United States v. Jose Lara

691 F. App'x 244

Opinion

COOK, Circuit Judge.

In a previous opinion, we held in abeyance the issue of whether defendant Jose Alberto Lara could be found jointly and severally liable for the proceeds of a drug conspiracy in which he had participated. United States v. Lara, 679 Fed.Appx. 392, 396, 2017 WL 527912, at *4 (6th Cir. Feb. 8, 2017). We did so because the Supreme Court had recently granted certiorari in a separate case to address “whether, under [21 U.S.C.] § 853, a defendant may be held jointly and severally liable for property that his co-conspirator derived from the crime but that the defendant himself did not acquire.” Honeycutt v. United States, — U.S. -, 137 S.Ct. 1626, 1630, 198 L.Ed.2d 73 (2017).

The Court now has resolved that question, holding that “[Congress] authorized the Government to confíscate assets only from the defendant who initially acquired the property and who bears responsibility for its dissipation.” Id. at 1634; see also id. at 1633-35 (rejecting the application of Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 66 S.Ct. 1180, 90 L.Ed. 1489 (1946), (i.e„ conspiracy liability) to § 853). Because the district court held Lara liable under § 853 for $162,211 — the sum of the drug proceeds attributed to the conspiracy as a whole — without making factual findings about what portion (if any) Lara “actually acquired” or whether he received “substitute property” derived from the proceeds, see id. at 1633-35, we VACATE the district court’s sentence with respect to Lara’s money-forfeiture judgment and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The judgment of the district court is otherwise AFFIRMED for the reasons given in our prior opinion.