraband with which he was directly involved and, in the case of a jointly undertaken criminal activity, all reasonably foreseeable quantities of contraband that were within the scope of the criminal activity that he jointly undertook.” USSG §1B1.3, comment., n. 2; see also USSG §2D1.1, comment., nn. 6, 12. The presentence report therefore suggested that Witte was accountable for the 1,000 pounds of marijuana involved in the attempted possession offense to which he pleaded guilty, 15 tons of marijuana that Witte, Mason, and Pokorny had planned to import from Mexico in
At the sentencing hearing, both petitioner and the Government urged the court to hold that the 1990 activities concerning importation of cocaine and marijuana were not part of the same course of conduct as the 1991 marijuana offense to which Witte had pleaded guilty, and therefore should not be considered in sentencing for the 1991 offense. The District Court concluded, however, that because the 1990 importation offenses were part of the same continuing conspiracy, they were “relevant conduct” under § IB 1.3 of the Guidelines and should be taken into account. The court therefore accepted the presentence report’s aggregation of the quantities of drugs involved in the 1990 and 1991 episodes, resulting in a base offense level of 40, with a Guideline range of 292 to 365 months’ imprisonment. App. 80-81; see also USSG §2D1.1. From that base offense level, Witte received a two-level increase for his aggravating role in the offense, see USSG §3B1.1, and an offsetting two-level decrease for acceptance of responsibility, see USSG §3E1.1. Finally, the court granted the Government’s §5K1.1 motion for downward departure based on Witte’s substantial assistance. By virtue of that departure, the court sentenced Witte to 144 months in prison, see App. 76, which was 148 months below the minimum sentence of 292 months under the predeparture Guideline range. Witte appealed, but the Court of Appeals dismissed the case when Witte failed to file a brief.
In September 1992, another grand jury in the same district returned a two-count indictment against Witte and Pokorny for conspiring and attempting to import cocaine, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§ 952(a) and 963. The indictment alleged that, between August 1989 and August 1990, Witte tried to import about 1,091 kilograms of cocaine from Central America. Witte moved to dismiss, arguing that he had already been
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. 25 F. 3d 250 (1994). Relying on our decision in Williams v. Oklahoma, 358 U. S. 576 (1959), the court held that “the use of relevant conduct to increase the punishment of a charged offense does not punish the offender for the relevant conduct.” 25 F. 3d, at 258. Thus, although the sentencing court took the quantity of cocaine involved in the 1990 importation scheme into account when determining the sentence for Witte’s 1991 marijuana possession offense, the Court of Appeals concluded that Witte had not been punished for the cocaine offenses in the first prosecution — and that the Double Jeopardy Clause therefore did not bar the later action. In reaching this result, the court expressly disagreed with contrary holdings in United States v. Koonce, 945 F. 2d 1145 (CA10 1991), cert, denied, 503 U. S. 994 (1992), and United States v. McCormick, 992 F. 2d 437 (CA2 1993), that when a defendant’s actions are included in relevant conduct in determining the punishment under the Sentencing Guidelines for one offense, those actions may not form the basis for a later indictment without violating double jeopardy. We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict among the Circuits, 513 U. S. 1072 (1995), and now affirm.
II
The Double Jeopardy Clause provides: “[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 5. We have explained that “the Clause serves the function of preventing
Petitioner clearly was neither prosecuted for nor convicted of the cocaine offenses during the first criminal proceeding. The offense to which petitioner pleaded guilty and for which he was sentenced in 1992 was attempted possession of marijuana with intent to distribute it, whereas the crimes charged in the instant indictment are conspiracy to import cocaine and attempted importation of the same. Under Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299, 304 (1932), “where the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one, is whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not.” See also Dixon, supra, at 696 (emphasizing that the same inquiry generally applies “[i]n both the multiple punishment and multiple prosecution contexts”). Under the Blockburger test, the indictment in this case did not charge the same offense to which petitioner formerly had pleaded guilty.
Traditionally, “[sentencing courts have not only taken into consideration a defendant’s prior convictions, but have also considered a defendant’s past criminal behavior, even if no conviction resulted from that behavior.” Nichols v. United States, 511 U. S. 738, 747 (1994). We explained in Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241, 246 (1949), that “both before and since the American colonies became a nation, courts in this country and in England practiced a policy under which a sentencing judge could exercise a wide discretion in the sources
Against this background of sentencing history, we specifically have rejected the claim that double jeopardy principles bar a later prosecution or punishment for criminal activity where that activity has been considered at sentencing for a separate crime. Williams v. Oklahoma, 358 U. S., at 576, arose out of a kidnaping and murder committed by the petitioner while attempting to escape from police after a robbery. Following his arrest, Williams pleaded guilty to murder and was given a life sentence. He was later convicted of kidnaping, which was then a capital offense in Oklahoma, and the sentencing court took into account, in assessing the death penalty, the fact that the kidnaping victim had been murdered. We rejected Williams’ contention that this use of the conduct that had given rise to the prior conviction violated double jeopardy. Emphasizing that “the exercise of a sound discretion in such a case required consideration of all the circumstances of the crime,” we made clear that “one of the aggravating circumstances involved in this kidnaping crime was the fact that petitioner shot and killed the victim in the course of its commission,” and rejected the claim “that the sentencing judge was not entitled to consider that cir
We find this case to be governed by Williams; it makes no difference in this context whether the enhancement occurred in the first or second sentencing proceeding. Here, petitioner pleaded guilty to attempted possession of marijuana with intent to distribute it, in violation of 21U. S. C. §§ 841(a) and 846. The statute provides that the sentence for such a crime involving 100 kilograms or more of marijuana must be between 5 and 40 years in prison. § 841(b)(1)(B). By including the cocaine from the earlier transaction — and not just the marijuana involved in the offense of conviction — in the drug quantity calculation, the District Court ended up with a higher offense level (40), and a higher sentence range (292 to 365 months), than it would have otherwise under the applicable Guideline, which specifies different base offense levels depending on the quantity of drugs involved. USSG § 2D 1.1. This higher Guideline range, however, still falls within the scope of the legislatively authorized penalty (5 to 40 years). As in Williams, the uncharged criminal conduct was used to enhance petitioner’s sentence within the range authorized by statute. If use of the murder to justify the death sentence for the kidnaping conviction was not “punishment” for the murder in Williams, it is impossible to con-
Williams, like this case, concerned the double jeopardy-implications of taking the circumstances surrounding a particular course of criminal activity into account in sentencing for a conviction arising therefrom. Similarly, we have made clear in other cases, which involved a defendant’s background more generally and not conduct arising out of the same criminal transaction as the offense of which the defendant was convicted, that “[enhancement statutes, whether in the nature of criminal history provisions such as those contained in the Sentencing Guidelines, or recidivist statutes which are common place in state criminal laws, do not change the penalty imposed for the earlier conviction.” Nichols, 511 U. S., at 747 (approving consideration of a defendant’s previous uncounseled misdemeanor conviction in sentencing him for a subsequent offense). In repeatedly upholding such recidivism statutes, we have rejected double jeopardy challenges because the enhanced punishment imposed for the later offense “is not to be viewed as either a new jeopardy or additional penalty for the earlier crimes,” but instead as “a stiffened penalty for the latest crime, which is considered to be an aggravated offense because a repetitive one.” Gryger v. Burke, 334 U. S. 728, 732 (1948). See also Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554, 560 (1967); Oyler v. Boles, 368 U. S. 448, 451 (1962); Moore v. Missouri, 159 U. S. 673, 677 (1895) (under a recidivist statute, “the accused is not again punished for the first offence” because “ ‘the punishment is for the last offence committed, and it is rendered more severe in consequence of the situation into which the party had previously brought himself’ ”).
In addition, by authorizing the consideration of offender-specific information at sentencing without the procedural protections attendant at a criminal trial, our cases necessarily imply that such consideration does not result in “punish
We are not persuaded by petitioner’s suggestion that the Sentencing Guidelines somehow change the constitutional analysis. A defendant has not been “punished” any more for double jeopardy purposes when relevant conduct is included in the calculation of his offense level under the Guidelines than when a pre-Guidelines court, in its discretion, took similar uncharged conduct into account. Cf. McMillan, supra, at 92 (perceiving no difference in the due process cal-
Justice Stevens disagrees with our conclusion because, he contends, “[u]nder the Guidelines, ... an offense that is included as ‘relevant conduct’ does not relate to the character of the offender (which is reflected instead by criminal history), but rather measures only the character of the offense.” Post, at 411. The criminal history section of the Guidelines, however, does not seem to create this bright line distinction; indeed, the difference between “criminal history” and “relevant conduct” is more temporal than qualitative, with the former referring simply to a defendant’s past criminal conduct (as evidenced by convictions and prison terms), see USSG §4A1.1, and the latter covering activity arising out of the same course of criminal conduct as the instant offense, see USSG § 1B1.3.
To the extent that the Guidelines aggravate punishment for related conduct outside the elements of the crime on the
The relevant conduct provisions of the Sentencing Guidelines, like their criminal history counterparts and the recidivism statutes discussed above, are sentencing enhancement regimes evincing the judgment that a particular offense should receive a more serious sentence within the authorized range if it was either accompanied by or preceded by additional criminal activity. Petitioner does not argue that the range fixed by Congress is so broad, and the enhancing role played by the relevant conduct so significant, that consideration of that conduct in sentencing has become “a tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense.” McMillan, 477 U. S., at 88; cf. Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 700 (1975). We hold that, where the legislature has authorized such a particular punishment range for a given crime, the resulting
III
At its core, much of petitioner’s argument addresses not a claim that the instant cocaine prosecution violates principles of double jeopardy, but the more modest contention that he should not receive a second sentence under the Guidelines for the cocaine activities that were considered as relevant conduct for the marijuana sentence. As an examination of the pertinent sections should make clear, however, the Guidelines take into account the potential unfairness with which petitioner is concerned.
Petitioner argues that the Sentencing Guidelines require that drug offenders be sentenced in a single proceeding for all related offenses, whether charged or uncharged. See Brief for Petitioner 20-23. Yet while the Guidelines certainly envision that sentences for multiple offenses arising out of the same criminal activity ordinarily will be imposed together, they also explicitly contemplate the possibility of separate prosecutions involving the same or overlapping “relevant conduct.” See USSG §5G1.3, comment., n. 2 (addressing cases in which “a defendant is prosecuted in ... two or more federal jurisdictions, for the same criminal conduct or for different criminal transactions that were part of the same course of conduct”). There are often valid reasons why related crimes committed by the same defendant are not prosecuted in the same proceeding, and §5G1.3 of the Guidelines attempts to achieve some coordination of sentences imposed in such situations with an eye toward having such punishments approximate the total penalty that would have been imposed had the sentences for the different offenses been imposed at the same time (i. e., had all
Because the concept of relevant conduct under the Guidelines is reciprocal, § 5G1.3 operates to mitigate the possibility that the fortuity of two separate prosecutions will grossly increase a defendant’s sentence. If a defendant is serving an undischarged term of imprisonment “resulting] from offense(s) that have been fully taken into account [as relevant conduct] in the determination of the offense level for the instant offense,” § 5G1.3(b) provides that “the sentence for the instant offense shall be imposed to run concurrently to the undischarged term of imprisonment.” And where § 5G1.3(b) does not apply, an accompanying policy statement provides, “the sentence for the instant offense shall be imposed to run consecutively to the prior undischarged term of imprisonment to the extent necessary to achieve a reasonable incremental punishment for the instant offense.” USSG §5G1.3(c) (policy statement). Significant safeguards built into the Sentencing Guidelines therefore protect petitioner against having the length of his sentence multiplied by dupli-cative consideration of the same criminal conduct; he would be able to vindicate his interests through appropriate appeals should the Guidelines be misapplied in any future sentencing proceeding.
Even if the Sentencing Commission had not formalized sentencing for multiple convictions in this way, district courts under the Guidelines retain enough flexibility in appropriate cases to take into account the fact that conduct underlying the offense at issue has previously been taken into account in sentencing for another offense. As the Commission has explained, “fu]nder 18 U. S. C. § 3553(b) the sentencing court may impose a sentence outside the range established by the applicable guideline, if the court finds ‘that there exists an aggravating or mitigating circumstance of a kind, or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines
>
Because consideration of relevant conduct in determining a defendant’s sentence within the legislatively authorized punishment range does not constitute punishment for that conduct, the instant prosecution does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause’s prohibition against the imposition of multiple punishments for the same offense. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy join all but Part III of this opinion, and Justice Stevens joins only Part III.