{"id":7134,"date":"2009-09-19T15:39:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-19T20:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7134"},"modified":"2009-09-19T15:50:34","modified_gmt":"2009-09-19T20:50:34","slug":"seventh-circuit-criminal-case-of-the-week-what-can-be-inferred-from-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/09\/seventh-circuit-criminal-case-of-the-week-what-can-be-inferred-from-a-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: What Can Be Inferred From a Lie?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"seventh-circuit51\"<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

When a person is caught in a lie, we normally assume that\u00a0he is\u00a0covering something up.\u00a0 But, if a defendant in a criminal case lies on the witness stand, is it fair to assume that he actually\u00a0did what he was accused of doing?\u00a0 Such was the question in United States v. Edwards <\/a><\/em>(No. 08-1124).<\/p>\n

Edwards was arrested after making arrangments to sell\u00a0crack to a government informant.\u00a0 The intended sale did not actually take place, but that is\u00a0no barrier to conviction for drug trafficking.\u00a0 And, once convicted, a drug dealer\u00a0becomes responsible under the federal sentencing guidelines for the entire quantity of drugs he has ever sold that counts as “relevant conduct.”\u00a0 (For an earlier post on the pitfalls of relevant conduct, see here<\/a>.)\u00a0 In order to establish the amount that Edwards sold, the\u00a0sentencing judge\u00a0relied on, among other things, $765 in cash that Edwards was carrying at the time of his arrest.\u00a0 Edwards tried to explain away the cash with an unsubstantiated and seemingly implausible\u00a0story\u00a0about selling his minivan, but the judge was not convinced.\u00a0 If the minivan story was fabricated, then Edwards must have earned the money from selling crack, right?\u00a0 The sentencing judge concluded as much, and increased Edwards’ drug quantity accordingly.<\/p>\n

On appeal, however, the Seventh Circuit held that the judge moved to this conclusion\u00a0too quickly.\u00a0 \u00a0Judge Posner, writing for the panel, sensibly observed,<\/p>\n

The falsity of the defendant’s testimony makes reasonably clear that the $765 was proceeds of an illegal transaction of some sort, but does not show that it was proceeds from selling crack.\u00a0 For all one knows, the defendant sold other illegal drugs\u00a0(he had been convicted in the\u00a0past of possession of marijuana)\u00a0or other contraband, such as guns, but did not want to acknowledge other illegal behavior, which he might have thought would get him into even worse trouble than he was in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In light of these possibilities, it appeared that too much crack might have been attributed to Edwards\u00a0when his guidelines sentence was calculated.\u00a0 The Seventh Circuit thus vacated Edwards’ sentence and remanded for resentencing.<\/p>\n

It is true that Edwards’ false testimony does not logically require<\/em> an inference that the $765 came from crack sales, but it is still\u00a0surprising to see the\u00a0Seventh Circuit\u00a0not permit <\/em>the inference.\u00a0 After all, what was at issue was a district court’s finding of fact, to which appellate courts are supposed to show some deference.\u00a0 Indeed, the First Circuit upheld a district court’s decision on similar facts in United States v. Jackson<\/em>, 3 F.3d 506 (1st Cir. 1993).\u00a0 However, the Seventh Circuit felt that Jackson <\/em>was inconsistent with other cases that reject “the automatic <\/em>inference from disbelief in one part of a witness’s testimony to disbelief in the rest.”<\/p>\n

Although the Seventh Circuit may not have shown its typical deference to district-court fact-finding in Edwards<\/em>, the\u00a0lower court’s piling on of relevant conduct is a reminder of why the drug sentencing guidelines have provoked so much criticism.\u00a0 Quantity tends to overwhelm other considerations in drug sentencing, and the determination of quantity under the guidelines makes no distinction between what was proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt and what was proven to a judge by a preponderance of the evidence.\u00a0 The\u00a0diminished burden of proof under the guidelines invites dramatic increases in punishment on the basis of the sort of flimsy inferences used in Edwards.\u00a0 <\/em>This is especially troubling when the defendant is being sentenced under the crack guideline, which is widely recognized to be unjustifiably harsh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a person is caught in a lie, we normally assume that\u00a0he is\u00a0covering something up.\u00a0 But, if a defendant in a criminal case lies on the witness stand, is it fair to assume that he actually\u00a0did what he was accused of doing?\u00a0 Such was the question in United States v. Edwards (No. 08-1124). Edwards was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,30,28,74,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-circuit-splits","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-federal-sentencing","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}