Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-15-01509/USCOURTS-ca8-15-01509-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Donnie Ray Sumner
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 15-1509

___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Donnie Ray Sumner

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant

____________

Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Western District of Missouri - Joplin

____________

 Submitted: November 20, 2015

 Filed: March 21, 2016

____________

Before COLLOTON, GRUENDER, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.

____________

GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

Donnie Sumner pleaded guilty to receipt and distribution of child pornography,

in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2). The district court concluded that Sumner’s 1

1989 Missouri conviction for deviate sexual assault in the first degree triggered a

sentencing enhancement under § 2252(b)(1) and sentenced Sumner to the mandatory

The Honorable Beth Phillips, United States District Court for the Western 1

District of Missouri.

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minimum of 180 months’ imprisonment. Sumner challenges his sentence, arguing

that the district court erred by determining that the previous Missouri offense

subjected him to the enhancement. We affirm. 

I. 

In 1989, Sumner entered an Alford plea to the crime of deviate sexual assault

in the first degree, in violation of section 566.070 of the Missouri Revised Statutes.

This statute provided:

A person commits the crime of deviate sexual assault in the first degree

if he has deviate sexual intercourse with another person to whom he is

not married and who is incapacitated or who is fourteen or fifteen years

old.

Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.070 (1989). Sumner received a suspended sentence with five

years’ probation, which was discharged after one year.

In January 2013, investigators with the Southwest Missouri Cybercrimes Task

Force remotely connected to a computer through the Ares peer-to-peer network. The

investigators downloaded from the target computer two video files that depicted

prepubescent males engaged in a sexual act. Investigators later identified Sumner as

the subscriber through his IP address. Investigators subsequently obtained a warrant

to search Sumner’s residence and seized a desktop computer, laptop computer, and

a Seagate hard drive. A forensic examination revealed fifteen video files and 114

images depicting child pornography located on the desktop computer and one video

file containing child pornography located on the laptop computer.

Sumner was then charged in a single-count indictment with receiving and

distributing child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2). Sumner pleaded guilty.

At the change-of-plea hearing, the magistrate judge advised Sumner that, if he had a

qualifying prior offense to trigger the sentencing enhancement under 18 U.S.C.

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§ 2252(b)(1), the range of punishment for the offense would be fifteen to forty years

in prison. According to 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(1), if a person who violates 18 U.S.C.

§ 2252(a)(2) “has a prior conviction . . . under the laws of any State relating to

aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor

or ward . . . such person shall be . . . imprisoned for not less than 15 years nor more

than 40 years.” Pursuant to the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation, the

district court entered an order accepting Sumner’s guilty plea and adjudging him

guilty. The district court then ordered a presentence investigation report (PSR),

which concluded that Sumner’s 1989 Missouri conviction counted as a predicate

offense to enhance the statutorily authorized minimum sentence to fifteen years or

180 months.

Sumner objected to the PSR’s conclusion on two grounds. He first argued that

the facts underlying his predicate Missouri offense did not support the PSR’s finding

that he had committed an offense “relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse,

or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor.” Sumner next argued that the

suspended sentence he received for the Missouri offense did not constitute a

conviction for purposes of § 2252(b)(1). At sentencing, the district court rejected

Sumner’s objections, concluding that deviate sexual assault in the first degree

qualified as a predicate offense and that his suspended sentence likewise qualified as

a conviction.

II.

On appeal, Sumner contends that the district court procedurally erred by

finding that his Missouri conviction for deviate sexual assault sufficed to trigger the

sentencing enhancement under 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(1). He argues that the district

court should have considered the facts ofthe underlying offense to determine whether

his prior conviction actually involved “aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or

abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.” 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(1). Such

consideration, Sumner maintains, would reveal that his prior conviction arose from

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a consensual act not involving force or threats and, therefore, not involving abuse.

“When reviewing a defendant’s sentence, we must ‘ensure that the district court

committed no significant procedural error . . . .’” United States v. Hagen, 641 F.3d

268, 270 (8th Cir. 2011) (quoting Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007)). In

determining whether a procedural error has occurred, we review the district court’s

factual findings for clear error and its interpretation and application of statutory

sentencing provisions de novo. United States v. Williams, 627 F.3d 324, 327 (8th Cir.

2010); United States v. Weis, 487 F.3d 1148, 1151 (8th Cir. 2007).

If a defendant has a prior conviction “under the laws of any State relating to

aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor

or ward,” then a conviction for receipt and distribution of child pornography under

18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2) triggers an enhanced sentencing range of “not less than 15

years nor more than 40 years.” 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(1). “Because [18 U.S.C.

§ 2252(b)(1)] does not define aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive

sexual conduct with a minor or ward, we give the terms their ‘ordinary, contemporary,

common meaning.’” United States v. Sonnenberg, 556 F.3d 667, 671 (8th Cir. 2009)

(quoting Perrin v. United States, 444 U.S. 37, 42 (1979)). We evaluate whether a

2

prior conviction qualifies as a predicate offense triggering a sentencing enhancement

by “look[ing] to the fact of conviction and the statutory definition of the prior offense

and determin[ing] whether the full range of conduct encompassed by the state statute

The Supreme Court recently clarified identical language in § 2252(b)(2), 2

holding that “‘involving a minor or ward’ modifies only ‘abusive sexual conduct,’”

such that “the provision applies to prior state convictions for ‘sexual abuse’ and

‘aggravated sexual abuse,’ whether or not the convictions involved a minor or ward.” 

Lockhart v. United States, 577 U.S. ---, 2016 WL 782862, at *4, *11 (2016). The

Lockhart dissent acknowledged that “[n]o one can possibly think (and the majority

therefore does not try to argue) that the disputed language means something different

in § 2252(b)(2) than in its neighbor and model, § 2252(b)(1).” Id. at *17 n.4

(Kagan, J., dissenting). Although we may apply the Court’s holding to this

§ 2252(b)(1) case, we need not do so in light of our conclusion that Sumner’s prior

conviction was for “abusive sexual conduct involving a minor.”

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qualifiesto enhance the sentence.” Sonnenberg, 556 F.3d. at 670. However, “[i]f the

statute criminalizes both conduct that would qualify a defendant for an enhancement,

as well as conduct that would not do so, the court may refer to the charging

document, the terms of a plea agreement, the transcript of the colloquy, jury

instructions, and other comparable judicial records to determine the basis for the

guilty plea or verdict.” Id. (citing Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 26 (2005)).

The 1989 version of the Missouri statute under which Sumner was convicted

of first-degree deviate sexual assault required that he “ha[d] deviate sexual

intercourse with another person to whom he [wa]s not married and who [wa]s

incapacitated or who [wa]s fourteen or fifteen years old.” Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.070

(1989). “Deviate sexual intercourse,” in turn, encompassed “any sexual act involving

the genitals of one person and the mouth, tongue, hand, or anus of another person.” 

Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.010.1(2) (1989). Because these terms criminalized conduct

involving either an incapacitated person or a minor, the district court rightly

considered the charging document. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 16. In this case, the

charging document was the information containing the sole count to which Sumner

pleaded guilty. That count alleged that Sumner “had deviate sexual intercourse with

[the victim], to whom the defendant was not married, who was then 14 or 15 years

old.” Under our case law, this conviction clearly satisfies the requirement under 18

U.S.C. § 2252(b)(1) of a prior conviction “under the laws of any State relating to

. . . abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.” See Weis, 487 F.3d at 1152

(concluding that a prior conviction that involved touching a minor “with the intent

to have sexual intercourse” fit “well within the broad meaning of ‘relating

to . . . abusive sexual conduct’” with a minor and thus satisfied 18 U.S.C.

§ 2252(b)(1)).

Despite the details contained in the charging document, Sumner nonetheless

argues that the district court erred by not considering the underlying facts of his

conviction because those facts would reveal a consensual act not involving force or

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threats. Therefore, he continues, the Government failed to show any abuse on 3

Sumner’s part. This argument proves unavailing. As noted above, the district court

properly confined its inquiry to a limited class of documents. See Sonnenberg, 556

F.3d at 670 (approving application of the categorical approach). Even if the district

court had been able to consider the underlying facts, however, our circuit does not

require “abuse” for the purpose of applying the § 2252(b)(1) enhancement to entail

force or threats. See, e.g., Linngren, 652 F.3d at 870-71 (finding Minnesota

conviction for sexual contact with a minor committed with sexual intent satisfied

§ 2252(b)(1)); Sonnenberg, 556 F.3d at 670 (finding Iowa conviction for lascivious

acts with a child not involving touching satisfied § 2252(b)(1)); Weis, 487 F.3d at

1151-52 (finding Iowa conviction for assault with intent to commitsexual abuse—no

injury satisfied § 2252(b)(1) even though the charging document specified the assault

to consist of “touch[ing], with the intent to have sexual intercourse” with a minor);

see also State v. Williams, 628 S.W.2d 947, 949 (Mo. Ct. App. 1982) (describing the

same iteration of the Missouri statute at issue here as “requir[ing] no employment or

threat of physical force . . . because the design of the statute isto identify as assaultive

certain behavior . . . not by the manner of commission but by the identity of the

victim”). Accordingly, the district court did not err by considering the charging

document and not the facts underlying Sumner’s Missouri conviction. See

Sonnenberg, 556 F.3d at 670. 

III.

For the reasons set forth above, we affirm Sumner’s sentence.

______________________________

3Although Sumner objected before the district court that the suspended

sentence he received for the Missouri offense did not constitute a “conviction” for

purposes of § 2252(b)(1), he concedes this point on appeal. See United States v.

Storer, 413 F.3d 918, 921-22 (8th Cir. 2005).

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