Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca6-18-01086/USCOURTS-ca6-18-01086-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Lori Gidley
Appellee
Marcus Magnum Reign
Appellant

Document Text:

RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION

Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b)

File Name: 19a0151p.06

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

MARCUS MAGNUM REIGN,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

LORI GIDLEY, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

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No. 18-1086

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.

No. 2:17-cv-11692—Gershwin A. Drain, District Judge.

Argued: May 9, 2019

Decided and Filed: July 10, 2019

Before: ROGERS, DONALD, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.

_________________

COUNSEL

ARGUED: Michael H. McGinley, DECHERT LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Appellant. 

Linus Richard Banghart-Linn, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, 

for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Michael H. McGinley, DECHERT LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 

for Appellant. Linus Richard Banghart-Linn, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, 

Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.

_________________

OPINION

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ROGERS, Circuit Judge. Marcus Magnum Reign was convicted of armed robbery in 

Michigan state court. He was originally sentenced under a mandatory guidelines scheme that 

>

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determined his minimum sentence and incorporated judge-found facts. As became clear before 

the judgment was final, such a sentence would violate his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. 

See Robinson v. Woods, 901 F.3d 710, 714 (6th Cir. 2018); People v. Lockridge, 870 N.W.2d 

502, 513–14 (Mich. 2015) (applying Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013), and United 

States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005)). In the end the sentencing court recognized the SixthAmendment-driven change in the law from a mandatory to an advisory guideline scheme. The 

sentencing court nonetheless imposed a minimum sentence within the relevant guidelines, taking 

into account such judge-found facts, reasoning that the advisory nature of the guidelines did not 

affect the court’s previous application of the guidelines. Magnum Reign1 now appeals the denial 

of habeas relief by the federal district court below, arguing that he is entitled to a resentencing 

hearing, essentially because the guidelines were considered mandatory at the time of his hearing, 

even though not at the time that his sentence became final. Declining to conduct such a new 

hearing in this case was not contrary to, nor did it involve an unreasonable application of, clearly 

established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, and habeas 

relief was therefore properly denied. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 

In August 2014, Magnum Reign pled guilty to one count of armed robbery in Michigan 

state court. At the time, minimum sentences in Michigan were chosen by the sentencing court 

from a range computed under nearly mandatory guidelines. The state sentencing court calculated 

Magnum Reign’s minimum-sentence guidelines range at 108–180 months. This calculation was 

built in part upon judge-found facts, neither admitted by Magnum Reign nor found by a jury. 

The sentencing court chose a minimum sentence of 144 months, at the middle of the range. 

After Magnum Reign moved to correct his sentence in January 2015, the sentencing court 

recalculated the guidelines range for his minimum sentence at 81–135 months, or roughly 6 3⁄4 to 

11 1⁄4 years. At the second sentencing hearing, however, Magnum Reign’s counsel incorrectly 

stated that the range was “around 7 years to about 13 years.” Even though the sentencing court 

again stated its intention to sentence in the middle of his guidelines range, the court gave 

Magnum Reign a minimum sentence of ten years, halfway between seven and thirteen, instead of 

nine years, the actual middle of his range. 

 

1Petitioner’s last name is Magnum Reign.

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Five days after this first resentencing, the Michigan Supreme Court handed down its 

decision in People v. Lockridge, 870 N.W.2d 502 (Mich. 2015). In Lockridge, the Michigan 

Supreme Court held that the Michigan guidelines scheme violated defendants’ Sixth Amendment 

rights under Alleyne, because it was all but mandatory and incorporated judge-found facts to 

increase minimum sentences. See 870 N.W.2d at 513–14. The Michigan Supreme Court’s 

remedy was to “Booker-ize the Michigan sentencing guidelines, i.e., render them advisory only.” 

Id. at 520; see Booker, 543 U.S. at 245. Lockridge accordingly made the Michigan guidelines 

for minimum sentences akin to the federal guidelines—advisory, but “a highly relevant 

consideration in a trial court’s exercise of sentencing discretion.” 870 N.W.2d at 520. Thus, 

Lockridge did not change how the guidelines ranges for minimum sentences were computed; the 

only change was that they were no longer binding on the sentencing judge. To provide guidance 

to Michigan appellate courts, the Michigan Supreme Court instructed that “in cases in which a 

defendant’s minimum sentence was established by application of the sentencing guidelines in a 

manner that violated the Sixth Amendment, the case should be remanded to the trial court to 

determine whether that court would have imposed a materially different sentence but for the 

constitutional error.” Id. at 523. 

After his first resentencing, and after Lockridge came down, Magnum Reign again moved 

for a correction of his sentence. Magnum Reign argued that his previous sentencing counsel had 

been ineffective by stating that the guidelines range for a minimum sentence was 7 to 13 years, 

when in fact it was 6 3⁄4 to 11 1⁄4 years. Magnum Reign also argued that the sentencing court had 

relied on judicial factfinding in violation of Alleyne. Using the language of Lockridge, he wrote 

that “the Court should reconsider the sentence and whether it would have imposed a ‘materially 

different’ sentence using advisory sentencing guidelines.” 

In a written order on March 2, 2016, the sentencing court did just that. After granting 

Magnum Reign’s motion in part, based on the earlier misstatement by his counsel, and lowering 

his sentence to nine years, the sentencing court declined to resentence under Lockridge. The 

court wrote that it “did not feel constrained by the then-mandatory nature of the guidelines. That 

is, the Court would have applied its same reasoning regardless of whether sentencing occurred 

before or after Lockridge. Accordingly, Lockridge does not require resentencing in this case.” 

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Put differently, the sentencing court again decided on a middle-of-the-guidelines sentence even 

though the guidelines were by then advisory, but did so without holding another hearing. 

Magnum Reign appealed his sentence to the Michigan Court of Appeals and the 

Michigan Supreme Court. In both appeals, he argued that the sentencing court had failed to 

follow Lockridge properly, because, in his view, if the sentencing court had followed Lockridge

it would not have considered judge-found facts and would have lowered his guidelines range. 

Both courts denied his appeal in summary orders.

Magnum Reign then filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court 

below, asserting among other things that the sentencing court had based his sentence on 

“unconstitutional judicial fact finding” in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. The district 

court denied his petition. See Magnum Reign v. Gidley, Case No. 2:17-cv-11692, 2017 WL 

4918533 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 31, 2017).

We granted Magnum Reign a certificate of appealability with respect to his Sixth 

Amendment claim. In reviewing Magnum Reign’s habeas appeal, we look to the last reasoned 

state court decision. Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 803–05 (1991). The last reasoned state 

court decision was the state sentencing court’s order in which it imposed a minimum sentence 

within the guidelines range without holding another hearing.

This decision by the sentencing court was not “contrary to, or . . . an unreasonable 

application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the 

United States,” and is therefore entitled to deference under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective 

Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). There is no Supreme Court decision that 

clearly requires a sentencing court in this posture to hold a resentencing hearing.

It is true that, at an earlier point in the state proceedings, the sentencing court had 

imposed a minimum sentence based on state guidelines deemed mandatory. However, the final 

minimum sentence actually challenged by Magnum Reign in the instant appeal was imposed by 

the state trial court at a point in the proceedings when it was clear under state law that the trial 

court must treat as advisory the Michigan guidelines for imposing a minimum sentence. 

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Moreover, at that point the sentencing court explicitly recognized that the Michigan guidelines 

were advisory. 

Magnum Reign argues that the sentencing court at that point should have declined to 

consider certain judge-found facts, but that argument is flatly without merit. Throughout his 

briefing, Magnum Reign contends that a resentencing would necessarily result in a lower 

sentence because his guidelines range would be lower post-Lockridge, but he presents no 

reasoning that supports this contention. According to Magnum Reign, “[h]ad the State Trial 

Court conducted a proper harmful error analysis, the relevant question would have been whether 

Magnum Reign would have received the same sentence without the judicially found facts . . . not 

whether the judge might impose the same sentence under the new discretionary sentencing 

regime.” Reply Br. at 9.

But the constitutional error here was the mandatory application of the guidelines, not 

merely the consideration of judge-found facts. Indeed, under Michigan law the sentencing court 

must still consider judge-found facts. See Lockridge, 870 N.W.2d at 520 n.28. The most recent 

edition of the Michigan Sentencing Guidelines Manual explains that “sentencing courts are still 

required to determine the applicable guidelines range [and] [a]ccordingly, the guidelinesscoring content of this manual remains applicable, with the caveat that the calculated guidelines 

range is advisory rather than binding.” Mich. Sentencing Guidelines Manual at 3 (2019) 

(emphasis in original).

At oral argument, Magnum Reign’s attorney argued for the first time that the harm here 

was Magnum Reign’s inability to argue for a downward departure in a post-Lockridge world. In 

other words, by depriving him of a full resentencing hearing, the sentencing court deprived 

Magnum Reign of the chance to make an argument that the court should depart from the 

guidelines under a sentencing scheme where such departures were more likely. This is a stronger 

argument than the argument in his briefing regarding the calculation of the guidelines, but it does 

not change the result. Aside from the fact that it came too late, this argument fails for two 

reasons. First, Magnum Reign had the ability to make this argument to the sentencing court. 

He could have asked for a new hearing in order that he might request a downward departure. 

Instead, he asked the court to consider whether the mandatory nature of the guidelines made a 

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material difference in his sentence—the court answered that question, and said it did not. 

Second, under AEDPA, Magnum Reign must do more than demonstrate the possibility of a 

lower sentence if his petition were granted. He must demonstrate that the sentencing court’s 

decision contravened clear dictates of the Supreme Court, and this he has not done. 

Finally, Magnum Reign argues that Supreme Court precedent forecloses the procedure of 

the sentencing court here. He contends that under Booker, when a defendant makes a Sixth 

Amendment objection to the mandatory application of sentencing guidelines, the reviewing court 

cannot consider whether the constitutional error was harmless, but must instead hold a 

resentencing hearing. He relies on cases after Booker in which an appellate court, reviewing a 

pre-Booker sentence, had remanded and required a sentencing hearing on remand, rather than 

merely remanding for the district court to determine whether such a hearing was required. 

These cases do not help Magnum Reign for two reasons. First, whatever the merits of 

these varying approaches to Booker remands, the Supreme Court has not clearly established 

which approach is correct, such that the requirements of AEDPA are not met. Second, Magnum 

Reign’s case is not a remand, but rather an appeal from the district court’s sentence finally 

imposed when the guidelines were known and understood to be advisory.

In Booker, the Supreme Court held that the federal sentencing guidelines were 

unconstitutional because they incorporated judge-found facts, 543 U.S. at 226–44, and in a 

“remedy opinion” the Court fixed the problem by rendering the guidelines advisory, 543 U.S. at 

244–68. The Court did not hold that a trial court must conduct a resentencing hearing if 

presented with this objection to a mandatory guidelines sentence. 

Magnum Reign reads much into the final paragraph of the Court’s opinion. There the 

Court noted that it was remanding one of the defendant’s cases for resentencing, but cautioned 

that:

That fact does not mean that we believe that every sentence gives rise to a Sixth 

Amendment violation. Nor do we believe that every appeal will lead to a new 

sentencing hearing. That is because we expect reviewing courts to apply ordinary 

prudential doctrines, determining, for example, whether the issue was raised 

below and whether it fails the “plain-error” test. It is also because, in cases not 

involving a Sixth Amendment violation, whether resentencing is warranted or 

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whether it will instead be sufficient to review a sentence for reasonableness may 

depend upon application of the harmless-error doctrine.

Id. at 268. 

Magnum Reign’s argument rests on a negative inference from the final sentence: if, “in 

cases not involving a Sixth Amendment violation,” the harmless-error doctrine may apply, this 

means that in cases that do involve a Sixth Amendment violation, the harmless-error doctrine 

may not apply. This negative inference does not “clearly establish” the law for AEDPA’s 

purposes. “The text of § 2254(d)(1) . . . suggests that the state court’s decision must be 

substantially different from the relevant precedent of the Supreme Court.” Williams v. Taylor, 

529 U.S. 362, 405 (2000). The state court’s decision was not substantially different from these 

final lines of Booker. What is more, the Supreme Court in Booker was discussing how federal 

appellate courts should consider appeals by federal defendants who were sentenced under the 

mandatory guidelines. Magnum Reign presented his Sixth Amendment challenge to the 

sentencing court on a motion for resentencing. The end of the remedy opinion in Booker does 

not clearly forbid the original sentencing court from determining, prior to a direct appeal,

whether a previously imposed sentence would be altered in an advisory scheme.

Moreover, our precedent does not require us to deem such a reading of Booker to be 

clearly established law. In United States v. Milan, 398 F.3d 445 (6th Cir. 2005), we considered 

the proper procedure for reviewing appeals by federal defendants in the wake of Booker. The 

Second Circuit had recently issued a decision in United States v. Crosby, 397 F.3d 103 (2d Cir. 

2005), in which it had held that such appeals should be remanded to the district court for it to 

determine in the first instance whether resentencing was necessary under the advisory guidelines 

(that is, the Second Circuit recommended doing what the Michigan Supreme Court did in 

Lockridge). Milan read Booker differently than the Second Circuit, and rejected the so-called 

“Crosby remand.” See 398 F.3d at 452. To Magnum Reign, then, Milan stands for the 

proposition that Booker clearly forbade lower courts from reviewing their own sentences for 

harmless error when the defendant has objected on Sixth Amendment grounds. 

However, Milan did not stand on “clear” language from the Supreme Court, but rather 

relied upon implicit cues. As Milan explained, “[i]t is certainly our obligation as courts of appeal 

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to carefully consider what the Supreme Court said in Booker. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore 

what the Court did.” Id. at 452 (emphasis in original). Because the Court in Booker remanded 

for resentencing, in Milan we held that we would remand for resentencing, contrary to Crosby. 

It is hard to read Milan as standing for the proposition that the Supreme Court in Booker clearly 

prohibited Crosby-type remands. 

In fact, Milan and Crosby serve to demonstrate why Booker cannot be the foundation for 

habeas relief here. “A state court’s determination that a claim lacks merit precludes federal 

habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could disagree on the correctness of the state court’s 

decision.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011) (quotation marks omitted). Milan and 

Crosby show that “fairminded jurists could disagree” on the propriety of a lower court’s 

reviewing its own sentence for harmless error. Magnum Reign points out that even the Second 

Circuit later rejected the Crosby remand (for preserved errors), see United States v. Fagans, 406 

F.3d 138, 140–41 (2005), but this development has little force here. Whatever the current 

unpopularity of the Crosby remand, such disfavor does not diminish the fact that different federal 

judges read the final lines of Booker in different ways to require different remedies. This fact 

requires the conclusion that “fairminded jurists could disagree” on the action taken by the 

sentencing court here. 

Magnum Reign’s position is also not supported by Robinson v. Woods, 901 F.3d 710 (6th 

Cir. 2018). In Robinson, the petitioner was sentenced in Michigan when the guidelines were 

mandatory, and he appealed when they were mandatory (that is, pre-Lockridge). See id. at 713. 

We granted his petition for a writ of habeas corpus and remanded “with instructions to remand to 

the state sentencing court for sentencing proceedings consistent with this opinion and the 

Constitution.” Id. at 718. Magnum Reign urges that because we remanded in Robinson, we 

must do so in his case. But the petitioner in Robinson was in a fundamentally different position, 

having never been able to ask the sentencing court to reconsider its sentence under an advisory 

scheme. In Robinson, we essentially granted as relief the chance to do what Magnum Reign has 

already done: ask the sentencing court if it would change its mind once the guidelines became 

advisory. 

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No clearly established federal law prohibits the sentencing court’s procedure here—

neither Booker, nor, for what it is worth, Milan or Robinson. Further, there was no constitutional 

error in the substance of the sentencing court’s decision. 

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

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