Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-02137/USCOURTS-ca7-16-02137-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jason Davila
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16‐2137

JASON DAVILA,

Petitioner‐Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent‐Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 15 C 8403 — Gary Feinerman, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 16, 2016 — DECIDED DECEMBER 13, 2016

____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and HAMILTON, Circuit

Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Jason Davila pleaded guilty

to two criminal charges: that he conspired to commit rob‐

bery in violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. §1951, and that

he possessed a firearm in connection with both the planned

robbery and a drug trafficking crime, in violation of 18

U.S.C. §924(c)(1)(A). The indictment charged the drug of‐

Case: 16-2137 Document: 28 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6
2 No. 16‐2137

fense as a separate substantive count, which was dismissed

as part of a plea bargain. The judge sentenced Davila to con‐

secutive sentences of 6 months’ imprisonment under the

Hobbs Act and 60 months’ imprisonment under §924(c). He

did not appeal.

But after the Supreme Court held in Johnson v. United

States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), that the residual clause of the

Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. §924(e), is unconstitu‐

tionally vague, Davila filed this collateral attack under 28

U.S.C. §2255. He contends that conspiracy to commit a rob‐

bery could be deemed a crime of violence only under the re‐

sidual clause in §924(c)(3)(B) and that this clause should be

held unconstitutional under Johnson’s reasoning. This court

recently reached that conclusion about the validity of

§924(c)(3)(B). See United States v. Cardena, No. 12‐3680 (7th

Cir. Nov. 18, 2016), slip op. 52–54. Anticipating the possibil‐

ity of that outcome—and without deciding whether a Hobbs

Act conspiracy is a crime of violence under the elements

clause in §924(c)(3)(A)—the district judge held that Davila’s

conviction is valid no matter how conspiracy to rob is classi‐

fied. The indictment charged Davila with possessing the gun

in connection with both that planned robbery and a complet‐

ed drug deal, and the latter is a “drug trafficking crime” un‐

der §924(c)(2). The district court accordingly declined to dis‐

turb the conviction or sentence.

Davila’s appellate brief assumes that a conviction under

§924(c) is proper only if there is also a conviction for a quali‐

fying predicate offense—either a “drug trafficking crime” or

a “crime of violence”. As he pleaded guilty to the Hobbs Act

count but not the drug count, he submits that the drug deal

cannot be considered under §924(c). This approach treats

Case: 16-2137 Document: 28 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6
No. 16‐2137 3

§924(c) as a sentence‐enhancement statute, and a judge can’t

enhance a sentence unless there has been a conviction for an

underlying offense.

The Armed Career Criminal Act is a sentence‐

enhancement statute, but §924(c) is not. It defines a stand‐

alone crime. Section 924(c)(1)(A) provides that

any person who, during and in relation to any crime of violence

or drug trafficking crime (including a crime of violence or drug

trafficking crime that provides for an enhanced punishment if

committed by the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or de‐

vice) for which the person may be prosecuted in a court of the

United States, uses or carries a firearm, or who, in furtherance of

any such crime, possesses a firearm, shall, in addition to the pun‐

ishment provided for such crime of violence or drug trafficking

crime ... be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than

5 years[.]

This requires a minimum sentence of five years if the firearm

is possessed during and in relation to a drug offense or

crime of violence “for which the person may be prosecuted”

(emphasis added); it does not require a prosecution for or

conviction of that other offense. See United States v. Moore,

763 F.3d 900, 908 (7th Cir. 2014); Young v. United States, 124

F.3d 794, 800 (7th Cir. 1997). When stating the factual basis of

his plea, Davila admitted to a substantive drug offense that

made him eligible for conviction under §924(c), no matter

how the Hobbs Act conspiracy is best classified (a subject

that we do not address).

Davila contends that even if a §924(c) conviction is possi‐

ble without a conviction on a predicate offense, he under‐

stood the §924(c) count of the indictment to allege only that

he possessed the gun during and in relation to a crime of vi‐

olence. Yet the §924(c) count is short (about half of a double‐

Case: 16-2137 Document: 28 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6
4 No. 16‐2137

spaced page) and mentions the Hobbs Act and drug offenses

within a single sentence. The plea colloquy also covered the

relation between his gun and drugs.

There is a deeper problem with Davila’s challenge to his

conviction under §924(c): He pleaded guilty. He did not fight

the charge and contend that the residual clause is invalid or

that conviction of a drug charge is essential to a §924(c) con‐

viction. He gave up those and other possible arguments as

part of a plea bargain, which conferred benefits including

the dismissal of two other serious charges (the substantive

drug count and a felon‐in‐possession count). Davila cannot

keep those benefits while avoiding the criminal responsibil‐

ity to which he admitted.

The Supreme Court has held many times that a plea of

guilty is all that is necessary for a conviction:

[W]hen the judgment of conviction upon a guilty plea has be‐

come final and the offender seeks to reopen the proceeding, the

inquiry is ordinarily confined to whether the underlying plea

was both counseled and voluntary. If the answer is in the affirm‐

ative then the conviction and the plea, as a general rule, foreclose

the collateral attack. There are exceptions where on the face of

the record the court had no power to enter the conviction or im‐

pose the sentence.

United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563, 569 (1989). Davila’s plea

was counseled, and he does not contend that it was involun‐

tary. His brief tells us that he does not want the plea set aside

and the prosecution restarted. That leaves the question

whether the court had “power to enter the conviction”—in

other words, subject‐matter jurisdiction. A later passage in

Broce contemplates the possibility that a plea might be inva‐

lid if the very act of initiating a criminal prosecution violated

the Constitution, see id. at 574–75, but Davila does not con‐

Case: 16-2137 Document: 28 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6
No. 16‐2137 5

tend that there was any problem with this prosecution’s ini‐

tiation. He argues only that he is entitled to the benefit of the

later decision in Johnson.

The district court had subject‐matter jurisdiction under

18 U.S.C. §3231. See United States v. Martin, 147 F.3d 529 (7th

Cir. 1998). This leads Davila to contend that, whenever a

constitutional problem crops up in a case that had been re‐

solved by a guilty plea, the district court retroactively loses

jurisdiction despite §3231. That position runs headlong into

Broce, for the Court there held that a guilty plea prevents col‐

lateral relief even on the assumption that the conviction vio‐

lated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Broce is hardly the only holding to that effect. The Court

observed, 488 U.S. at 571–72, that in Brady v. United States,

397 U.S. 742 (1970), it had rejected the contention that a con‐

stitutional flaw revealed by post‐plea developments permits

a court to set aside a plea. Brady had been charged with cap‐

ital kidnapping and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge to

avoid the risk of the death penalty. Nine years after Brady

entered that plea, United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570 (1968),

held that the Constitution precluded the death‐penalty sys‐

tem established by the statute under which Brady had been

charged. But this did Brady no good because “a voluntary

plea of guilty intelligently made in the light of the then ap‐

plicable law does not become vulnerable because later judi‐

cial decisions indicate that the plea rested on a faulty prem‐

ise.” Brady, 397 U.S. at 757, quoted in Broce, 488 U.S. at 572.

What was true for Brady and Broce is true for Davila as well.

Johnson did not order the prosecution dismissed for lack

of subject‐matter jurisdiction. Instead the Supreme Court

ruled in Johnson’s favor on the merits. Likewise we decided

Case: 16-2137 Document: 28 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6
6 No. 16‐2137

Cardena on the merits. Unless a suit is laughably frivolous at

the outset, a decision that the plaintiff loses because the law

favors the defense leads to a decision on the merits, not a

dismissal for lack of subject‐matter jurisdiction. See Bell v.

Hood, 327 U.S. 678 (1946). So Davila loses for two independ‐

ent reasons: first, conviction of a drug crime is not essential

to a conviction under §924(c) for possessing a gun during

and in relation to a drug offense; second, Davila’s guilty plea

forecloses a collateral attack based on Johnson or any other

development that does not concern subject‐matter jurisdic‐

tion or imply that the very institution of the criminal charge

violated the Constitution.

AFFIRMED

Case: 16-2137 Document: 28 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6