Summary of a Recent
Judicial
Development in
International Agricultural Trade
Sentence Calculation for Violating CITES
Emilie H. LeibovitchNational AgLaw Center Graduate Assistant
In United States v. Norris, 452 F.3d 1275 (11th Cir. 2006), the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a Texas resident who violated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) by illegally importing orchids was properly sentenced under the United States Sentencing Guidelines because the lower court correctly calculated the market value of the illegal shipment.
Norris was charged with conspiring to import and importing orchid specimens from Peru in violation of CITES, which was implemented in the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Id. at 1277. Specifically, the charges stated that Norris and his co-conspirator Manuel G. Arias Silva exported orchids from Peru without valid CITES export permits from the country of origin and that Norris placed false labels on some orchids to conceal the fact that they were not authorized for export. See id. at 1278.
Norris pled guilty to the charges, and to determine his sentence, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida used the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which partially determined the sentence according to the market value of the illegal shipment. See id. at 1280. The district court imposed a sentence of seventeen months of prison, two years of supervised release, and a $700 special assessment because the district court calculated the market value of the shipment based on the value of the whole shipment, including the legally imported orchids. See id. at 1279. Norris appealed and argued, among other things, that the sentence should not have been determined based on the market value of the whole shipment but instead on the market value of the illegally imported orchids only. See id.
The main question before the Eleventh Circuit was whether the market value should have been based exclusively on the market value of the undocumented orchids, or if it should have been based on the market value of the whole shipment, including the documented orchids. See id. at 1280. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling and, relying on §1B1.3 of the Sentencing Guidelines providing all acts helping in the commission of the crime were to be taken into account in determining the guideline range, held that since Norris used the legally imported orchids to hide the undocumented ones, the legally imported orchids were an important part of the conspiracy and needed to be taken into account in the market value calculations. See id. at 1281-82.
The case was decided on June 23, 2006; this summary was posted October 24, 2006.