Trammell

MEMORANDUM *

George Trammell (“Trammell”), a former California Superior Court Judge, appeals his sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of mail fraud, by which he deprived the People of the State of California of their right to honest services in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1346. The district court did not, as Trammell argues, impermissibly shift the burden of proof to him by using his silence against him. Instead, the district court elected not to rely on those facts in the PreSentence Report to which Trammell objected.

Neither did the district court err in applying the vulnerable victim adjustment pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1. Pifen Lo (“Lo”), a woman with whom Trammell engaged in a sexual relationship after she appeared as a defendant in a criminal case before Trammell, was a vulnerable victim of Trammell’s crime. The harm Trammell caused Lo need not be an element of the crime of which Trammell was convicted. United States v. Haggard, 41 F.3d 1320, 1324-26 (9th Cir.1994). Trammell’s criminal conduct need only be “inextricably intertwined” with the harm his sexual relationship with Lo caused to her. See United States v. Sherwood, 98 F.3d 402, 413 (9th Cir.1996).…