Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: What Can Be Inferred From a Lie?
When a person is caught in a lie, we normally assume that he is covering something up. But, if a defendant in a criminal case lies on the witness stand, is it fair to assume that he actually did what he was accused of doing? Such was the question in United States v. Edwards (No. 08-1124).
Edwards was arrested after making arrangments to sell crack to a government informant. The intended sale did not actually take place, but that is no barrier to conviction for drug trafficking. And, once convicted, a drug dealer becomes responsible under the federal sentencing guidelines for the entire quantity of drugs he has ever sold that counts as “relevant conduct.” (For an earlier post on the pitfalls of relevant conduct, see here.) In order to establish the amount that Edwards sold, the sentencing judge relied on, among other things, $765 in cash that Edwards was carrying at the time of his arrest. Edwards tried to explain away the cash with an unsubstantiated and seemingly implausible story about selling his minivan, but the judge was not convinced. If the minivan story was fabricated, then Edwards must have earned the money from selling crack, right? The sentencing judge concluded as much, and increased Edwards’ drug quantity accordingly.
On appeal, however, the Seventh Circuit held that the judge moved to this conclusion too quickly.
Simple bank robbery carries a maximum sentence of twenty years, but armed bank robbery has an enhanced maximum of twenty-five. Should a robbery be considered armed, though, when the robber carries an unloaded weapon? 