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United States v. Eduardo Pena, 33 F.3d 2, 2d Cir. (1994)
United States v. Eduardo Pena, 33 F.3d 2, 2d Cir. (1994)
3d 2
On March 8, 1993, appellant Eduardo Pena and another man, Jose Diaz,
walked into a post office and demanded money from a postal clerk. When the
clerk failed to understand the command, Pena drew a semi-automatic handgun
from his waistband. The meaning of the request now clear, the clerk handed
money over to Pena and Diaz, who then fled together. Pena was later arrested
and pleaded guilty.
On appeal, Pena, relying upon our decision in United States v. Garcia, 920 F.2d
153 (2d Cir.1990) (per curiam), contends that the district court impermissibly
focused exclusively on Pena's assigned task in the criminal undertaking rather
than examining "the defendant's culpability in the context of the facts of the
case." Id. at 155. As Pena reads Garcia, the sentencing court should not
examine a defendant's culpability relative to the typical offender convicted of
the same federal crime but must focus exclusively on a defendant's culpability
relative to his cohorts in the jointly undertaken criminal activity.
Moreover, nowhere in Garcia did we imply that the inquiry into a mitigating
role adjustment must consider only culpability relative to a defendant's coperpetrators. As we observed in United States v. Lopez, 937 F.2d 716 (2d
Cir.1991), "the defendant's role in the offense is determined 'not only by
comparing the acts of each participant in relation to the relevant conduct for
which the participant is held accountable, ... but also by measuring each
participant's individual acts and relative culpability against the elements of the
offense of conviction....' " Id. at 728 (quoting United States v. Daughtrey, 874
F.2d 213, 216 (4th Cir.1989)); see United States v. Caruth, 930 F.2d 811, 815
(10th Cir.1991) ("the Guidelines permit courts not only to compare a
defendant's conduct with that of others in the same enterprise, but also with the
conduct of an average participant in that type of crime"). As then-Chief Judge
Breyer has observed, "one who, say, points a gun at a bank teller and seizes the
money is not entitled to a downward adjustment simply because someone else
in the gang supervised his activities." United States v. Rotolo, 950 F.2d 70, 71
(1st Cir.1991) (emphasis omitted).
Sec. 3B1.2 and the rationale underlying the Sentencing Guidelines. Application
Note 4 to Sec. 3B1.2--in the course of counselling against a mitigating role
reduction for a defendant pleading guilty to a less serious offense than
warranted by actual criminal conduct--compares the culpability of the offender
being sentenced with the typical offender convicted of the same federal crime.
The inference drawn from this Application Note is that the Sentencing
Commission intends for culpability to be gauged relative to the elements of the
offense of conviction, not simply relative to co-perpetrators. Moreover, the
background commentary to Sec. 3B1.2 expressly provides that culpability is to
be measured against "the average participant." Cf. Stinson v. United States, --U.S. ----, ----, 113 S.Ct. 1913, 1915, 123 L.Ed.2d 598 (1993) ("commentary in
the Guidelines Manual that interprets or explains a guideline is authoritative").
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Affirmed.
The Honorable Ellen Bree Burns, United States District Judge for the District
of Connecticut, sitting by designation