Marrero, Edwin v. United States ( 2002 )


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  •                                In the
    United States Court of Appeals
    For the Seventh Circuit
    ____________
    Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078
    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
    Plaintiff-Appellee,
    v.
    EDWIN MARRERO and DAVID HERNANDEZ,
    Defendants-Appellants.
    ____________
    Appeals from the United States District Court
    for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
    No. 00 CR 368—William J. Hibbler, Judge.
    ____________
    ARGUED APRIL 5, 2002—DECIDED AUGUST 5, 2002
    ____________
    Before FLAUM, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER,
    Circuit Judges.
    POSNER, Circuit Judge. The defendants, “Little Bum” Mar-
    rero and “Fat Man” Hernandez, lured three drug dealers
    from Detroit to a rendezvous in Chicago on the pretext
    of selling them cocaine. When the dealers arrived, the
    defendants showed them what purported to be cocaine
    but was actually flour with a thin coating of cocaine,
    then robbed them at gunpoint of the $25,000 that the deal-
    ers had brought with them to make the purchase. The
    defendants were convicted by a jury of violating the
    Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, and of a firearm offense, and
    2                                    Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078
    received very heavy sentences—324 months for Marrero,
    192 months for Hernandez.
    The Hobbs Act criminalizes robberies that obstruct or
    otherwise affect interstate or foreign commerce, and the
    main issue raised by this appeal is whether the robbery
    of the drug dealers had the requisite effect on commerce.
    We set to one side the defendants’ arguments that the
    dealers may have been “from Detroit” only in the sense
    of having been born or raised there and that they may not
    have been dealers at all but merely purchasers for their own
    consumption. We are required to construe the facts as
    favorably to the government as the record permits, and
    that construal requires us to reject these anyway rather
    fanciful hypotheses about the robbery victims.
    Of course, there is an element of paradox in a prosecu-
    tion for obstructing illegal commerce (the government does
    not seek to defend the judgment on the ground that the
    defendants’ scheme affected the interstate trade in flour);
    one might as an original matter have thought that were
    it not for concerns about encouraging violent activities,
    such as armed robbery, the obstruction of illicit commerce
    should be rewarded rather than punished. The less pro-
    tection the law gives drug dealers, the higher the price
    of illegal drugs and so the smaller the quantity con-
    sumed—the very aim of the “war on drugs.” But, quite
    apart from the fact that the defendants were also drug
    dealers, whose theft from other dealers might aid the
    defendants’ drug dealings, any argument that the Hobbs
    Act, or Congress’s commerce power (exerted to the full
    in that Act, Stirone v. United States, 
    361 U.S. 212
    , 215
    (1960); Evans v. United States, 
    504 U.S. 255
    , 263 n. 12
    (1992); United States v. Peterson, 
    236 F.3d 848
    , 851-52 (7th
    Cir. 2001)), does not reach robberies that disrupt rather
    than promote illegal trafficking in drugs is foreclosed by
    Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078                                       3
    the case law, e.g., United States v. Esposito, 
    771 F.2d 283
    ,
    286 (7th Cir. 1985); United States v. Ambrose, 
    740 F.2d 505
    ,
    512 (7th Cir. 1984); United States v. Jones, 
    30 F.3d 276
    , 285-
    86 (2d Cir. 1994), and wisely not pressed by the appellants.
    This case would be a very easy one for the government
    if, as in United States v. Thomas, 
    159 F.3d 296
    , 297-98 (7th
    Cir. 1998), and United States v. 
    Jones, supra
    , 30 F.3d at
    280, 285, the defendants had robbed a confidential infor-
    mant of his “buy money.” Such a robbery would interrupt
    a transaction in commerce (since all cocaine originates
    outside the United States), and, as it happens, a socially
    valuable one, since a “controlled buy” is an efficient meth-
    od of apprehending drug dealers. See also United States
    v. Bailey, 
    227 F.3d 792
    , 795, 798 (7th Cir. 2000). There was
    no interruption of a transaction in commerce in the pre-
    sent case, because the defendants had no drugs, only flour
    that was not for sale. (There was no suggestion in Thomas
    that the defendants did not have cocaine to make the sale
    to the confidential informant—so far as appears, they
    simply decided they would be better off with both the
    cocaine and the purchase money rather than with just the
    money.) Had our defendants not robbed the Detroit dealers,
    there would have been no transaction—at least with them.
    But the qualification is vital. Had the defendants not
    lured the Detroit dealers to Chicago, those dealers would
    have used their $25,000 to buy cocaine elsewhere, and
    that purchase, a transaction in commerce whether it would
    have been made in Detroit or elsewhere because, as we
    said, all cocaine originates overseas, thus was thwarted,
    and commerce therefore obstructed, by the robbery. United
    States v. 
    Thomas, supra
    , 159 F.3d at 297-98. (This is the “de-
    pletion of assets” theory of Hobbs Act jurisdiction. It is
    orthodox. See, e.g., United States v. 
    Peterson, supra
    , 236 F.3d
    at 854, 856; United States v. 
    Jones, supra
    , 30 F.3d at 285.) Of
    4                                     Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078
    course this is a prediction, not a certainty. Maybe the De-
    troit dealers had no other potential source of cocaine
    (maybe that’s why they could be lured to Chicago), and
    after searching a bit would have decided to use the mon-
    ey to buy something quite local. But the cases do not re-
    quire certainty of effect on commerce; a reasonable prob-
    ability is enough, e.g., United States v. 
    Peterson, supra
    , 236
    F.3d at 851-52; United States v. Spagnolo, 
    546 F.2d 1117
    ,
    1119 (4th Cir. 1976) (per curiam), and is present here, es-
    pecially since as we said the defendants were themselves
    drug dealers, so that, had they not been apprehended,
    some of the money they stole might have been used to
    buy cocaine. Nor is it necessary that the individual crim-
    inal act, here the robbery of the Detroit dealers, be shown
    to have a measurable impact on commerce, which would
    usually be impossible to show. It is enough if the class
    of acts has such an impact. Perez v. United States, 
    402 U.S. 146
    , 153-54 (1971); United States v. 
    Thomas, supra
    , 159
    F.3d at 298; United States v. Hale, 
    978 F.2d 1016
    , 1018 (8th
    Cir. 1992). Deciding what shall count as a class is dif-
    ficult, but not in this case. Whether the class is defined
    broadly as theft from drug dealers or narrowly as theft of
    cash from drug dealers, it is undoubtedly large enough to
    have some effect on the drug trade, or what is just as
    good, would have such an effect if the law did not pun-
    ish such thefts and by punishing them deter many of the
    potential thieves and incapacitate the actual ones who are
    apprehended. Cf. United States v. Olin Corp., 
    107 F.3d 1506
    ,
    1510 and n. 8 (11th Cir. 1997); Proyect v. United States,
    
    101 F.3d 11
    , 13 (2d Cir. 1996) (per curiam). In either event,
    it is legitimately punishable under Congress’s power to
    protect interstate commerce from obstruction.
    The case might conceivably be different (we do not hold
    that it would be) if the Detroit dealers, being hopelessly
    impecunious, had brought with them only a few hundred
    Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078                                        5
    dollars, hoping to persuade the defendants to sell them
    cocaine at a ridiculously low price and knowing that if
    they failed to persuade them they would have to aban-
    don their quest altogether. Then it might be untenable to
    argue that, had they not been robbed, they would have
    bought cocaine elsewhere; it would be arguable instead
    that we should recognize a class of attempted drug trans-
    actions that, having no effect on commerce even in the
    aggregate, fell outside the jurisdictional scope of the Hobbs
    Act. But that is not our case.
    We are troubled, however, by the inability of the gov-
    ernment’s lawyer either in his brief or at argument to
    suggest a limiting principle in Hobbs Act prosecutions, de-
    spite the Supreme Court’s evident concern not to allow
    the concept of “commerce” (interstate or foreign) to ex-
    pand to the point at which every transaction in the Ameri-
    can economy would be within Congress’s reach. United
    States v. Lopez, 
    514 U.S. 549
    , 564 (1995); United States v.
    Morrison, 
    529 U.S. 598
    , 615 (2000); see United States v.
    Hicks, 
    106 F.3d 187
    , 189 (7th Cir. 1997). Before Lopez, courts,
    including our own, were not fussy about the jurisdictional
    requirement of the Hobbs Act. See, e.g., United States
    v. Rindone, 
    631 F.2d 491
    , 493-94 (7th Cir. 1980) (per curiam);
    United States v. Peete, 
    919 F.2d 1168
    , 1175 (6th Cir. 1990). But
    we are in a new era and must be wary of such arguments
    as that the theft of a bottle of aspirin from a person’s
    home “affects” commerce, provided only that the bottle
    was shipped from another state, because the homeowner
    would be likely to buy another bottle from his local drug-
    gist to replace the one that was stolen and the druggist
    would replace that sale by purchasing another bottle in-
    terstate.
    Some cases indeed draw the line between a theft from
    the home and theft from a store (see United States v.
    6                                       Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078
    Lynch, 
    282 F.3d 1049
    , 1053-54 (9th Cir. 2002), summariz-
    ing the case law), since an extra step (the local purchase
    of the new bottle from the drugstore) must be taken in
    the first case before one gets to the interstate transaction.
    But that line—which incidentally is supported by the
    “noncommercial” character of the activity involved in
    Lopez itself (schooling), and by the Supreme Court’s re-
    cent decision interpreting the federal arson statute to be
    limited to commercial buildings, an interpretation adopted
    in part at least to avoid having to decide Congress’s pow-
    er under the commerce clause to make burning down a
    private residence a federal crime, Jones v. United States, 
    529 U.S. 848
    , 858-59 (2000)—would not help the defendants
    in the present case. They stole from a business, the drug
    business of the three dealers, that was engaged in inter-
    state or foreign commerce. The dealers’ business was “in
    commerce” not only because it bought its merchandise
    (cocaine) from out of state but also because conducting
    the business involved crossing state lines when the deal-
    ers came to Chicago to try to buy drugs from the defen-
    dants. United States v. Carcione, 
    272 F.3d 1297
    , 1301 (11th Cir.
    2001); United States v. Atcheson, 
    94 F.3d 1237
    , 1243 (9th Cir.
    1996); see also United States v. Schaffner, 
    258 F.3d 675
    , 683
    (7th Cir. 2001); United States v. Griffith, 
    284 F.3d 338
    , 347 (2d
    Cir. 2002).
    The only other issue presented by the appeal involves
    Marrero alone and is whether for sentencing purposes his
    two prior convictions for drug offenses were “related” to
    each other. They were (so far as bears on this case) if they
    “were part of a single common scheme or plan.” U.S.S.G.
    § 4A1.2, Application Note 3; see United States v. Brown,
    
    209 F.3d 1020
    , 1023 (7th Cir. 2000); United States v. Ali,
    
    951 F.2d 827
    (7th Cir. 1992). And if they were related in
    this sense, he should not have been given, as he was (it
    is a major reason for his outsized sentence), an enhanced
    Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078                                       7
    sentence for being a “career offender.” §§ 4B1.1, 1.2(c). The
    first conviction was for buying 7.8 grams of cocaine from
    an undercover agent. The agent told Marrero that he’d
    be back if the cocaine turned out to be “decent.” Two and
    a half months later the agent was back and bought 45
    grams of cocaine from Marrero. The two sales would
    have been part of the same plan if before the first sale
    Marrero and the agent had agreed that the agent would
    make two or more purchases from Marrero. United States
    v. Joy, 
    192 F.3d 761
    , 770-71 (7th Cir. 1999); cf. United States
    v. Lechuga, 
    994 F.2d 346
    , 349-50 (7th Cir. 1993) (en banc). But
    there was no such agreement. The relatively small sizes
    of the purchases, their separation in time, and their over-
    all fewness all point to a casual buyer-seller relationship
    rather than to a broader agreement whereby Marrero un-
    dertook to supply the agent on a repeat basis, let alone
    to a conspiracy to distribute drugs rather than a mere
    sales contract. Compare United States v. Sanchez, 
    251 F.3d 598
    , 601-02 (7th Cir. 2001). A person who buys a honeydew
    melon from a grocery store and tells the sales clerk that
    if the melon is good he’ll be back is not thereby agreeing
    to buy another melon from the store. If he changed his
    mind and, while liking the melon, never went back to that
    store he would not be violating any agreement. No more
    would the agent have been violating an agreement with
    Marrero if he had not come back and made a second pur-
    chase from Marrero. Not that an agreement is always re-
    quired to show a common scheme or plan—the test is
    whether the second crime was “anticipated and planned
    when the original crime was planned or committed,” United
    States v. 
    Ali, supra
    , 951 F.2d at 828—but in the absence of
    an agreement in this case there is no evidence that Mar-
    rero anticipated and planned the second sale, which de-
    pended on what the agent did.
    8                                      Nos. 01-2283 & 01-4078
    The sentencing enhancement was therefore proper.
    Cf. United States v. Thomas, 
    284 F.3d 746
    , 752 (7th Cir.
    2002); United States v. Thomas, 
    150 F.3d 743
    , 744-45 (7th Cir.
    1998) (per curiam).
    AFFIRMED.
    A true Copy:
    Teste:
    _____________________________
    Clerk of the United States Court of
    Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
    USCA-97-C-006—8-5-02