Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-09-10331/USCOURTS-ca9-09-10331-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Deante Broussard
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,  No. 09-10331

Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.

v.  3:06-cr-00544-

MHP-1 DEANTE BROUSSARD,

Defendant-Appellant. OPINION 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Marilyn H. Patel, Senior District Judge, Presiding

Submitted February 9, 2010*

San Francisco, California

Filed July 14, 2010

Before: Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, David R. Thompson

and M. Margaret McKeown, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Chief Judge Kozinski

*The panel unanimously finds this case suitable for decision without

oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). 

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COUNSEL

Briefed by Ethan A. Balogh, Coleman & Balogh LLP, San

Francisco, California, for the defendant-appellant.

Briefed by Joseph P. Russoniello, United States Attorney,

Northern District of California, San Francisco, California;

Barbara J. Valliere, Chief, Appellate Section, Northern District of California, San Francisco, California; and Owen P.

Martikan, Assistant United States Attorney, Northern District

of California, San Francisco, California, for the plaintiffappellee.

OPINION

KOZINSKI, Chief Judge:

We consider how convictions for contempt of court are

classified for sentencing purposes in the wake of United

States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005).

Facts

This case arises from Deante Broussard’s third supervised

release violation. But the story starts much earlier, when he

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was released following his first supervised release violation.

One of the terms of Broussard’s second round of supervised

release required him to reside in twenty-four-hour lockdown

at a halfway house in Oakland. The day Broussard arrived at

the halfway house, he tried to escape. An alert ATF agent saw

Broussard jump into a car in front of the halfway house and

blocked the car’s path. Broussard was subdued after a scuffle

and eventually pleaded guilty to assaulting a federal officer

and contempt of court for violating supervised release. The

district judge sentenced him to two concurrent eighteenmonth prison terms, followed by two concurrent three-year

terms of supervised release. The conditions of supervised

release included a prohibition on “excessive use of alcohol”

and a ban on visiting San Francisco, where Broussard had

gang ties. 

Broussard served his eighteen months and began a third

round of supervised release. A few weeks later, he violated its

terms by going to San Francisco, failing to report a police

contact and failing to report that he’d obtained a car. Broussard pleaded guilty to the violations and the district judge

revoked his supervised release. At issue is the punishment she

then imposed.

The supervised release statute caps the overall length of the

sentence that can be imposed following revocation of supervised release but gives the district judge discretion to impose

either imprisonment, supervised release or a combination of

the two. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b), (e)(3), (h). The maximum possible sentence for violating the terms of supervised release

turns on the seriousness of the underlying offense. 18 U.S.C.

§ 3583(b). The district judge was therefore required to classify the prior convictions supporting Broussard’s prior supervised release terms—assaulting a federal officer and contempt

of court—according to the scheme set out in 18 U.S.C.

§ 3559. Section 3559 classifies felonies by their maximum

sentence, with A felonies being the most serious and E felonies being the least. For example, crimes with a maximum

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sentence of life imprisonment or death are Class A felonies,

whereas crimes with a maximum sentence of less than five

years but more than one year are Class E felonies. Id.

§ 3559(a).

Because contempt of court has no statutory maximum, 18

U.S.C. § 401, the district judge held that Broussard’s prior

contempt conviction was for a Class A felony. The total maximum sentence for revocation of supervised release following

a Class A felony is five years. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). The

judge sentenced Broussard to two years in prison and three

years of supervised release. One of Broussard’s conditions of

supervised release was that he “refrain from the use of alcohol.” 

Broussard appealed the sentence, arguing that his contempt

conviction should have been classified as a Class E felony,

which would have capped his maximum total sentence at one

year. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b)(3), (e)(3). The government conceded that Broussard’s contempt conviction wasn’t a Class A

felony, but argued that it was a Class D felony, for which the

maximum sentence is three years, with up to two of those in

prison. Id. § 3583(b)(2), (e)(3). After affirming “the two year

term of imprisonment”—presumably on the basis of Broussard’s other prior conviction, assaulting a federal officer

under 18 U.S.C. § 111, which the parties agree was a Class D

felony—we remanded “for the district judge to determine, in

the first instance, whether Broussard’s prior contempt conviction should be considered a Class D felony, as the government

contends, or a Class E felony, as Broussard contends, and to

revise the term of supervised release accordingly.” United

States v. Broussard, No. 08-10128, slip op. at 1-2 (9th Cir.

Apr. 14, 2009) (mem.). 

On remand, the district judge determined that Broussard’s

contempt conviction was most analogous to “escape” under

18 U.S.C. § 751, because he committed the contempt by trying to escape from the halfway house. Neither party disputes

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this analogy. Finding escape to be a Class D felony, the judge

treated Broussard’s contempt conviction as a Class D felony.

Because assaulting a federal officer is also a Class D felony,

the district judge imposed identical concurrent terms for both

offenses, consisting of two years in prison and one year of

supervised release. Finally, the judge refused to alter the

previously-imposed ban on consuming alcohol. Broussard

appeals yet again.

Analysis

[1] 1. Because criminal contempt has no statutory maximum sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 401, under a literal reading of the

classification statute, it would be a Class A felony, 18 U.S.C.

§ 3559(a) (“An offense that is not specifically classified by a

letter grade in the section defining it, is classified if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is . . . life imprisonment, or if the maximum penalty is death, as a Class A

felony.”). We’ve rejected that literal approach to classifying

contempt convictions. In United States v. Carpenter we

explained that “[i]t would be unreasonable to conclude that by

authorizing an open-ended range of punishments to enable

courts to address even the most egregious contempts appropriately, Congress meant to brand all contempts as serious and

all contemnors as felons.” 91 F.3d 1282, 1284 (9th Cir. 1996).

Therefore, “criminal contempt should be classified for sentencing purposes according to the applicable Guidelines range

for the most nearly analogous offense.” Id. at 1285. We reasoned that the “applicable Guidelines range is directly linked

to the severity of the offense and provides the best analogy to

the classification scheme” because it “focuses on the upper

limit of the district judge’s discretion, classifying the crime

according to the maximum sentence the judge was authorized

to impose rather than the sentence actually imposed.” Id. It

was on the basis of Carpenter that we remanded Broussard’s

sentence following his first appeal. See p. 10249 supra.

But the legal landscape has shifted since Carpenter. Its factual premise that the guidelines range sets the “upper limit of

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the district judge’s discretion,” Carpenter, 91 F.3d at 1285,

has been eroded by Booker, 543 U.S. at 245 (rendering the

guidelines advisory), and United States v. Carty, 520 F.3d

984, 991 n.5 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). The guidelines remain

an important consideration, but “the maximum sentence the

judge [i]s authorized to impose,” Carpenter, 91 F.3d at 1285

(emphasis omitted), is now the statutory maximum, see, e.g.,

Carty, 520 F.3d at 991 (“While the Guidelines are to be

respectfully considered, they are one factor among the

§ 3553(a) factors that are to be taken into account in arriving

at an appropriate sentence.”). 

We are required to follow circuit precedent, but in the face

of intervening Supreme Court and en banc opinions, “a threejudge panel of this court and district courts should consider

themselves bound by the intervening higher authority and

reject the prior opinion of this court as having been effectively

overruled.” Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir.

2003) (en banc). This is particularly true for sentencing cases

from the mandatory-guidelines era, because the court sitting

en banc has held that “[p]rior cases are overruled to the extent

they are inconsistent with Rita, Gall, Kimbrough, or this opinion.” Carty, 520 F.3d at 991 n.5.

[2] We therefore must revise the Carpenter rule in light of

Booker and its progeny. The basic rule of Carpenter remains

in place: The severity of contempt violations for purposes of

18 U.S.C. § 3559(a) turns on the most analogous underlying

offense. Carpenter, 91 F.3d at 1285. But judges are no longer

limited to the maximum guidelines sentence for that offense;

instead, the statutory maximum is now the “upper limit of the

district judge’s discretion.” Id. Our holding adapts Carpenter’s overarching principle—that the upper end of the district

judge’s discretion is what matters—to a regime in which the

statute of conviction, rather than the sentencing guidelines,

sets the upper limit on the district judge’s discretion. 

The district judge here analogized Broussard’s conviction

to “escape” under 18 U.S.C. § 751, which for Broussard

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yielded a guidelines range of 30-37 months. Accordingly,

Broussard argues that the judge was required to treat his contempt conviction as though its maximum sentence were 37

months, which would make it a Class E felony. 18 U.S.C.

§ 3559(a)(5). If Broussard were right, then the district judge

would only have been authorized to impose a one-year total

sentence, and exceeded her authority by imposing two years

of imprisonment and one year of supervised release on that

count. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b)(3), (e)(3), (h).

[3] But, for the reasons explained above, Broussard is not

right. In determining the class of felony for purposes of 18

U.S.C. § 3559(a) we look to the statutory maximum, not the

guidelines maximum. The statutory maximum sentence for

escape is five years, 18 U.S.C. § 751, which makes it a Class

D felony, 18 U.S.C. § 3559(a)(4). The maximum sentence for

revocation of supervised release when the underlying offense

is a Class D felony is three years, with up to two of those

years in prison. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b)(2), (e)(3), (h). Thus, the

judge did not exceed her authority by imposing two years of

imprisonment and one year of supervised release on the basis

of Broussard’s prior contempt conviction. 

2. Broussard also argues that the district judge abused her

discretion by prohibiting him from using alcohol. Broussard

could have raised this issue in his first appeal, but did not. Our

remand order directed the district court to “determine, in the

first instance, whether Broussard’s prior contempt conviction

should be considered” a Class D or E felony. Broussard, No.

08-10128, slip op. at 2. Because our remand was limited to

that single issue, the district judge was powerless to alter the

other terms of Broussard’s sentence. See, e.g., United States

v. Pimentel, 34 F.3d 799, 800 (9th Cir. 1994) (“In light of this

clear evidence that the scope of our remand was limited to the

single sentencing issue raised in Pimentel’s prior appeal, the

district court was without authority to reexamine any other

sentencing issues on remand.”). 

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* * *

The sentencing guidelines are now advisory. The maximum

sentence authorized by the statute of conviction is the upper

limit on a district judge’s discretion. We adapt Carpenter’s

express rationale to this new reality. 

AFFIRMED.

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