Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03817/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03817-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Terry L. Harlan
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Joseph F. Bataillon, United States District Judge for the

District of Nebraska. 

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-3817

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the District of

* Nebraska.

Terry L. Harlan, *

*

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: May 11, 2004

Filed: May 14, 2004

___________

Before WOLLMAN, HANSEN, and BYE, Circuit Judges.

___________

BYE, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Terry L. Harlan of assault with a dangerous weapon and

assault resulting in serious bodily injury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1153 and §

113(a), respectively, for beating his girlfriend Delilah Freemont with a board in their

home on the Omaha Indian Reservation. Concluding the Sentencing Guidelines

understated Mr. Harlan's criminal history and inadequately considered the severity

of Ms. Freemont's physical and psychological injury, the district court1

 departed

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The couple had an infant daughter, but the record does not reflect whether the

child lived with her parents in Unit 26. 

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upward from Criminal History Category I to III. On appeal, Mr. Harlan argues the

evidence was insufficient to support the conviction and the district court erred in

imposing the upward departure. We affirm. 

I

On October 5, 2002, Mr. Harlan and Ms. Freemont lived at Unit 26 on the

Omaha Indian Reservation in Macy, Nebraska.2

 Both were enrolled members of the

Omaha Tribe. 

The couple spent part of the afternoon at home drinking beer and watching

college football with Ms. Freemont's siblings, Lizzie Avila and Myron Freemont.

Some time after 3:00 p.m., Ms. Avila and Mr. Freemont left to obtain more beer, and

they returned to Unit 26 between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. to find Ms. Freemont

unconscious on the floor drenched in her own blood. Other than Mr. Harlan, no other

person was in the residence. 

At trial, Ms. Freemont testified she and Mr. Harlan started arguing after her

siblings departed and Mr. Harlan started beating her with a board when she attempted

to leave. She recalled the board repeatedly struck her head, face, knees, arms, and

back before she lost consciousness. 

When Ms. Freemont's siblings returned to Unit 26, they knocked on the door

and heard the television playing inside, but no one responded. After Mr. Freemont

looked through the kitchen window and threatened to kick in the door, Mr. Harlan

finally opened the door. Upon seeing Ms. Freemont lying unconscious in her own

blood on the livingroom floor, Mr. Freemont left to seek help at the tribal police

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department located one block away and Ms. Avila attended to Ms. Freemont. Mr.

Harlan then explained Ms. Freemont had gone next door and then returned home with

the injuries. He then changed his account, stating he woke up to find his cousins

beating Ms. Freemont. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Freemont returned with Omaha Tribal Police Officer Bertucci,

who had already called for an ambulance. Officer Bertucci observed Ms. Freemont's

blood loss and attenuated pulse and called for an ambulance a second time. After

escorting the ambulance to the hospital, Officer Bertucci returned to Unit 26 and there

discovered a board smeared with a red substance appearing to be blood. At the tribal

jail, Officer Bertucci observed specks of a like substance splattered on Mr. Harlan's

face. In the morning, Ms. Freemont provided Officer Bertucci with an oral and

written statement alleging Mr. Harlan had beaten her with a board. 

Ms. Freemont was life-flighted from the Winnebago Public Health Service

Hospital to the Mercy Medical Center, a level-two trauma center in Sioux City, Iowa.

Emergency room doctor Scott Murray observed Ms. Freemont suffered fractures to

her nasal bone, left orbital rim, and left ulnar bone. Dr. Murray described the latter

as a nightstick-type fracture, meaning the arm had been struck while Ms. Freemont

was in a defensive stance. Ms. Freemont's eyes were swollen shut, and she had more

than thirty-five centimeters of deep lacerations just on her scalp. Otolaryngologist

David Wagner observed a "degloving" injury consisting of parallel lacerations which

had lifted a swatch of scalp from Ms. Freemont's head. These scalp lacerations

required more than 120 staples to close. Both Dr. Murray and Dr. Wagner opined

Ms. Freemont's injuries caused extreme physical pain and presented a protracted and

obvious disfigurement. They also agreed the injuries were consistent with the use of

a board as the weapon. 

The instant offense is not the first time Mr. Harlan has run afoul of the law. In

1980, a federal court convicted him of voluntary manslaughter for killing a man with

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Mr. Harlan's appellate brief states there were three tribal convictions for

assault against Ms. Freemont prior to the instant offense; the government's brief states

there were only two such convictions. 

4

Without the departure, the applicable Guidelines range under Category I

would have been 51 to 63 months. Thus, Mr. Harlan's 72-month sentence exceeded

the maximum Category-I sentence by 9 months. 

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a knife. Starting in October 1997, Harlan accrued at least four tribal convictions, two

for disorderly conduct and at least two for assaults on Ms. Freemont.3

The Presentence Report (PSR) assessed Criminal History Category I and a base

offense level of 15. Pursuant to United States Sentencing Guidelines (U.S.S.G.) §

2A2.2(b)(2)(B), the district court applied a four-level enhancement for use of a

dangerous weapon, and pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2(b)(3)(E), the court assessed a

five-level enhancement for permanent bodily injury to the victim. Thus, the court

determined the applicable offense level was 24. Mr. Harlan neither objected to nor

now appeals these assessments. 

The government moved for an upward departure on the grounds the Guidelines

understated Mr. Harlan's criminal history and the offense culminated from a series of

brutal assaults Mr. Harlan had perpetrated upon Ms. Freemont. The court departed

upward to Category III, found the post-departure Guidelines range to be 63 to 78

months, and sentenced Mr. Harlan to 72 months of imprisonment.4

 On appeal, Mr.

Harlan challenges the upward departure and argues the evidence was insufficient to

support his conviction.

II

In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, we view the evidence in the light

most favorable to verdict, resolving evidentiary conflicts in favor of the government,

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and accepting all reasonable inferences drawn from the evidence that support the

jury's verdict. United States v. Espino, 317 F.3d 788, 792 (8th Cir. 2003). Put

simply, we affirm if a reasonable juror could have found the defendant guilty beyond

a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Harmon, 194 F.3d 890, 892 (8th Cir. 1999).

Sufficient evidence supports the jury's verdict in this case. First, Ms. Freemont

identified Mr. Harlan as the assailant and gave detailed testimony of the assault. See

United States v. L.B.G., 131 F.3d 1276, 1278 (8th Cir. 1997) (stating the

uncorroborated testimony of a single witness may suffice to sustain a conviction).

Mr. Harlan argues Ms. Freemont was inebriated at the time of the assault and so may

have misidentified Mr. Harlan as the attacker. Because "it is the sole province of the

jury to weigh the credibility of a witness," United States v. Enriquez, 201 F.3d 1072,

1074 (8th Cir. 2000), we reject this argument. Ms. Freemont well knew Mr. Harlan,

and her testimony was consistent with both the medical evidence and the statement

she gave the day after the attack. These facts were sufficient to permit a reasonable

juror to rely on Ms. Freemont's identification and testimony. 

The circumstantial and physical evidence also supports the verdict. When Ms.

Avila and Mr. Freemont returned to Unit 26, as when they left, only two people were

within – the victim and the accused. Ms. Avila and Mr. Freemont knocked on the

door repeatedly and Mr. Freemont threatened to kick in the door before Mr. Harlan

responded. Mr. Harlan then gave Ms. Avila contradictory explanations for Ms.

Freemont's injuries, stating first Ms. Freemont had come home bleeding and then

explaining his cousins had attacked her while he slept. From such evidence, a juror

could reasonably infer guilt. The physical evidence confirmed the inference. Officer

Bertucci observed Mr. Harlan's face was speckled with a substance appearing to be

blood, and the officer found a board smeared with a like substance in the washroom

of Unit 26. In sum, the evidence in the record is more than sufficient to support the

conviction. 

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The sentencing court's findings of fact are reviewed for clear error. Flores,

336 F.3d at 763. 

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III

Mr. Harlan next argues the district court erroneously relied on impermissible

factors in assessing the upward departure. Prior to the enactment of the Prosecutorial

Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT)

Act, Pub. L. No. 108-21, 117 Stat. 650 (2003), we would have reviewed the district

court's departure under a unitary abuse-of-discretion standard. Now, we review de

novo whether the district court based the departure on a permissible factor, and we

review for abuse of discretion the reasonableness of a permissible departure. United

States v. Flores, 336 F.3d 760, 763 (8th Cir. 2003).5

The district court appears to have based the departure on four factors: (1) Mr.

Harlan's prior convictions in tribal court, (2) Mr. Harlan's voluntary manslaughter

conviction in federal court, (3) the severity of the physical injuries, and (4) the alleged

extreme psychological harm. Mr. Harlan challenges the permissibility of all but the

first of these factors. 

A sentencing court may depart upward on the basis of "prior sentence(s) not

used in computing the criminal history category (e.g., sentences for foreign and tribal

offenses)." U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3(a)(2)(A). In departing upward on such basis, "the court

shall determine the extent of a departure . . . by using, as a reference, the criminal

history category applicable to a defendant whose criminal history or likelihood to

recidivate most closely resembles that of the defendant's." U.S.S.G. §

4A1.3(a)(4)(A). In other words, the sentencing court should be guided, at least in

part, by the criminal history category which would have applied had the uncounted

prior convictions been computed. 

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U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c) would have excluded the disorderly-conduct convictions.

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Had Mr. Harlan's tribal convictions been taken into account in his criminal

history score, his two assault convictions would have added at least one point each

to the score, depending on the length of the corresponding sentences.6

 See U.S.S.G.

§ 4A1.1. Similarly, his manslaughter conviction would have added three points to his

score because the conviction resulted in a prison sentence exceeding one year and one

month. Id. In all, the prior convictions would have added at least five points to Mr.

Harlan's criminal history score, and these points would have required a sentence

under Category III. See U.S.S.G. § 5A, Sentencing Table (mandating a Category III

sentence for defendants with 4, 5, or 6 criminal history points). In applying Category

III in this case, therefore, the district court appears to have used as a reference the

category applicable to a defendant whose criminal history or likelihood to recidivate

most closely resembled Mr. Harlan's. 

Mr. Harlan argues the district court improperly took into account his federal

manslaughter conviction. A prior conviction serves as the basis for an upward

departure if the defendant was convicted of the past offense, or was still serving time

for the past offense, within the fifteen-year period immediately preceding the instant

offense. See U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(e)(1). Because he was released from prison for the

manslaughter conviction approximately fifteen years and one month before his assault

upon Ms. Freemont, he argues the conviction constitutes an impermissible factor. 

The Sentencing Guidelines, however, contain an exception to the applicable

period: 

If the court finds that a sentence imposed outside [the fifteen-year]

period is evidence of similar, or serious dissimilar, criminal conduct, the

court may consider this information in determining whether an upward

departure is warranted under § 4A1.3 (Adequacy of Criminal History

Category).

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As an obvious example, we doubt a sentencing court could properly rely on

a minor similar offense occurring many years outside the applicable period in

imposing an upward departure. 

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U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2, cmt. n.8. Mr. Harlan's manslaughter conviction evidences

criminal conduct similar to aggravated assault. Moreover, manslaughter constitutes

serious criminal conduct and so again falls under the exception to § 4A1.2. As the

district court explained:

The fact [Mr. Harlan] has a prior manslaughter conviction that is a

month out, I think, needs to be taken into account, although I don't agree

with the government that the full weight of the conviction needs to be

taken into account because it has been so long since the manslaughter

conviction. . . .

Sentencing Transcript at 177-79. In our view, the district court properly decided to

apply the exception and consider the manslaughter conviction. Lest the exception

consume the rule, we think the decision to apply the exception requires balancing the

severity of the past conviction with length of the temporal extension. Here, the court

dealt with a homicide which fell outside the fifteen-year period by merely a month.

While surely the exception is not without limit,7

 we conclude the manslaughter

conviction, as well as the tribal convictions, was a permissible basis for the departure.

Finally, Mr. Harlan contends Ms. Freemont's physical and psychological

injuries were impermissible factors. He points out the five-level enhancement already

took these factors into account and so the court engaged in impermissible double

counting. Because his criminal record represents an independently adequate basis for

the departure, however, we need not reach the other factors the district court may

have considered. See United States v. Long Turkey, 342 F.3d 856, 859 n.2 (8th Cir.

2003). 

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We now review for abuse of discretion the reasonableness of the upward

departure based on Mr. Harlan's prior convictions. As explained, the district court

would have sentenced him under Criminal History Category III, had the Guidelines

accounted for his prior convictions, and by departing upward to Category III, the

district court imposed a sentence only 9 months longer than that authorized without

any departure under Category I. Under these circumstances, the district court acted

well within its sound discretion when it decided to impose the departure. 

IV

For the reasons we have discussed above, we affirm both the judgment of

conviction and the upward departure. 

______________________________

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