Source: http://www.kmbllaw.com/2015/04/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 11:23:21+00:00

Document:
Judge Graber’s dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc in Rendon v. Holder recognizes that the panel opinion in Rendon raises doubt about an earlier decision in Coronado v. Holder, 759 F.3d 977 (9th Cir. 2014) that rejects a challenge to the divisibility of the California drug statutes based on their failure to require unanimity on the type of drug.
Coronado is in fact subject to attack because (1) its analysis is minimal; (2) the state law authority it cites doesn’t really support its holding and the opinion ignores other state authority; and (3) at one last Ninth Circuit panel has suggested the holding in Coronado should be reconsidered en banc.
Also keep in mind that there’s an additional potential challenge to the divisibility of some of the California drug statutes because they criminalize multiple types of conduct, including transportation for personal use, and don’t appear to require unanimity on the type of conduct in which the defendant engaged.
Some of you may recall a post I put up three months after Descamps suggesting an argument that the California drug statutes aren’t divisible because juries aren’t required to unanimously agree on the type of drug involved in the offense. (See “Still More on Descamps: An Application of Last Week’s Post” in the September 2013 link at the right.) That argument was rejected, albeit in a footnote with relatively minimal analysis and no discussion of the cases cited in my post, in Coronado v. Holder, 759 F.3d 977 (9th Cir. 2014). See id. at 985 n.4.
Judge Graber’s dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc in Rendon v. Holder which I discussed in my post last week recognizes that the panel opinion in Rendon raises doubt about Coronado. She notes that “at least one judge questioned the correctness of Coronado under Rendon’s approach.” Rendon v. Holder, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 1474921, at *5 (9th Cir. April 2, 2015). The doubt was expressed by Judge Hawkins in a concurring opinion in United States v. Ramirez-Macias, 584 Fed. Appx. 818 (9th Cir. 2014). Judge Hawkins noted that “[b]oth sides reasonably can marshal intermediate appellate case law in their favor,” and went on to cite some of the same cases cited in my prior post. Id. at 820. (No, I’m not claiming he cited them because they were in my post, or even that he’d read my post.) He then went even further and suggested that “[b]ecause the magnitude of this issue is great and because we should tread carefully as we interpret unclear areas of state law, the en banc court may wish to consider these issues or certify the jury unanimity question to the Supreme Court of California.” Id. While the docket reflects that a petition for rehearing was denied in that case (just the day before the order denying en banc review, and accompanying dissenting opinions, were filed in Rendon), the docket also reflects all the judges in Ramirez-Macias voted for and/or recommended en banc review. Further, Judge Graber noted multiple pending petitions for rehearing in her Rendon dissent, not just the petition in Ramirez-Macias. See id., 2015 WL 1474921, at *5.
Coronado further argues that “the precise controlled substance possessed is not an essential element” of § 11377(a). Neither case he cites supports this contention. See People v. Palaschak, 9 Cal. 4th 1236, 40 Cal. Rptr. 2d 722, 893 P.2d 717, 720-21 (1995) (holding that an offender may be convicted of the offense of possessing drugs despite having ingested those drugs); People v. Martin, 169 Cal. App. 4th 822, 86 Cal. Rptr. 3d 858, 861-62 (2008) (finding no error where the defense failed to object to the specificity of the pleadings and the defendant was not prejudiced by the conflicting references to “cocaine” and “cocaine base” because the penalty of the offense was the same). The jury instructions applicable to this offense also undermine Coronado’s argument. See CALCRIM No. 2304 (2013); CALJIC 12.00 (2013).
Coronado, 759 F.3d at 985 n.4.
This reasoning falls short in several respects. First, it ignores other cases that support the argument, which are cited in my prior post. Second, the pattern jury instructions the footnote cites don’t really suggest anything one way or the other. The CALJIC instruction indicates that the court should “[i]nsert the name of the controlled substance as alleged in the information,” which presumably means all of the substances alleged if more than one is alleged and/or just “controlled substance” if the specific type isn’t alleged. The CALCRIM instruction simply tells the court to “insert type of controlled substance,” but doesn’t indicate that the court can’t enter more than one type if there’s more than one possibility. And nothing in either instruction tells the jury it has to unanimously agree on the controlled substance if it’s given more than one option.
In sum, it’s worth trying to take Judge Hawkins up on his invitation for possible en banc review. Coronado was decided before Rendon clearly established that jury unanimity is a requirement for divisibility, it has minimal analysis, it ignores pertinent state case law, and it cites jury instruction authority that is at best ambiguous about unanimity.
Finally, remember a second, alternative challenge to the divisibility of some of the California drug statutes. That’s an argument from our Los Angeles Federal Public Defender office about the absence of a jury unanimity requirement in the California statutes criminalizing sale of drugs, such as California Health and Safety Code § 11352 (for most controlled substances) and 11360 (for marijuana). Those statutes apply (or at least they did until the statute was amended in 2013, and remember that what matters is the statute as it was written at the time the defendant was convicted, not the statute as it’s written now) not just to sale but also to transportation for personal use, and there’s a very plausible argument that juries aren’t required to unanimously agree on which conduct the defendant engaged in. For an outline of this argument and some sample pleadings, see the prior post mentioned in passing in last week’s post – entitled, “Another Descamps Angle on a California Drug Statute” – in the May 2014 link at the right.
A petition for rehearing en banc that’s been pending in Rendon v. Holder has been denied.
Still, there’s a lengthy dissent by Judge Graber arguing that Rendon is wrong.
Judge Graber’s dissent can be challenged as (1) reading too much into a footnote in Descamps; (2) simplifying the problem for trial convictions where there are jury instructions and overlooking the far more common guilty plea conviction where there aren’t jury instructions; and (3) exaggerating the other policy concerns she raises.
For those of you who knew about it – and even more for those of you who were worried about it – I thought I’d put up a post about a petition for rehearing en banc that’s been pending in the Rendon v. Holder case (764 F.3d 1077 (9th Cir. 2014)) which I discussed in a post last October. (See “The Ninth Circuit Agrees With Us on What Divisibility Means Under Descamps,” in the October 2014 link at the right.) You’ll recall that the holding in Rendon was that a statute containing a list of alternatives is divisible under Descamps only if a jury has to unanimously agree on which alternative is true. The good news is that the petition for rehearing en banc in Rendon was just recently denied.
The order denying rehearing was accompanied by two dissents, however. One was a very lengthy dissent by Judge Graber, see Rendon v. Holder, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 1474921 (9th Cir. April 2, 2015), which I think is worth discussing for two reasons. First, just for the intellectual exercise (though those of you in circuits without controlling authority may have the dissent pointed out and then need to respond to it), and, second, for an attack on the California drug statutes that the dissent suggests is worth continuing, at least for now.
The dissent delves into the nuances of various States’ laws in an effort to cast doubt on this understanding of our prior holdings, arguing that we used the modified categorical approach in Taylor[ v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990)], Shepard[ v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005)], and Johnson[ v. United States, 559 U.S. 133 (2010)] “in relation to statutes that may not have been divisible” in the way that we have just described. Post, at 2297 (ALITO, J.). But if, as the dissent claims, the state laws at issue in those cases set out “merely alternative means, not alternative elements” of an offense, post, at 2298, that is news to us. And more important, it would have been news to the Taylor, Shepard, and Johnson Courts: All those decisions rested on the explicit premise that the laws “contain[ed] statutory phrases that cover several different . . . crimes,” not several different methods of committing one offense. (Citations omitted.) And if the dissent’s real point is that distinguishing between “alternative elements” and “alternative means” is difficult, we can see no real-world reason to worry. Whatever a statute lists (whether elements or means), the documents we approved in Taylor and Shepard – i.e., indictment, jury instructions, plea colloquy, and plea agreement – would reflect the crime’s elements. So a court need not parse state law in the way the dissent suggests: When a state law is drafted in the alternative, the court merely resorts to the approved documents and compares the elements revealed there to those of the generic offense.
Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at 2285 n.2, quoted in Rendon, 2015 WL 1474921, at *2 (emphasis added by Judge Graber).
I have to confess the language in this footnote seems far more ambiguous to me than Judge Graber suggests. It does disclaim the need to “parse state law,” but it also refers at multiple points to “elements,” including in the text Judge Graber emphasizes. And Judge Graber’s position is problematic for multiple other reasons. First, it creates a problematic distinction between statutes which list alternative means (as opposed to elements) and those which don’t list the alternative means; she would allow a court to use the modified categorical approach for the former, but not use it for the latter. Second, it ignores the limits and rationales for the modified categorical approach which Descamps emphasized in the non-footnote text. Those are that (1) the modified categorical approach is merely another version of the categorical approach to be used when a single statute includes multiple offenses, see Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at 2285; (2) it must avoid creating Sixth Amendment problems by making sure the Sixth Amendment’s jury unanimity requirement was respected (see another post, “More on Descamps,” in the September 2013 link at the right for multiple ways in which the Descamps opinion emphasizes this); and (3) it must retain the categorical approach’s focus on the crime the defendant was “convicted” of, not the crime he “committed,” see Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at 2285, 2287; see also Taylor, 495 U.S. at 600.
Judge Graber also expresses concern about having to “delve into the nuances of a seemingly endless variety of state laws in order to determine whether, in the abstract, a jury must unanimously agree as to which statutory alternative the defendant committed.” Rendon, 2015 WL 1474921, at *5. But that train’s already left the station. We already “delve into the nuances” of state law in determining the substantive scope of state statutes. Judge Graber asserts that determining state law on jury unanimity is “a notoriously uncertain inquiry,” Rendon, 2015 WL 1474921, at *5, but determining the scope of state statutes can also be a highly nuanced and difficult task. See, e.g., James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 204-06 & nn.3,4 (2007) (acknowledging state case law establishing differing scope of attempted burglary statutes in different states). Jury unanimity questions may actually be easier to answer at times, because there may be pattern jury instructions to look to.
For us in the Ninth Circuit – and the Fourth (see the case of United States v. Royal, 731 F.3d 333 (4th Cir. 2013), that’s cited in Rendon and discussed in another prior post, “More on What’s a Divisible Statute Under Descamps,” which can be found in the April 2014 link at the right) – the foregoing discussion is largely an intellectual exercise. But for those of you in other circuits, it’s more than an intellectual exercise, because your circuits will have to decide whether to follow the analysis of the panel opinion in Rendon or the analysis suggested in Judge Graber’s dissent. At least you’ve got controlling precedent in two circuits to start with.
And for those in our circuit, I’ll have some more thoughts in next week’s post – on what Judge Graber’s dissent suggests about continuing an attack on the California drug statutes. That post will hopefully be more than an intellectual exercise.
In the vein of last week’s post on ameliorating sentencing legislation – and maybe because I’m feeling a little lazy this week – I thought I’d share a presentation I gave – just before leaving the Federal Public Defender’s office – on what I called the “history” of changes in the criminal justice system over my lifetime and my career as a public defender. It was a presentation put on by the California Supreme Court Historical Society that was led by Barbara Babcock, a mentor and former professor of mine (and former public defender), who’s made her most recent project a study of the first Los Angeles County Public Defender, Clara Foltz.
In any event, my presentation on the panel was about the history of changes in the criminal justice system over my lifetime and career as a public defender in the form of the horrible swing toward harshness, and possible glimmers of hope for a swing back. I also offered some thoughts on how and why restricting sentencing in individual cases with detailed sentencing rules created by bodies like Congress and a Sentencing Commission creates an inherent bias in favor of harshness.
Perhaps you’ll be able to use some of my thoughts – or your own modification and improvement on them – for policy attacks on the guidelines. If not, at least entertain yourself with the short “history” of the criminal justice system over my lifetime and career. I’ll be back next week with something a little less lazy.

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