United States v. Archuleta

865 F.3d 1280, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 14287
Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit·Decided July 28, 2017·No. No. 16-1297·Published·Cited by 15 cases

Opinions

BRISCOE, Circuit Judge.

Defendant Gabriel Archuleta pleaded guilty to three criminal counts: specifically, [1282]*1282violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 924(c)(l)(A)(ii), and 2113(a) and (d). All of these charges arose out of Archuleta’s participation in an armed bank robbery and his subsequent agreement to engage in additional armed bank robberies. Archule-ta was sentenced to concurrent terms of 120 months’ imprisonment on the § 371 and § 2113 convictions, plus a consecutive 84-month sentence on the § 924(c) conviction, for a total term of imprisonment of 204 months. Archuleta now appeals his sentence, arguing that the district court erred in (1) imposing a four-level enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2B3.1(b)(4)(A) for “abduction,” (2) assigning him a criminal history point for a Colorado state conviction for marijuana possession, and (3) imposing a sentence above the statutory maximum for the § 371 conviction. Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. '§ 1291, we reject Archuleta’s first argument, but conclude that there is merit to his second and third arguments. Consequently, we remand to the district court with directions to vacate Archuleta’s sentence and resentence him.

I

On the afternoon of June 17, 2014, two armed men wearing masks and gloves entered the lobby of the Wells Fargo Bank in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and ordered the employees and customers to get down on the floor. The men then ordered the tellers to come out from the teller area. One of the men also demanded that the bank manager come forward and give them access to the bank’s vault. The manager complied and said that she could give the robber access to the vault. The robber said he was aware that it would take two people to open the vault, so he directed the manager and one teller, at gunpoint, to take him to the vault area of the bank. The manager and teller complied and, together with the robber, they left the lobby area and.entered the bank’s vault. There, the robber, again at gunpoint, directed the manager to open the safe and place the money from the safe into a black plastic trash bag. The manager complied, but the robber expressed frustration that she was not moving quick enough and cycled the slide on his handgun, pointed it directly at the manager, and ordered her to move faster.

While the one robber was in the vault, the other robber maintained control over the remaining employees and customers in the bank’s lobby by ordering them at gunpoint to lie on the floor. When new customers entered the bank, the robber also ordered them to get down on the floor. This robber walked continuously around the area, maintaining control over the employees and'customers, while telling the robber in the vault to hurry up.

After the manager had placed most of the money from the vault into the trash bag, the robber in the vault took the trash bag with the money and left the vault area. The two robbers then fled the bank and got into a Honda Element that was waiting in the bank’s parking lot. The Honda Element, which had been stolen a few days earlier from a home in south Denver, was driven by a third individual. A witness observed the Honda Element leave the bank parking lot and head southbound. Not long after the robbers fled the bank, the Honda Element was found engulfed in flames in a wooded area less than five miles from the bank.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found no useful forensic evidence at the scene of the robbery. But the FBI did discover that a woman who worked as a teller at another Wells Fargo branch in the Denver area had conspired with the robbers. Specifically, the woman provided the robbers with information about Wells Fargo’s general procedures for gaining access to a vault, and also with information [1283]*1283about how to determine which Wells Fargo branch would have large amounts of cash on hand at a particular time. In exchange for this information, the robbers provided her with a portion of the robbery proceeds.

The two robbers were identified as Gabriel Archuleta and Thomas McQuown. The FBI determined that shortly after the robbery, Archuleta spent large sums of money, often $100 bills, on a variety of items including clothing, jewelry and automobiles. The FBI also monitored and recorded phone calls between Archuleta and the female teller who had conspired with him.

In February of 2015, McQuown told his female coconspirator that he was in need of cash and was considering committing additional robberies. At the suggestion of the FBI, the female coconspirator told McQuown to hold off because she might have some ideas for him. The female co-conspirator then, at the suggestion of the FBI, arranged for McQuown and Archule-ta to meet with an undercover FBI agent posing as an employee of an armored car company. The purported purpose of the meeting was to discuss a possible robbery.

The undercover FBI agent met with Archuleta and discussed setting up a robbery. The agent advised Archuleta that he would know when large deposits would be made at a given bank and could contact Archuleta so that he and McQuown could rob the bank immediately following a large deposit. Two days later, the undercover FBI agent met with Archuleta again and provided him with a cell phone to use for further communications.

The undercover agent subsequently met with both Archuleta and McQuown to further discuss the planned robbery. The three men discussed a general plan in which the undercover agent, acting in the course of his alleged employment as an armored ear driver, would drop money at a bank and then Archuleta and McQuown would shortly thereafter enter the bank at gunpoint and steal the money before bank personnel had the opportunity to place it in the vault.

The undercover agent met with Archule-ta and McQuown two more times. The last of these meetings, which was audio and video recorded by the undercover agent, was for the purpose of casing banks for potential robbery. During this meeting, the undercover agent drove Archuleta and McQuown to two suburban Denver banks where they surveilled the exteriors of these banks. The undercover agent also provided Archuleta and McQuown with sketches of the interiors of both banks. Archuleta discussed possible escape routes from both banks, and Archuleta and McQuown devised a code that the undercover agent could text them to identify which of the two banks would have the most money. McQuown also provided the undercover agent with a separate code to use if the money deposited at the target banks was not sufficient to justify the robbery.

Archuleta was arrested on March 18, 2015. Archuleta waived his rights and agreed to be interviewed. He admitted to committing the June 17, 2014, bank robbery and conspiring to commit an additional bank robbery in March 2015. With respect to his role in the June 17, 2014, bank robbery, Archuleta admitted that he was one of the two men who entered the bank, and that he was the one who ordered and accompanied the bank manager and a teller into the vault. He also identified the driver of the getaway vehicle as Thomas Lucero.

II

On March 23, 2015, a federal grand jury indicted Archuleta, McQuown and Lucero on four criminal counts: (1) conspiracy to commit bank robbery in 2014, in violation [1284]

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United States v. Archuleta, 865 F.3d 1280, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 14287 (10th Cir. 2017).

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