Tag Archives: sentencing enhancements

California Kiddie Porn Statute Encompasses Too Much for Federal Purposes – Update for June 26, 2018

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

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9TH CIRCUIT FINDS STATE SEX OFFENSE PRIORS OVERBROAD FOR 2252 SENTENCE ENHANCEMENT

kittyporn170420People convicted of receiving child porn can receive a 10-year mandatory minimum under 18 U.S.C. 2252(b)(2) if they have a prior state conviction “relating to” possession of such porn. Last week, the 9th Circuit applied a Taylor-type analysis to California’s child porn possession law and child sexual exploitation law, ruling that both statutes were overbroad and thus could not be used to increase Melvin “Buck” Reinhart’s Sec. 2252 minimum sentence to 10 years.

The Circuit said Cal. Penal Code Sec. 311.11(a) sweeps in “depictions of a broader range of sexual conduct than the federal statute and is not divisible. The panel likewise held that Sec. 311.3(a) is categorically overbroad as compared to the federal definition of “sexually explicit conduct,” and that it is not divisible.

Because the terms “child pornography” and “sexually explicit conduct,” are explicitly defined in California law, the statutory text “tug[s]… in favor of a narrower reading” of the phrase “relating to.” The holding is at odds with 8th and 10th Circuit decisions, and may “have the effect of making Sec. 2252(b)(2) inapplicable in numerous states that define child pornography more broadly than the federal definition.”

United States v. Reinhart, Case No. 16-10409 (June 18, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root

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2nd Circuit Holds “In Guidelines” Sentence to be Unreasonable – Update for April 20, 2017

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LISAStatHeader2smallA SHOT ACROSS THE BOW

We have to begin, as always, with our usual disclaimer: child pornography is odious. The creation of it has a terrible impact on the children forced into such conduct. And of course, we – like the overwhelming majority of people – are repulsed by child porn itself. Even reading details of it in appellate court decisions often has us getting up frequently to wash our hands.

childporn170420As a result, there is hardly a crime easier to demagogue than child pornography. Congress has juiced the kiddie porn sentencing guidelines repeatedly, because – after all – who could object to hammering depraved people who looked at kiddie porn with what are effectively life sentences? Certainly not legislators. And can you imagine a senator or House member who voted against dictating guideline levels to the Sentencing Commission (who is expert in sentencing matters)? Any challenger at reelection time is going to point at the unfortunate solon and shout, “My opponent voted to let child molesters out of prison early!!!”

pork170420It’s the kind of thing (along with eating one too many pork-chops-on-a-stick) that will keep a politician awake at night.

Seven years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals fired the first warning shot at the child porn guidelines in United States v. Dorvee. After reviewing in detail the politically-charged and commonsense-challenged history of the child pornography guideline, the Court “encouraged” district judges “to take seriously the broad discretion they possess in fashioning sentences under § 2G2.2 – ones that can range from non-custodial sentences to the statutory maximum – bearing in mind that they are dealing with an eccentric Guideline of highly unusual provenance which, unless carefully applied, can easily generate unreasonable results.”

shot170420Last Monday, the 2nd Circuit revisited the question, and in a remarkable decision – a real shot across the bow for the child pornography Guidelines – held that a child porn sentence that fell within the calculated Guidelines range was nevertheless substantively unreasonable. And it did so even where the defendant was rather unsympathetic.

To our knowledge, no court has ever before held that a within-range Guidelines sentence was substantively unreasonable. That alone makes today’s decision a remarkable case.

Joe Jenkins – a man with no prior criminal conduct – was on his way to Canada to meet his parents for a family vacation. When Joe crossed into Canada, Canadian customs people thought he was acting squirrely, and so they inspected his laptop and a couple of thumb drives he had with him. They found a lot of kiddie porn.

Joe was charged in Canada, but – being released on bail – he beat feet back to the US. The Mounties, deciding that getting mad was not as rewarding as getting even, asked US Homeland Security whether they might be interested in Joe’s collection. They were. Joe was charged with a count of possession of child porn, and another of transportation of such porn across state lines.

bound170420At trial, Joe was obstreperous, sharp-tongued and uncooperative. He was convicted, and the court figured his Guidelines as 210-240 months. Joe was sentenced to 120 months for possession, the statutory maximum. On the transportation count, he got a concurrent sentence of 225 months, with a supervised release term of 25 years after the sentence ended. The district court thought Joe’s disrespect for the judicial process – not to mention some of the whoppers he told on the stand – suggested he was likely to possess child porn again after he got released.

The 2nd Circuit, in an unprecedented decision, held that Joe’s “in Guidelines” sentence was excessive. Noting that “in view of Jenkins’s age [43], this sentence effectively meant that Jenkins would be incarcerated and subject to intense government scrutiny for the remainder of his life,” the Court rejected the sentence as violating § 3553(a)’s “parsimony clause,” which instructs a district court to impose a sentence “sufficient, but not greater than necessary,” to achieve § 3553(a)(2)’s goals.

The Court noted that “bringing a personal collection of child pornography across state or national borders is the most narrow and technical way to trigger the transportation provision. Whereas Jenkins’s transportation offense carried a skittyporn170420tatutory maximum of 20 years, the statutory maximum for his possession offense was “only” 10 years. Jenkins was eligible for an additional 10 years’ imprisonment because he was caught with his collection at the Canadian border rather than in his home.” What’s more, the Court said, the Sentencing Commission’s own statistics suggest that Joe’s age makes him much less likely to reoffend after a 10-year prison stint, which is at odds with the district judge’s holding to the contrary.

The Circuit reserved its most withering criticism for the enhancements that applied to Joe’s Guidelines calculations. The four most common include a 2-level increase for use of a computer and another increase for “more than 600 images.” The Court said that in Dorvee,

we noted that four of the sentencing enhancements were so “run-of-the-mill” and “all but inherent to the crime of conviction” that “[a]n ordinary first-time offender is therefore likely to qualify for a sentence of at least 168 to 210 months” based on an offense level increased from the base level of 22 to 35… The concerns we expressed in Dorvee apply with even more force here and none of them appears to have been considered by the district court. Jenkins received precisely the same “run-of-the-mill” and “all-but-inherent” enhancements that we criticized in Dorvee, resulting in an increase in his offense level from 22 to 35. These enhancements have caused Jenkins to be treated like an offender who seduced and photographed a child and distributed the photographs and worse than one who raped a child…

kporn160124The Circuit cited Sentencing Commission stats showing that 96% of child porn possession defendants received the enhancement for an image of a victim under the age of 12, 85% for an image of sadistic or masochistic conduct or other forms of violence, 79% for an offense involving 600 or more images, and 95% for the use of a computer. When nearly everyone qualifies for the enhancement, it ceases being an enhancement and begins being merely a characteristic of the underlying offense.

The 2-1 majority observed that

a sentence of 225 months for a first-time offender who never spoke to, much less approached or touched, a child or transmitted explicit images to anybody is unreasonable. Additional months in prison are not simply numbers. Those months have exceptionally severe consequences for the incarcerated individual. They also have consequences both for society which bears the direct and indirect costs of incarceration and for the administration of justice which must be at its best when, as here, the stakes are at their highest.

The appellate court concluded that “on remand, we are confident that Jenkins will eventually receive a sentence that properly punishes the crimes he committed. But Judge Suddaby, in imposing his sentence, went far overboard.”

United States v. Jenkins, Case No. 14-4295 (2nd Cir., Apr. 17, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

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A Nation of Second Chances – Update for January 19, 2017

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

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5th CIRCUIT OKS 2241 ATTACK UNDER BURRAGE

second170119Everyone’s been gushing about second chances, as President Obama goes out in a blaze of commutation glory, granting sentence clemency to over 600 people in his final days in office. And we have no problem with that, except that so many others who were punished with draconian sentences they could never get today were left behind. 

This week also brought a “second chance” for a rational sentence of a different kind. 

Tiofila Santillana was trafficking in methadone. One of her buyers, as buyers of illegally-sold controlled substances are wont to do, overdosed on a cocktail of alcohol and multiple drugs – including methadone – and “shuffel’d off this mortall coile” (which is Shakespearean for “died).” Under 21 USC 841(b)(1)(C), if death results from drugs distributed by a defendant, a court must sentence a defendant to a mandatory minimum 20 years.

The experts testifying in Tiofila’s case agreed that her methadone contributed to the doper’s death, even though it was not the cause of death. The trial court felt obliged to hammer her with a 20-year sentence.

cocktail170119Five years after Tiofila’s conviction, the Supreme Court held in Burrage v. United States that where “use of the drug distributed by the defendant is not an independently sufficient cause of the victim’s death or serious bodily injury, a defendant cannot be liable under the penalty enhancement provision of 21 USC 841(b)(1)(C) unless such use is a but-for cause of the death or injury.” Tiofila promptly filed for relief.

But here’s the rub. Tiofila was out of time to file a motion under 28 USC 2255, because that statute requires that the motion be filed within a year of the case becoming final. There is an exception where the “right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review.”

Tiofila filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 USC 2241, claiming she was entitled to relief under Burrage v. United States. The district court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction, finding that Tiofila had not satisfied the “savings clause” of 28 USC 2255(e) because Burrage was not retroactively applicable on collateral review.

Earlier this week, the 5th Circuit reversed, agreeing with Tiofila that she is entitled to relief. The case provides a clear roadmap as to what must be shown by a petitioner seeking to use a 2241 motion because he or she says a 2255 will not do.

inadequacy17-119Ordinarily, to attack a conviction collaterally, a federal prisoner can seek relief only by a 2255 motion. But under 2255(e)’s “savings clause,” she may file a habeas petition if Sec. 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality” of the detention. Courts have held 2255 to be “inadequate or ineffective” if the 2241 petition raises a claim “that is based on a retroactively applicable Supreme Court decision”; (2) the claim was previously “foreclosed by circuit law at the time when [it] should have been raised in petitioner’s trial, appeal or first 2255 motion”; and (3) that retroactively applicable decision establishes that “the petitioner may have been convicted of a nonexistent offense.”

The Court held that Burrage was retroactive whether the Supreme Court had said so or not, because such new Supreme Court decisions “interpreting federal statutes that substantively define criminal offenses automatically apply retroactively,” applying retroactively because they “necessarily carry a significant risk that a defendant stands convicted of an act that the law does not make criminal…”

retro160110The district court had dismissed Tiofila’s petition, relying on Tyler v. Cain, which held that for a prisoner to file a second or successive habeas petition based on a new rule of constitutional law, the Supreme Court must have held the rule to be retroactive to cases on collateral review. But Tyler does not apply to the “savings clause” of 2255(e), the Circuit said, which requires only that a qualifying 2241 petition be based on a “retroactively applicable Supreme Court decision,” without specifying that the Supreme Court must have made the determination of retroactivity.

On its face, the Court said, “Burrage is a substantive decision that interprets the scope of a federal criminal statute… At issue in Burrage was the meaning of “death or serious bodily injury results.” The Burrage holding “narrows the scope of a criminal statute, because but-for causation is a stricter requirement than are some alternative interpretations of “results.”

Santillana v. Warden, Case No, 15-10606 (5th Cir. Jan. 16, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

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Bootstrapping Your Way to Enhanced Sentences – Update for January 11, 2017

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

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CHECK OUT THESE GUNS

About one out of ten federal offenders is charged with a firearms offense, and just about all of them are charged as felons-in-possession.

guns170111The shorthand is misleading, because literally, 18 USC 922 nowhere uses the word “felony.” But it does talk about a lot of other things. You can commit the offense colloquially called felon-in-possession if you own a firearm or ammunition that has traveled in interstate commerce after (1) being convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison; (2) being under indictment for such a crime; (3) being convicted of any misdemeanor involving domestic violence; (4) being a fugitive from justice; (5) being a drug abuser; (6) being under a civil protection order; (7) being an illegal alien; (8) being dishonorably discharged from the armed forces; or (9) having renounced your citizenship.

The statute’s a hot mess, and its byzantine requirements would almost be laughable if the penalty – up to 10 years in prison – were not so serious. We just talked to a Navy veteran the other day who wanted to expunge a domestic violence misdemeanor he had gotten while on leave 22 years ago. He was shocked when we told him that he was committing a 10-year federal felony by owning the shotgun he hunted deer with every year.

Today’s case isn’t about the flaws in the statute, however, but rather the flaws in the system. Dasean Taylor was very much a felon-in-possession. In fact, he must have caught the authorities’ attention as a bona fide bad guy, because law enforcement sent an informant to buy guns from Dasean on three separate occasions.

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                            Not a business license…

Catching Desean the first time he sold a gun would have been plenty to hang him as a felon-in-possession. But the Sentencing Guidelines include an arsenal of enhancements that can jack up the sentencing range of a felon-in-possession, and the government pretty clearly wanted Dasean’s hide.

Dasean’s case centered around a 4-level enhancement for trafficking in firearms. The enhancement would apply to Desean if he sold two or more guns, and knew or had reason to know possession of the guns by the buyer was illegal or the buyer was going to use the guns illegally.

To be sure they could hammer Dasean, the authorities had their undercover buyer tell Dasean he was going to file the serial numbers off one of the guns. One of other guns sold was a sawed-off shotgun, illegal to own unless it was registered under 26 USC 5841. The district court held that the sale of those two guns satisfied the trafficking enhancement.

An unfortunate effect of the adoption of the federal sentencing guidelines was to institutionalize the practice of sentence manipulation. The drug guidelines increased according to the weight of the drugs sold, so law enforcement would not just make one buy, but rather a number of buys, until a weight threshold was reached. If the offense carried an enhancement for possession of a firearm, the undercover would beg the defendant to find a gun, any gun, that the undercover could buy. The worst examples are the “stash house” robberies, where the ATF agents running the sting would tell tales of a fictitious safe house stacked with kilos and kilos of cocaine. Why tell the perps they could knock over a place and get 4 kilos of coke when it was just as easy to promise 25 kilos?

§ 924 tacks a few years onto a sentence for carrying a gun during a violent or drug crime.
                                           Some guns you just know aren’t for plinking at cans…

In today’s case, Desean complained on appeal that there wasn’t enough evidence to apply the 4-level enhancement to his sentence (giving him 71 months instead of 46 months). Monday, the 1st Circuit affirmed the enhancement and sentence.

The district court found that “the cooperating witness [said] that he [was] going to take the serial number off” and that therefore “Mr. Taylor as a supplier would know [that the transfer] involved some unlawful possession or the use or disposal of the firearm unlawfully.” Dasean said the audio didn’t prove he heard the buyer say that, but the Circuit concluded otherwise., holding that because Taylor must have heard the statement,

then the District Court committed no clear or obvious error — or, for that matter, any error at all — in concluding that Taylor knew or should have known that the removal of a serial number is indicative of “anticipation that the gun will be used in criminal activity,” and thus that Taylor knew or should have known that CW-1 intended to use or dispose of the firearm unlawfully.

Now that’s a totem pole of inferences! The Court inferred from the audio that Dasean heard the buyer saw he’d remove the number, it inferred that Dasean knew that removing serial numbers indicates the buyer plans to be up to no good with the gun, and therefore it inferred that Dasean knew or should have known that the buyer intended to use or dispose of the firearm unlawfully.

Maybe so, but we think that begs the question. The cooperating witness did not intend to use the firearm unlawfully, or, for that matter, to remove the serial number. Instead, he was buying the firearm (and making the claim) at the behest of law enforcement, without any intention of carrying out his promise. It’s pretty obvious the buyer claimed he wanted to remove the serial number solely to trap Dasean with a higher guideline range. But can a defendant be said to know a b uyer will do something the buyer has no intention of doing when he claims to plan to do so?

It’s just unseemly to lie to someone, and then punish them because you assert they must have believed their lie.

boot170111Of course, there was a sawed-off shotgun, too. Under the National Firearms Act, one may not possess a sawed-off shotgun without registering it with the ATF. But the district court conceded that proper registration of the shotgun was possible, just unlikely. The Court of Appeals agreed, noting among other things that Dasean knew the buyer was up to no good because he “was on notice that CW-1 had expressed during the September transaction an intention to remove the serial number from a firearm.”

We don’t excuse selling guns to people who intend to misuse them, but the entire exercise in pumping up Dasean’s sentence struck us a serious case of bootstrapping.

United States v. Taylor, Case No. 15-1775 (1st Circuit, Jan. 9, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

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