Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-02547/USCOURTS-ca8-05-02547-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Michael Kuntz
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Susan Webber Wright, United States District Judge for the

Eastern District of Arkansas.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-2547

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Eastern District of Arkansas.

Michael Kuntz, *

* [UNPUBLISHED]

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: May 25, 2006

Filed: June 9, 2006

___________

Before MELLOY, FAGG, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

PER CURIAM.

Michael Kuntz appeals the 180-month sentence the district court1

 imposed after

he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C.

§ 922(g)(1). Kuntz argues (1) that the district court erred in sentencing him as an

armed career criminal because his prior burglaries were not separate instances, but

amounted to a single event or spree; (2) that his sentence, based on prior convictions,

violates the Sixth Amendment because United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005),

and Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005), challenge the continued viability

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of Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 243-44 (1998) (prior criminal

history is sentencing factor for court to decide, not fact issue for jury to decide); and

(3) that due process and ex post facto principles prevent the application of Booker’s

remedy of advisory Guidelines to his pre-Booker criminal conduct.

We conclude that the district court did not err in sentencing Kuntz as an armed

career criminal, because Kuntz’s four prior burglaries, over a period of five days, were

discrete criminal episodes. See United States v. Gray, 85 F.3d 380, 381 (8th Cir.)

(discrete criminal episodes, rather than dates of conviction, trigger sentence

enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA); burglaries committed

only twenty-five minutes apart were separate offenses under ACCA), cert. denied, 519

U.S. 907 (1996).

Kuntz’s argument under Shepard--that his sentence should not have been

increased by the district court based on prior convictions--was recently rejected in

United States v. Johnson, 408 F.3d 535, 540 (8th Cir. 2005) (“Shepard did not alter

the rule that a court may consider prior criminal history as a sentencing factor.”). We

further conclude that because Kuntz was sentenced to the statutory minimum, there

is no merit to his argument that the district court’s application of Booker’s remedy of

advisory Guidelines to his pre-Booker criminal conduct was an ex post facto or due

process violation. See United States v. Kelly, 436 F.3d 992, 995 (8th Cir. 2006) (ex

post facto and due process clauses require that defendant have fair warning of

punishment for crimes which he committed; finding no ex post facto or due process

violation where district court’s variance above Guidelines range was below statutory

maximum and sentence was not unexpected or indefensible by reference to expressed

law prior to conduct in issue). We note that Booker was not implicated by Kuntz’s

sentence because the sentence was based on the statutory mandatory minimum. See

United States v. Thomas, 398 F.3d 1058, 1063-64 (8th Cir. 2005) (use of prior felony

conviction to impose statutory minimum penalties does not implicate Booker); United

States v. Vieth, 397 F.3d 615, 620 (8th Cir.) (no Booker issue arises where sentence

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was based on statutory mandatory minimum rather than on application of Guidelines),

cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 2560 (2005).

Accordingly, we affirm. 

______________________________

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