Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-02481/USCOURTS-ca8-03-02481-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Robert Allen Sanders
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Ronald E. Longstaff, United States District Court for the

Southern District of Iowa. 

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-2481

___________

United States of America, *

*

Plaintiff - Appellee, * Appeal from the United States

* District Court for the Southern

v. * District of Iowa.

* 

Robert Allen Sanders, *

*

Defendant - Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: February 12, 2004

Filed: July 26, 2004

___________

Before BYE, HEANEY, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

___________

BYE, Circuit Judge. 

Robert Allen Sanders pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm

in violation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). As Mr. Sanders had three prior Iowa burglary

convictions, the Pre-sentence Report (PSR) recommended the district court1

 sentence

him as a career criminal under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(e). Because Iowa had failed formally to admit the Nebraska-licensed lawyer

who represented him in one of the Iowa convictions, Mr. Sanders objected to the

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Mr. Sanders acknowledges he benefitted from a plea agreement negotiated by

Mr. Gallup. The agreement allowed Mr. Sanders to serve his Nebraska and Iowa

sentences simultaneously. 

-2-

PSR, arguing the conviction violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The

district court overruled the objection, applied the ACCA, and sentenced Mr. Sanders

to 144 months of imprisonment. On appeal, he reiterates his collateral attack of the

predicate 1980 conviction, and we affirm.

I

In 1980, Mr. Sanders was charged with burglary in Mills County, Iowa. At that

time, he was already incarcerated in Nebraska for a parole violation on an unrelated

matter. After seeing attorney William J. Gallup's name in the paper and on television,

Mr. Sanders retained Mr. Gallup to defend him in the Iowa case. Mr. Sanders

pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.2

 He apparently never

appealed or otherwise challenged this or his other two Iowa burglary convictions.

During the sentencing hearing in the instant case, Mr. Gallup testified he has

been licensed in Nebraska since 1964. Between 1964 and 1971, he worked as a city

prosecutor, deputy county prosecutor, and Assistant United States Attorney. In 1971,

Mr. Gallup entered private practice and has worked as a criminal defense attorney

since then. He has regularly defended cases in Iowa during his long career. 

Mr. Gallup also testified that, while he was a member of the Nebraska bar in

good standing in 1980, he did not formally move to be admitted pro hac vice in Iowa

for Mr. Sanders's 1980 burglary case. He explained the judges in Mills County and

Pottawattamie County, Iowa, routinely forewent the formalities of admission for

Nebraska attorneys, particularly those with whom the courts were familiar, such as

himself. Apparently, this informality continues to this day. 

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In reaching this conclusion, the district court did not engage in judicial fact

finding offensive to the holding in the United States Supreme Court's recent landmark

decision in Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004). While the Court declared

unconstitutional any increase in penalty beyond the prescribed statutory maximum

-3-

Matt Wilbur, the County Attorney for Pottawattamie County, corroborated Mr.

Gallup's testimony. In Mr. Wilbur's experience as County Attorney and private

practitioner, judges in both Iowa counties allow Nebraska lawyers to defend criminal

cases without going through the formal pro hoc vice procedure of associating with a

local attorney. 

The district court ruled Mr. Sanders could not escape the application of the

ACCA through a collateral attack on his 1980 conviction. The court stated, 

I think Mr. Gallup was an attorney at the time he represented Mr.

Sanders in Mills County. He was admitted to practice law in Nebraska

. . . Although I don't disagree that maybe it's not a wise practice to allow

out-of-state attorneys to practice without associating with local counsel,

I think it's routinely done by the courts in Iowa and also by this Court as

a federal court in Iowa.

Finding no merit to the collateral attack of the 1980 conviction, the court

applied the career-criminal enhancement under United States Sentencing Guidelines

(U.S.S.G.) § 4B1.4. This guideline applies in the case of a defendant subject to an

enhanced sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), and under § 924(e)(1) a defendant is

subject to an enhanced sentence if the instant offense of conviction is a violation of

18 U.S.C. § 922(g) and the defendant has at least three prior convictions for a violent

felony or serious drug offense. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.4, cmt. A burglary conviction

qualifies as a violent felony under section § 924(e)(2)(B). Because Mr. Sanders

pleaded guilty to violating § 922(g) and had three burglary convictions (that is, three

violent felonies for purposes of § 924(e)) the district court concluded the § 4B1.4

enhancement was applicable in his case.3

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based on facts not submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the

Court expressly exempted “the fact of prior conviction.” Id. at 2536. Here, the

statute defines burglary as a violent felony for purposes of 924(e). Thus, in

concluding Mr. Sanders's history contained three violent offenses, the district court

did not have to find burglary qualifies as a violent offense.

-4-

On appeal, Mr. Sanders disputes neither the court's conclusion his three Iowa

convictions qualify as violent offenses nor the finding Mr. Gallup was informally

admitted to practice in Iowa in the 1980 case. The question presented, therefore, is

whether representation by a licensed attorney not formally admitted to practice pro

hoc vice denies the defendant the right to counsel as to subject the conviction to

collateral attack.

II

This court reviews de novo a district court's interpretation of a sentenceenhancing statute. United States v. Speakman, 330 F.3d 1080, 1081 (8th Cir. 2003).

In Curtis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485 (1994), the defendant attempted to

avoid an ACCA sentence enhancement, claiming he had received ineffective

assistance of counsel in one of his predicate convictions. First, the Supreme Court

found the statutory language of the ACCA did not authorize collateral attacks on

underlying convictions. Then the Court concluded a prior conviction was subject to

collateral attack on constitutional grounds only when the record of the conviction

demonstrated a failure to appoint counsel for an indigent defendant. Id. at 486. The

Court rejected Curtis's invitation to extend the right of collateral attack to claims of

ineffective assistance or other constitutional violations, finding these did not rise "to

the level of jurisdictional defect resulting from the failure to appoint counsel at all."

Id. (citation omitted).

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Mr. Sanders acknowledges Curtis bars collateral attacks grounded on claims

of ineffective assistance of counsel. He contends, however, the failure to adhere to

formal pro hoc vice procedures is equivalent to the failure to appoint counsel.

This argument is factually and legally without merit. Mr. Sanders's 1980

conviction was rendered while he was represented by counsel licensed to practice

law, albeit in a neighboring state. Although Mr. Gallup had not gone through the

formal pro hoc vice admission procedure, the Iowa state court accepted his

representation, just as the two county courts (and indeed the federal district court)

have apparently done routinely for other Nebraska attorneys. As a factual matter,

then, Mr. Gallup practiced law in Iowa with the court's authority, bypassing the

formalities of admission only because the court itself saw fit to relax them. 

In support of his argument, Mr. Sanders cites several cases in which courts

have held the failure to satisfy licensing requirements amounted to per se ineffective

assistance. Even if these cases could show ineffective assistance rises to the level of

“defect” required by Curtis, they are distinguishable from this case as they involved

defense counsel who were not licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction. See, e.g.,

People v. Felder, 391 N.E.2d 1274, 1276 (N.Y. 1979). 

In contrast, Mr. Gallup was a licensed and experienced lawyer, who apparently

provided Mr. Sanders effective assistance, as evidenced by the plea agreement

allowing him to serve his Nebraska and Iowa sentences simultaneously. Indeed, Mr.

Sanders does not claim today, nor did he in 1980, that Mr. Gallup provided

substandard assistance or even that he would have provided more-effective assistance

by associating with local counsel. In short, the informality of the pro hoc vice

procedure did not work prejudice upon Mr. Sanders, and thus he was not, even

arguably, denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel in the 1980 Iowa case.

Accordingly, we affirm the district court's sentencing decision.

______________________________

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