Filed: Sep. 02, 2011
Latest Update: Feb. 22, 2020
Summary: UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 11-4218 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. JACK DEON COOPER, a/k/a Donald Deon Jones, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver, Jr., District Judge. (2:10-cr-00124-1) Submitted: August 26, 2011 Decided: September 2, 2011 Before DUNCAN, DAVIS, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opi
Summary: UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 11-4218 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. JACK DEON COOPER, a/k/a Donald Deon Jones, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver, Jr., District Judge. (2:10-cr-00124-1) Submitted: August 26, 2011 Decided: September 2, 2011 Before DUNCAN, DAVIS, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opin..
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UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-4218
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JACK DEON COOPER, a/k/a Donald Deon Jones,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver,
Jr., District Judge. (2:10-cr-00124-1)
Submitted: August 26, 2011 Decided: September 2, 2011
Before DUNCAN, DAVIS, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Mary Lou Newberger, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne,
Appellate Counsel, Lex A. Coleman, Assistant Federal Public
Defender, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. R. Booth
Goodwin II, United States Attorney, William B. King, II,
Assistant United States Attorney, Charleston, West Virginia, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Jack Deon Cooper pled guilty to distribution of
oxycodone, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) (2006), and was
sentenced to a term of ninety-six months. Cooper appeals his
sentence, contending that the district court clearly erred in
treating $5000 he agreed to deliver from one co-conspirator to
another as relevant conduct. U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual
§§ 1B1.3, 2D1.1 (2010). We affirm.
On July 16, 2010, Cooper drove from Detroit, Michigan,
to Craigsville, West Virginia, and sold 145 Oxycodone pills to
Chrissy May for $10,000. May had recently been arrested and was
cooperating with authorities, who set up audio and video
equipment in her house to record the transaction. May had
bought oxycodone from Cooper before, as well as from “Manny,” an
associate of his. While Cooper was at her house, May gave him
$5000 to deliver to Manny. In the presentence report, the
probation officer recommended that an additional seventy-seven
oxycodone pills, the number $5000 would buy, should be included
in Cooper’s relevant conduct because it was “reasonably
foreseeable” to him that the money was payment for oxycodone May
had previously obtained from Manny. See USSG § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B).
Cooper objected that he did not know that the money was for a
drug debt.
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The audio recording of Cooper’s transaction with May
was so poor that it did not reveal whether May told Cooper that
the $5000 was for payment of her drug debt. At Cooper’s
sentencing, May testified that she owed money to Manny for
Oxycodone and he had agreed to take $5000 in payment of her
debt. May could not remember whether she told Cooper what the
money was for, but she testified that he would have understood
that the money was to pay off a drug debt to Manny, because he
knew that was the basis of their relationship. The district
court determined that Cooper would have known the money was for
a drug debt because “the only dealings that existed between
Manny and Chrissy May were oxycodone transactions[.]” The court
further found that Cooper was involved in a jointly undertaken
criminal activity, and was properly held responsible for the
$5000.
On appeal, Cooper argues that May’s debt to Manny
could not have been “reasonably foreseeable” to him because it
was incurred before the single drug distribution to which he
pled guilty. A district court commits procedural error by
basing a sentence on clearly erroneous facts. Gall v. United
States,
552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007).
When an offense involves “jointly undertaken criminal
activity,” regardless of whether it is charged as a conspiracy,
the defendant is accountable for his own conduct, USSG
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§ 1B1.3(a)(1)(A), as well as, for sentencing purposes, “all
reasonably foreseeable acts and omissions of others in
furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity,” which
“occurred during the commission of the offense of conviction, in
preparation for that offense, or in the course of attempting to
avoid detection or responsibility for that offense.” USSG
§ 1B1.3(a)(1). Cooper points out that Application Note 2 to
§ 1B1.3 states:
A defendant’s relevant conduct does not
include the conduct of members of a
conspiracy prior to the defendant’s joining
the conspiracy, even if the defendant knows
of the conduct (e.g., in the case of a
defendant who joins an ongoing drug
distribution conspiracy knowing that it had
been selling two kilograms of cocaine per
week, the cocaine sold prior to the
defendant joining the conspiracy is not
included as relevant conduct in determining
the defendant’s offense level).
We note that the court did not attribute the debt to
Cooper as reasonably foreseeable conduct of his co-conspirators.
Rather, Cooper was held responsible for his own conduct. The
court found that he agreed to deliver money from May to Manny
when his knowledge of May’s past drug dealings with Manny gave
him reason to infer that the money was drug proceeds. He thus
aided and abetted the ongoing drug distribution agreement
between May and Manny, and in so doing he knowingly aided that
conspiracy. Thus, in attributing the $5000 to Cooper, the
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district court correctly held him responsible under
§ 1B1.3(a)(1)(A), which provides that a defendant’s relevant
conduct includes “all acts and omissions committed, aided,
abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, procured, or willfully
caused by the defendant[.]”
We therefore affirm the sentence imposed by the
district court. We dispense with oral argument because the
facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before the court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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