United States v. Gumbs

286 F. App'x 763
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit·Decided July 24, 2008·No. No. 06-4708-cr·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

Defendant-Appellant Shavon Gumbs appeals from an October 6, 2006 judgment of conviction entered in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Gleeson, J.) after a jury trial, sentencing Gumbs principally to 135 months’ imprisonment. Gumbs was convicted of the following: (1) conspiring to distribute at least 50 grams of cocaine base (“crack”) in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841 (b)(1)(A)(Hi); (2) conspiring to distribute marijuana in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(b)(1)(D); and (3) possessing with intent to distribute at least five grams of crack and marijuana, within 1,000 feet of a school, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(B)(iii), 841(b)(1)(D), 860(a), and 18 U.S.C. § 2. On appeal, Gumbs challenges the District Court’s imposition of enhancements for obstruction of justice and for possessing a gun, and he argues that his sentence is unreasonable. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the remaining factual background and procedural history of this case, as well as the issues Gumbs raises on appeal.

The first challenge that Gumbs raises to his sentence involves the enhancement for obstruction of justice under section 3C1.1 of the Sentencing Guidelines — specifically, Gumbs’s lying to the District Court about his citizenship and immigration status in order to obtain his release on bail. In his brief, Gumbs concedes that, shortly after his arrest, he falsely informed a Magistrate Judge, via a report prepared by Pre-Trial Services, that he was born in Brooklyn, New York [765] and was therefore an American citizen. In fact, Gumbs had been born in Antigua, West Indies, and had no legal status in the United States. However, as before the District Court, Gumbs contends that his providing such false information merely for the purpose of obtaining bail may not, as a matter of law, constitute obstruction of justice for the purpose of enhancing a sentence under section 3C1.1. In United States v. Mafanya, 24 F.3d 412 (2d Cir. 1994), we affirmed a district court’s determination that a defendant’s provision of false information to a magistrate judge in order to obtain bail warrants an enhancement under section 3C1.1 for obstruction of justice. Id. at 414-15. In his brief, Gumbs does not argue that his circumstances differ, in any meaningful way, from those in Mafanya.

Instead, Gumbs argues that the circumstances surrounding his fabrications to Pre-trial Services were sufficiently similar to those at issue in United States v. Khimchiachvili, 372 F.3d 75 (2d Cir.2004), to warrant our reversal of the District Court’s imposition of this enhancement. In Khimchiachvili, the defendant submitted a false affidavit regarding his finances in order to obtain court-appointed counsel. Id. at 76-77. We held that the facts known about the defendant’s fabrication did not “reveal the required obstructive intent” because the only motivation to explain the defendant’s conduct was his desire not to pay for a lawyer. Id. at 80 (“He was not seeking to prevent justice or even delay it.”). Such a motivation could not be held, as a matter of law, to satisfy the intent requirement of section 3C1.1 because the district court’s mere appointment of counsel — as opposed to the defendant obtaining counsel on his own — does not “interfere[ ] with ... the disposition of the criminal charges against a defendant.” Id. (noting, however, that “[i]n other circumstances, a court could find that [such conduct] was made with the willful intent to obstruct justice”). “For a defendant’s conduct to qualify as obstruction of justice, it must have the ‘potential to impede’ the investigation, prosecution, or sentencing of the defendant.” Id. (quoting United States v. McKay, 183 F.3d 89, 95 (2d Cir. 1999)). As Mafanya implicitly recognized, a defendant’s falsely obtaining bail always has the potential to impede the prosecution of the offense charged due to the inherent risk that a defendant on bail may not appear in court as scheduled. See Mafan-ya, 24 F.3d at 415 (rejecting defendant’s argument that “his lies did not ‘significant fy obstruct or impede the government’s ‘investigation or prosecution’ of the offense ... because the government never believed him, and because the government would have obtained the correct information — as it did — through a routine investigation that was not made any more difficult by the false statements”). In sum, the District Court did not err in enhancing Gumbs’s sentence for obstruction of justice.

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United States v. Gumbs, 286 F. App'x 763 (2d Cir. 2008).

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