Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-90-06371/USCOURTS-ca10-90-06371-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Hershel Dean Williams
Appellant

Document Text:

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FI LE 0 

United St!lf4!f C91m r,f Appeals 

·r et\~h Cireuit 

JUN 2 7 19 

.ROBERT L. HOECKER 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Clerk · 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

HERSHEL DEAN WILLIAMS, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

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Ho. 90-6371 

(D.C. Ho. CR-90-114-A) 

(W.D. Oklahoma) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before SEYMOUR, MCWILLIAMS, and MOORE, Circuit Judges. 

Hershel Dean Williams appeals from a sentence imposed 

following a plea of guilty to one count of an indictment charging 

kidnapping and a count of possessing a firearm during the 

commission of a crime of violence. On appeal, he asserts the 

trial court erred in passing sentence. We affirm. 

*This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall not 

be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, except 

for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of the case, 

res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

Appellate Case: 90-6371 Document: 010110128225 Date Filed: 06/27/1991 Page: 1 
Mr. Williams admitted taking two young boys from their home 

in Moore, Oklahoma, to Houston, Texas. The boys stated that 

during the trip, Mr. Williams had them engage in various sexual 

acts. Mr. Williams also admitted a long-standing sexual 

relationship with one of the boys and that sex acts between them 

occurred during the trip to Houston. Defendant conceded he 

carried a weapon during the course of the kidnapping. 

Mr. Williams was sentenced to a term of 260 years in state 

court for crimes arising out of his sexual activity with one of 

the boys prior to the kidnapping. Following defendant's bargained 

plea of guilty in this case, the district court imposed a 

guideline sentence of twenty-one years on the kidnapping count and 

sixty months on the firearms count. The court ordered the 

sentence on the second count to be served consecutively to the 

sentence on the first count, and both federal sentences to be 

served consecutively to the state sentence. 

Defendant has presented four issues for our review. First, 

he contends the district court erred by misapplying the guidelines 

to enhance his sentence. He asserts the court's use of the state 

criminal offenses for enhancement was improper and that only the 

federal sexual offenses specifically defined in federal statutes 

should be used for that purpose. He argues the guidelines were 

not intended to incorporate crimes other than those within federal 

jurisdiction. We have, however, already held to the contrary. 

United States v. Willis, 925 F.2d 359, 361-62 (10th Cir. 1991). 

Accordingly, this argument is without merit. 

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Appellate Case: 90-6371 Document: 010110128225 Date Filed: 06/27/1991 Page: 2 
Defendant next contends the district court erred in finding 

that the kidnapping was committed to facilitate the crime of 

sexual abuse. Admitting whether the intent underlying the 

kidn~pping is a factual question, defendant argues the trial 

court's finding that he kidnapped the boys to facilitate a sex 

crime was erroneous. This argument is based upon the contention 

that taking the victim with whom he had an ongoing sexual 

relationship to Houston "did not make having sex with [him] more 

or less difficult." He posits that even though he admitted 

knowing in advance of the trip he was going to have sex with the 

child, "no evidence in the record supports this was the primary 

reason for the kidnapping." 

We have reviewed the record and conclude Mr. Williams' 

argument is disingenuous. Even though defendant never explicitly 

admitted taking the boys to Texas for the purpose of having sex, 

his plea of guilty belies his argument here. The count to which 

he pled guilty charged him with kidnapping the boy and "[holding] 

him for the purpose of sodomy." His plea of guilty is an 

admission of this fact, cf. McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 

459, 466 (1969) (noting that "a guilty plea is an admission of all 

the elements of a formal criminal charge"); United States v. 

Crockett, 812 F.2d 626, 629 (10th Cir. 1987) (a guilty plea 

constitutes an admission of all material facts well pleaded in the 

indictment), and we find no merit in the argument. 

Mr. Williams next argues the district court's application of 

the specific offense characteristic of "abduction" for the 

purposes of achieving a four-level enhancement results in an 

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Appellate Case: 90-6371 Document: 010110128225 Date Filed: 06/27/1991 Page: 3 
improper double counting of that conduct; hence, the trial court 

improperly applied u.s.s.G. § 2A3.1(5). He argues the guideline 

for the crime of kidnapping necessarily includes the act of 

abduction; therefore, applying a four-level enhancement for that 

conduct is an improper redundancy. 

We believe the guideline was appropriately applied. The 

district court was obliged by § 2A4.l(b)(5)(B) to apply the 

guideline for sexual abuse, U.S.S~G. § 2A3.1. Having been so 

directed, the court was required to apply the entire guideline. 

See U.S.S.G. § lBl.5. Thus, although the crime to which defendant 

pled includes the element of abduction, the severity of the 

circumstances of that crime required the punishment dictated by 

the guidelines for a different offense. Even though that enhanced 

level of punishment includes the element of abduction, it is 

because the punishment imposed must follow the pattern dictated 

for the offense of sexual abuse and not kidnapping. The 

sentencing scheme embodied in § 2A4.l(b)(5)(B) clearly 

contemplates this result. 

Finally, defendant argues the district court erred in 

ordering the federal sentences to run consecutively to the state 

sentence. He contends that under u.s.s.G. § 5Gl.3, as it existed 

prior to November 1, 1989, a consecutive sentence could not be 

ordered if the crimes which resulted in the two sentences "arose 

out of the same transactions or occurrences." The district court 

found that the federal crimes and the state crimes did not arise 

out of the same transactions or occurrences because defendant's 

motivation to commit the federal offenses was different from his 

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Appellate Case: 90-6371 Document: 010110128225 Date Filed: 06/27/1991 Page: 4 
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motivation to commit the state offenses. The court stated the 

defendant "knew that the Cleveland County authorities were going 

to take action to disable him by imprisonment, and so he committed 

the kidnapping in specific reaction to that knowledge." There is 

ample support for that conclusion. 

More importantly, however, the guideline in effect at the 

time of sentencing applies. 18 u.s.c. § 3553(a)(4) & (5). See 

also United States v. Walker, 931 F.2d 631, 634 (10th Cir. 1991). 

This result moots defendant's argument. 

AFFIRMED. 

Entered for the Court 

John P. Moore 

Circuit Judge 

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Appellate Case: 90-6371 Document: 010110128225 Date Filed: 06/27/1991 Page: 5