Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-04-03101/USCOURTS-ca8-04-03101-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
John A. Schafer
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The HONORABLE NANETTE K. LAUGHREY, United States District Judge

for the Western District of Missouri.

2

Unless otherwise noted, all citations are to the Guidelines provisions in effect

on November 1, 2002, when Schafer committed the offenses.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 04-3101

___________

United States of America, *

*

Plaintiff - Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Western District of Missouri.

John A. Schafer, *

*

Defendant - Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: May 11, 2005

Filed: November 25, 2005

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, BEAM and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

John A. Schafer pleaded guilty to three child pornography offenses in violation

of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(1), (2), and (4). Two months after the Supreme Court’s

decision in Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004), the district court1

sentenced Schafer to 137 months in prison. Applying U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(c) (2002),2

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the court ordered that the federal sentence run consecutively to Schafer’s undischarged

state sentence for numerous child abuse offenses. Schafer raised a Blakely objection

at sentencing. In response, the district court imposed a higher alternative consecutive

sentence -- 180 months in prison -- in the event the Guidelines were held

unconstitutional. Schafer appeals, arguing that the district court incorrectly applied

U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3 by imposing a consecutive federal sentence and violated his Fifth

and Sixth Amendment rights under Blakely. We analyze the latter contention under

the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738

(2005). We affirm.

I. The § 5G1.3 Issue.

Schafer’s federal charges grew out of an investigation that included an

interview in which he admitted being a pedophile and collecting child pornography

for thirty years, and a warrant search that yielded at least 1,825 computer images of

child pornography, some involving bondage and bestiality, and videotapes and slides

depicting Schafer having sexual relations with and sodomizing four young victims.

Based on the tapes and slides, Schafer was also charged with rape, incest, sodomy, and

child abuse in a 53-count state court indictment. After Schafer’s federal guilty plea,

his April 2004 presentence investigation report cited this conduct, plus evidence that

he had sexually molested at least eight other children over a long period of time, in

recommending a five-level enhancement for “a pattern of activity involving the sexual

abuse or exploitation of a minor.” U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b)(4). Some time later, Schafer

pleaded guilty to 31 of the state court charges.

Two weeks before Schafer’s August 2004 sentencing hearing, the state court

sentenced him to life plus seven years in prison for the child abuse offenses. At his

federal sentencing, he argued that the state offenses were relevant conduct to the

federal offenses and therefore a concurrent federal sentence is mandated by U.S.S.G.

§ 5G1.3(b): 

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If . . . the undischarged term of imprisonment resulted from offense(s)

that have been fully taken into account in the determination of the

offense level for the instant offense, the sentence for the instant offense

shall be imposed to run concurrently to the undischarged term . . . .

The government argued that subsection (b) does not apply because the five-level

enhancement in § 2G2.2(b)(4) is warranted by Schafer’s abuse of children other than

the victims of the state offenses. Therefore, under § 5G1.3(c), “the sentence . . . may

be imposed to run . . . consecutively to the prior undischarged term of imprisonment

to achieve a reasonable punishment for the instant offense.”

The district court found that the five-level enhancement applies without taking

the state offenses into account. The court departed upward and imposed a 137-month

sentence to run consecutively to the undischarged state court sentence. On appeal,

Schafer challenges the consecutive sentencing. The underlying facts are not at issue.

We review the district court’s interpretation and application of § 5G1.3 de novo.

United States v. Lincoln, 408 F.3d 522, 526 (8th Cir. 2005).

The 2002 version of § 5G1.3(b) mandated a concurrent federal sentence if the

offenses underlying an undischarged state sentence were “fully taken into account”

in determining the federal sentence. The phrase “fully taken into account” triggered

a perceived conflict among two of our sister circuits. In United States v. Fuentes, 107

F.3d 1515, 1524 (11th Cir. 1997), the court concluded that § 5G1.3(b) requires a

concurrent sentence “when a defendant is serving an undischarged sentence resulting

from conduct that is required to be considered in a subsequent sentencing proceeding

as relevant conduct pursuant to section 1B1.3.” In United States v. Williams, 260

F.3d 160, 167 (2d Cir. 2001), on the other hand, the court held that, even if prior

offense conduct “might technically qualify as ‘relevant conduct’ in a federal

prosecution, a defendant cannot enjoy the benefits of section 5G1.3(b) unless the

district court in fact incorporated his prior offense as relevant conduct.” We have not

had occasion to consider these seemingly disparate interpretations.

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At the outset, we note that this conflict may be more apparent than real, at least

as applied to this case. In Fuentes, 107 F.3d at 1524-26, the court explained that the

grouping rules in § 3D1.2(d) must be applied to determine whether a separate state

offense is relevant conduct under § 1B1.3(a)(2) and therefore has been “fully taken

into account” in the federal sentence. This is a logical linkage because § 5G1.3(b),

like the grouping rules in § 3D1.2, “operates to mitigate the possibility that the fortuity

of two separate prosecutions will grossly increase a defendant’s sentence.” Witte v.

United States, 515 U.S. 389, 405 (1995). Here, the offense level for Schafer’s child

pornography offenses is determined under § 2G2.2, which is a guideline subject to

grouping under § 3D1.2(d). But his state child abuse offenses, if sentenced under the

federal Guidelines, would fall under Part 2A3, which governs offenses “specifically

excluded” from grouping under § 3D1.2(d). Thus, even under the Fuentes analysis,

it appears that § 5G1.3(b) does not apply in this case and therefore the district court

had discretion to impose consecutive sentences.

In any event, the Sentencing Commission addressed this apparent circuit

conflict in November 2003 by amending § 5G1.3(b) to provide that concurrent

sentencing is required only if the undischarged term of imprisonment “resulted from

another offense that is relevant conduct to the instant offense of conviction . . . and

that was the basis for an increase in the offense level for the instant offense.”

(Emphasis added.) The Commission described this as a clarifying amendment. See

U.S.S.G. App. C, Vol. II, amendment 660. Assisted by this clarification, we conclude

that the Second Circuit in Williams correctly interpreted the term “fully taken into

account” in the 2002 version of § 5G1.3(b). Here, as in United States v. Terry, 305

F.3d 818, 825-26 (8th Cir. 2002), the district court did not base the five-level

enhancement under § 2G2.2(b)(4) on either the state court conviction or the offense

conduct underlying that conviction. Therefore, the court correctly concluded that it

had discretion under § 5G1.3(c) to impose a consecutive federal sentence. 

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II. The Booker Issue.

The district court’s primary sentence assumed that the Guidelines were

mandatory and included fact-based enhancements under U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2(b). The

court overruled Schafer’s objection based on Blakely. In this circuit, when the

defendant has preserved a claim of Booker error by arguing Blakely to the district

court, we review the claim for harmless error whether “addressing a Sixth Amendment

challenge or a challenge to the use of mandatory, as opposed to advisory, guidelines.”

United States v. Archuleta, 412 F.3d 1003, 1005-06 (8th Cir. 2005). Schafer argues

the error was not harmless. We agree there was understandable Booker error but

conclude it was harmless. 

In response to Schafer’s Blakely objection, the district court imposed an

alternative sentence in the event the Guidelines were declared unconstitutional. In

some cases, an alternative sentence -- even an identical alternative sentence -- “can

render a Booker error harmless.” United States v. Porter, 417 F.3d 914, 917 (8th Cir.

2005), citing United States v. Bassett, 406 F.3d 526, 527 (8th Cir. 2005). Here, of

course, the alternative sentence was not identical. Instead, freed of Guidelines

constraints, the court imposed a consecutive federal sentence equal to the highest

statutory maximum penalty applicable to the three counts of conviction, 180 months.

The burden of proving an error harmless is on the beneficiary of the error. The

government’s brief, filed prior to Booker, urged us to affirm the district court’s

primary 137-month consecutive sentence. But at oral argument, the government

refused to argue that any Booker error was harmless. The reason for these

contradictory positions is apparent -- the government urged the district court at

sentencing to depart upward to the statutory maximum of 180 months and no doubt

is confident that the district court would now impose its alternative 180-month

sentence if we remand for resentencing under Booker. But the government may not

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This is the harmless error standard we apply to Sixth Amendment Booker

violations. See Archuleta, 412 F.3d at 1006. Absent a Booker error of constitutional

magnitude, we apply the less rigorous “no grave doubt” standard. See United States

v. Bruce, 413 F.3d 784, 785 (8th Cir. 2005).

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obtain relief for Booker error; it did not cross appeal. Therefore, we disregard its

tactical decision to eschew reliance on the harmless error principle. 

After careful review of the sentencing record, we conclude that the Booker error

was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.3

 The issue is whether Schafer would have

received a more favorable sentence had the district court sentenced him under the

advisory Guidelines regime mandated by Booker. In determining the 137-month

sentence, the court first granted an upward departure to offense level 28 and criminal

history category IV, based upon Schafer’s extensive pattern of abusing children, the

large number of visual depictions seized, and his understated criminal history. The

court then imposed a sentence at the top of the resulting range (110-137 months) to

run consecutively to Schafer’s state sentence of life plus seven years. In imposing the

180-month alternative sentence, the court noted that the 59-year-old Schafer may be

eligible for state parole in as little as thirteen years and explained:

[I]n the absence of the guidelines . . . you sentence the person. Is this

something that you think is, in fact, a continuing threat to the community

and will be, regardless of how much rehabilitation is provided and how

much incarceration is imposed. And I believe that the defendant is such

a threat. . . . [G]iven that evidence, I am reluctant to permit any

possibility that this defendant will, in fact, ever be in a position to abuse

children again. . . . So this is just an insurance policy to make sure that

if, in fact, the State chooses to let him out that the federal government

will make sure that he is restrained.

This sentencing record contains nothing to suggest that Schafer would have

received a more favorable sentence had the district court anticipated Booker’s

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advisory guidelines regime. The court correctly applied the mandatory Guidelines,

imposing a substantial upward departure and a discretionary consecutive sentence.

The 137-month consecutive sentence was not unreasonable given Schafer’s decades

of abuse of his children, his grandchildren, and others; his extensive collection of

child and adult pornography; and evidence that he distributed child pornography on

the Internet. Finally, the court’s detailed explanation of its alternative sentence

demonstrates that it considered the sentencing factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a). In these circumstances, the Booker error was harmless.

The judgment of the district court dated August 19, 2004, is affirmed, except

that the court is directed to delete the second and third paragraphs of the Imprisonment

section of the judgment form, which reflect the alternative sentence. We affirm the

137-month sentence as stated in the first paragraph of that section.

______________________________

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