Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-05-03045/USCOURTS-caDC-05-03045-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Manuel De Jesus Ventura
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 26, 2007 Decided March 16, 2007

No. 05-3045

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

MANUEL DE JESUS VENTURA, A/K/A MARIO

HERNANDEZ-CHACON,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 04cr00288-01)

Jonathan S. Zucker, appointed by the court, argued the

cause and filed the briefs for appellant.

Chrisellen R. Kolb, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Jeffrey A. Taylor,

U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese, III, Lisa H. Schertler, and

Elizabeth Gabriel, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: SENTELLE, HENDERSON and ROGERS, Circuit

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.

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PER CURIAM: Defendant appeals his sentence for a

conviction under federal immigration laws. He pled guilty and

was sentenced to 93 months incarceration. At the time he was

sentenced, the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v.

Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), was less than two months old.

The district court interpreted that case as permitting it to enter

a sentence without making a specific finding of the appropriate

range under the federal sentencing guidelines. On appeal,

defendant advances a number of arguments, including the

district court’s failure to calculate the applicable guidelines

range. In light of Booker’s changes to the sentencing regime,

we conclude that the district court may have erred, but the

ambiguity in the record prevents accurate review. Accordingly,

we vacate Ventura’s sentence and remand for resentencing.

* * *

Ventura is a citizen of El Salvador with a decade-long

history of unlawfully entering this country and committing

crimes herein. He entered the country in 1997 and was deported

shortly thereafter. He returned for the second time in 1999, was

convicted of felony abduction in Virginia in 2001, and was

sentenced to 18 months incarceration. While serving that

sentence, he was also convicted of illegal reentry after

deportation and sentenced to seven months incarceration. Upon

completing both sentences, Ventura was again deported. He

returned to the United States for the third time in 2003, and was

convicted of a number of crimes. On June 17, 2004, while

serving a sentence for those convictions, he was charged with

the offense that is the subject of this appeal: reentering the

United States after having been deported following conviction

of the Virginia crime, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and

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(b)(2). He pled guilty on December 3, 2004. 

The district court sentenced Ventura on March 7, 2005. The

primary dispute at Ventura’s sentencing hearing was the

calculation of the appropriate guidelines range. In particular, the

parties disagreed about whether Ventura’s base offense level

should be increased by eight or sixteen levels. A sixteen-point

increase was appropriate if the crime of which he was previously

convicted – abduction under Virginia law – was a “crime of

violence,” while an eight-point increase was appropriate if it was

only an “aggravated felony.” U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1). The

government argued that “the conviction . . . bolstered by the

factual proffer” justified the conclusion that the sixteen-point

increase was appropriate. The defendant contended that the

actual conduct was “irrelevant” because the district court was

limited to a categorical approach in which it should look only to

the elements of the offense rather than the underlying facts. The

district court held that Booker superseded the categorical

approach, permitting it to consider the factual proffer included

in the presentence investigation report. “Indeed, in the

aftermath of Booker,” the court stated, “it would appear that the

facts relating to the events that a person was previously

convicted of are more than fair game for the Court to consider

in determining what is the appropriate sentence.” The court

stated several times that, as it understood Booker, it was no

longer required to make a specific finding as to the appropriate

guidelines range. Rather, it had only to consider each party’s

arguments. Announcing the sentence, the district court

concluded: “on balance, the better arguments legally – and I’m

not making a specific finding – are to treat the conduct that you

engaged in as a crime of violence.”

Less than two months before Ventura’s sentencing, the

Supreme Court held, in Booker, that sentencing courts could not

treat the federal sentencing guidelines as mandatory. 543 U.S.

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at 245-46. Nonetheless, sentencing courts remain obligated to

calculate and consider the appropriate guidelines range. Id.; see

also United States v. Coumaris, 399 F.3d 343, 351 (D.C. Cir.

2005). In the instant case, the district court expressly eschewed

making a specific finding as to the guidelines range applicable

to Ventura. The government argues that we should consider the

merits of defendant’s arguments because the record implies that

the district court concluded that the appropriate guidelines range

was that resulting from the sixteen-point increase advocated by

the government at sentencing. We disagree. The present record

is insufficient to permit our review, and we must vacate

Ventura’s sentence and remand for resentencing. 

Were we to infer that the district court did, in fact, make a

specific finding, we would be ignoring its express and repeated

statements to the contrary. But neither do we infer, as defendant

suggests, that plain errors were made. It is simply not clear from

the record what findings influenced the sentence. The watershed

ruling in Booker created a new – and at that time unexplored –

sentencing regime that raised numerous questions for sentencing

courts. The district court had to render its sentence without the

benefit of subsequent cases clarifying the extent of the changes

wrought by Booker. A remand will permit the district court to

start on a clean slate. Upon resentencing, the district court will

enter a new sentence based on its consideration of the calculated

applicable guidelines range as well as the factors enumerated in

18 U.S.C. § 3553. We do not intend to imply either that the

district court must change the sentence or re-enter it unchanged

on remand, only that it should calculate defendant’s sentence in

accordance with current law. 

* * *

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We note that the question whether the Virginia statute under

which Ventura was previously convicted constitutes a “crime of

violence” for sentencing purposes is a vexing one. To answer

it, the Virginia statute must be compared with a generic,

contemporary definition of kidnapping. See Taylor v. United

States, 495 U.S. 575, 598 (1990). If the elements of abduction

under Virginia law are identical to, or narrower than, those of

generic kidnapping, Ventura’s conviction is properly considered

a crime of violence. Under this categorical approach, the actual

conduct underlying the conviction is not typically considered.

In limited circumstances, however, the district court may review

underlying facts. Id. at 602 (noting that the sentencing judge

may “go beyond the mere fact of conviction in a narrow range

of cases where a jury was actually required to find all the

elements” of the generic crime); see also Shepard v. United

States, 544 U.S. 13, 26 (2005) (holding that, in the context of

guilty pleas, Taylor’s exception extends to the “terms of the

charging document, the terms of a plea agreement or transcript

of colloquy between judge and defendant in which the factual

basis for the plea was confirmed by the defendant, or to some

comparable judicial record of this information”). The

government argues that we should immediately resolve the

question whether Ventura’s prior conviction was for a “crime of

violence” because this is a question of federal law that we

review de novo. We conclude that it would be premature to

address this issue at the present time. We do not know what

sentence the district court will impose on remand, and we do not

know whether the new sentence – and the crime of violence

issue – will be subsequently appealed to this Court. Cf.

Coumaris, 399 F.3d at 351 (noting, in light of the Court’s

remand for resentencing, that reviewing the district court’s

application of the guidelines would be “premature at best and

unnecessary at worst”). We thus conclude that the appropriate

course of action is to remand the matter for resentencing based

on full consideration of all relevant factors, including questions

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of law and issues of fact.

In light of the ambiguity in the district court’s decision, we

vacate Ventura’s sentence and remand for resentencing. 

So ordered.

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