United States v. Blacknoll , 372 F. App'x 911 ( 2010 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
April 14, 2010
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
No. 09-3232
v.
(D.C. No.2:07-CR-20100-JWL-9)
(D. Kan.)
JAMMAAL D. BLACKNOLL,
Defendant-Appellant.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before HARTZ, BALDOCK, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
After Jammaal D. Blacknoll pled guilty to drug charges, he argued he was
eligible for the safety valve provision in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f), which allows the
district court to sentence him to a lesser term than the statutory minimum. The
district court disagreed, finding that Mr. Blacknoll had failed to provide complete
and truthful cooperation to the government as the safety valve provision requires.
On appeal, Mr. Blacknoll argues he did fully cooperate with the government and
*
After examining appellant’s brief and the appellate record, this panel has
determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the
determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2) and 10th Cir. R.
34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This
order and judgment is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of law of
the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its
persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
submits that the district court’s contrary finding is clearly erroneous. Our
independent review, however, reveals that the district court had reason to doubt
the veracity and completeness of Mr. Blacknoll’s testimony. Accordingly, we
affirm.
I
Mr. Blacknoll was indicted, along with ten other co-defendants, for his
involvement in a drug conspiracy. He ultimately pled guilty to one count of
conspiracy to distribute approximately 1000 kilograms of marijuana and five
kilograms of cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 and 21 U.S.C. § 841, as
well as one count of possession with intent to distribute approximately 100
kilograms of marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841 and 18 U.S.C. § 2. In the
usual course, a Presentence Investigation Report (“PSR”) was prepared for the
district court.
Mr. Blacknoll objected to the PSR’s failure to apply the safety valve
provision codified in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) to reduce his sentence below the
statutory minimum. In order to be eligible for the safety valve, a defendant must,
among other things, truthfully provide to the government all information he has
relevant to the offense of conviction. See § 3553(f)(5). Mr. Blacknoll claimed he
did just that, but the government disagreed. To resolve the dispute, the district
court held a sentencing hearing at which it elected to entertain testimony from
Special Agent Doug Dorley and Mr. Blacknoll.
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Special Agent Dorley testified that he interviewed Mr. Blacknoll
on four separate occasions prior to Mr. Blacknoll’s guilty plea, and that during
each of these interviews Mr. Blacknoll admitted to making misstatements to the
government. Special Agent Dorley further testified that Mr. Blacknoll only
admitted to making a prior misstatement after being questioned further or
presented with evidence contradicting that statement.
For example, Mr. Blacknoll initially told Special Agent Dorley that he had
only visited the stash house with his uncle and a co-defendant named Johnathan
Kohrs. But when Special Agent Dorley informed Mr. Blacknoll that the
government had video footage of him entering the stash house with his wife and
child, Mr. Blacknoll admitted that he had visited the house with his wife.
Mr. Blacknoll also initially told Special Agent Dorley that he only owned a
Cadillac Escalade that his wife purchased with legitimate funds. After further
questioning, however, Mr. Blacknoll conceded he had bought the Escalade with
drug money — and he also admitted owning a Corvette.
Special Agent Dorley testified, as well, that Mr. Blacknoll gave
contradictory testimony about the involvement of others in the drug trafficking
ring. While Mr. Blacknoll initially stated his wife had no involvement, he later
admitted that she “helped count the money once or twice.” Aplt. App. Vol. I at
64. And while Mr. Blacknoll first told Special Agent Dorley that his friend
Tommy Humphreys was not involved in drug trafficking, after Special Agent
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Dorley confronted Mr. Blacknoll with the fact that the government knew he had
received 500 pounds of marijuana from Mr. Humphreys, Mr. Blacknoll admitted
he and Mr. Humphreys had a drug trafficking relationship. Given this pattern of
inconsistent statements, Special Agent Dorley testified that he wasn’t sure Mr.
Blacknoll ever told the government the truth.
At the hearing, Mr. Blacknoll replied to all this by acknowledging that he
had revised many of his statements during the course of the interviews. But he
also claimed that, in the end at least, he told the government everything he knew.
He also claimed (for the first time) that the reason he had not earlier told the
government about Mr. Humphreys’s participation in the drug ring was that Mr.
Humphreys had threatened to kill him if he did. Mr. Blacknoll testified that Mr.
Humphreys first threatened him while they were both on a trip to Las Vegas.
According to Mr. Blacknoll, Mr. Humphreys called several months later to
arrange another meeting in a parking lot, at which Mr. Humphreys again
threatened to kill Mr. Blacknoll if Mr. Blacknoll informed on him. Mr. Blacknoll
had not mentioned either of these threats during any of the four interviews with
Special Agent Dorley.
During the sentencing hearing, the district court explained to both parties
that it read the safety valve provision to require Mr. Blacknoll to disclose
truthfully all information known to him by the conclusion of the sentencing
hearing, rather than before its commencement. So, the court reasoned, even if
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Mr. Blacknoll had not been fully forthcoming in his interviews with the
government, he could still be eligible for the safety valve if he provided
completely truthful information at the sentencing hearing itself.
Even so, by the hearing’s conclusion, the court found Mr. Blacknoll hadn’t
been wholly truthful. It thus found Mr. Blacknoll was not eligible for the safety
valve and so sentenced him to the statutory minimum of 120 months’
imprisonment on the conspiracy count and 87 months’ imprisonment on the
possession count, to run concurrently.
II
18 U.S.C. § 3553(f), known as the “safety valve” provision, “permits the
district court to disregard a statutory mandatory minimum sentence and instead
impose a sentence within the advisory sentencing guidelines range, if the
defendant meets five criteria.” United States v. Altamirano-Quintero, 511 F.3d
1087, 1090 (10th Cir. 2007); see also U.S.S.G. § 5C1.2(a) (providing that “the
court shall impose a sentence in accordance with the applicable guidelines
without regard to any statutory minimum sentence, if the court finds that the
defendant meets the criteria in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(1)-(5)”). The only one of
these criteria at issue in this case is the final one, requiring that “not later than the
time of the sentencing hearing,” the defendant must “truthfully provide[ ] to the
Government all information and evidence the defendant has concerning the
offense or offenses that were part of the same course of conduct or of a common
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scheme or plan.” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(5). The phrase “offense or offenses that
were part of the same course of conduct or of a common scheme or plan” is
defined as “the offense of conviction and all relevant conduct.” § 5C1.2,
comment. (n. 3).
On appeal, Mr. Blacknoll challenges the district court’s factual finding that
he failed to provide truthful and complete disclosure about his crimes during the
sentencing hearing. Under our case law, we review a district court’s factual
determination on this score only for “clear error.” Altamirano-Quintero, 511 F.3d
at 1098. This is no easy hurdle to clear. For a finding to qualify as clearly
erroneous, the appellant must show that it is “more than possibly or even probably
wrong; the error must be pellucid to any objective observer.” Watson v. United
States, 485 F.3d 1100, 1108 (10th Cir. 2007).
Before addressing this factual question, however, we acknowledge an
antecedent legal one lurking in the background. The district court interpreted the
language of the safety valve provision — requiring Mr. Blacknoll to come clean
“not later than the time of the sentencing hearing” — to allow him to wait until
the sentencing hearing to provide completely truthful information about his
activities. That is, he could lie during his interviews with the government and
still obtain a safety valve reduction if he testified truthfully at the sentencing
hearing. Whether this view of the statute is correct is a question this court has
not yet answered. A number of our sister circuits have, however, adopted an
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apparently different reading of the language, requiring the offender to make a
complete and proper disclosure of information before the commencement of the
sentencing hearing. See, e.g., United States v. Brenes, 250 F.3d 290, 293 (5th
Cir. 2001); United States v. Schreiber, 191 F.3d 103, 107 (2d Cir. 1999); United
States v. Marin, 144 F.3d 1085, 1091 (7th Cir. 1998).
As it happens, however, we have no need to enter this fray today. Even
assuming without deciding that the district court’s reading of the statute was the
right one, Mr. Blacknoll has not carried his burden of showing that the district
court’s factual finding — that he failed to provide truthful and complete
information about his activities by the completion of the sentencing hearing —
was clearly erroneous.
When asked at the sentencing hearing why he hadn’t told the government
about Mr. Humphreys’s involvement in the drug ring until the final interview, Mr.
Blacknoll claimed that Mr. Humphreys had twice threatened to kill him if he
snitched, once in Las Vegas and then later at a mutually agreed meeting. While
maybe not an entirely unfathomable scenario, the district court was entitled to
disbelieve this testimony, as it did, given that Mr. Blacknoll (1) failed to mention
any such threats in four prior meetings with the government; (2) asked the court
to believe that, after Mr. Humphreys threatened to kill him once in Las Vegas, he
nonetheless willingly agreed to meet him in a parking lot several months later,
only to be threatened again; and (3) had a substantial history of fabricating stories
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to explain away his own illicit activities and those of others. Indeed, it was
entirely permissible for the district court to credit, as it did, Special Agent
Dorley’s testimony that, by dint of so many misrepresentations in the past, the
government could not be sure Mr. Blacknoll ever provided fully truthful
information. It is a fact of life that someone “who changes his or her story to
match [others’] evolving knowledge of the events risks irrevocably undermining
his or her credibility.” Schreiber, 191 F.3d at 107. That’s the conclusion the
district court reached in this case. And the record in this case precludes us from
saying an objective observer would have to find that conclusion not just possibly
or probably wrong, but clearly wrong.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Neil M. Gorsuch
Circuit Judge
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