Source: http://openjurist.org/169/f3d/787
Timestamp: 2015-07-08 06:43:09
Document Index: 195489192

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1326', '§ 155', '§ 1101', '§ 2', '§ 1101', '§ 844']

169 F3d 787 United States v. C Graham L C | OpenJurist
169 F. 3d 787 - United States v. C Graham L C Home
169 F3d 787 United States v. C Graham L C 169 F.3d 787
UNITED STATES of Americav.Winston C. GRAHAM a/k/a Vincent Graham, a/k/a MichaelDiamond a/k/a Tyrone L. Simmons, Winston C.Graham, Appellant
Argued Jan. 27, 1999.Decided March 5, 1999.
Maureen Kearney Rowley, Chief Federal Defender, David L. McColgin, Assistant Federal Defender, Supervising Appellate Attorney, Sylvia A. Russianoff (Argued), Assistant Federal Defender, Defender Association of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellant.
Michael R. Stiles, United States Attorney, Walter S. Batty, Jr., Assistant United States Attorney, Chief of Appeals, Judy Goldstein Smith, Robert A. Zauzmer (Argued), Assistant United States Attorneys, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellee.
Graham was deported in 1996 after serving a previous sentence for reentering the country after his deportation in 1990. He returned to the United States without permission from the Attorney General and was arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1997. He again pled guilty to reentry into the U.S. following deportation, a violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326, and was sentenced to 72 months in prison. The appeal is from that judgment, and raises only sentencing issues.
Graham has three state convictions: In February 1986, he was convicted of unlawful possession of marijuana, a violation with a maximum fine of $100, stemming from a November 1985 arrest. In May 1986, he was convicted of attempted possession of marijuana, a Class B misdemeanor with a maximum of three months' imprisonment, stemming from a November 1984 arrest. Finally, in May 1990, he was convicted of petit larceny, a Class A misdemeanor with a maximum of a year's imprisonment under New York law. See N.Y. Penal Law § 155.25 (McKinney 1997). He received a sentence of one year.
Congress has classified certain crimes as "aggravated felonies" for purposes of immigration and deportation. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43). In this case, the aggravated felony classification increases the penalty for the crime of reentering the country after deportation. See U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(B) (incorporating the aggravated felony definitions of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)). The District Court found that Graham's second drug conviction and his petit larceny conviction should be classified as aggravated felonies, which triggered a sixteen-level increase in the base offense level. The aggravated felony classification changed Graham's guideline sentence range from 21-27 months to 70-87 months.
The District Court reasoned that, because Graham had a prior drug possession conviction, his second conviction would have been a federal felony. However, because the conduct underlying Graham's second possession conviction did not occur after his first possession conviction had become final, as the applicable statute requires in order to convert a second possession offense into a felony, see 21 U.S.C. § 844(a), Graham would not have been subject to felony punishment even had he been convicted under federal law. The government concedes the error on appeal, and therefore we need not resolve the question of whether this "hypothetical federal felony" treatment is appropriate.
Section 1101(a)(43)(G) defines as an aggravated felony "a theft offense ... for which the term of imprisonment at least one year." The sentence is obviously missing a crucial verb. Graham argues that there are two options: The statute could apply to theft offenses "for which the term of imprisonment is at least one year" or to theft offenses "for which the term of imprisonment imposed is at least one year." He then argues that, because we should interpret ambiguous statutes to favor defendants, we should interpret the statute to mean "is," not "imposed," so that the minimum term for the theft offense has to be at least one year. Since petit larceny carries no minimum term, he contends, it is not an aggravated felony under his interpretation.
Graham claims that the rule of lenity mandates his interpretation--courts should not interpret a statute to increase a penalty when the interpretation can be based on "no more than a guess as to what Congress intended." Ladner v. United States, 358 U.S. 169, 178, 79 S.Ct. 209, 3 L.Ed.2d 199 (1958). However, the rule of lenity does not apply simply because a statute requires interpretation. See Caron v. United States, 524 U.S. 308, 118 S.Ct. 2007, 2012, 141 L.Ed.2d 303 (1998) (the rule is "not invoked by a grammatical possibility"); Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125, 118 S.Ct. 1911, 1919, 141 L.Ed.2d 111 (1998) (the rule only applies if "after seizing everything from which aid can be derived ... we can make no more than a guess as to what Congress intended" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). Courts will also consider other clear provisions of a law in order to interpret an ambiguous portion of the statute. See Hernandez v. Kalinowski, 146 F.3d 196, 199 (3d Cir.1998).
Graham's statutory construction is flawed. Before its amendment in 1996, section 1101(a)(43)(G) defined "aggravated felony" in relevant part as "a theft offense ... for which the term of imprisonment imposed (regardless of any suspension of such imprisonment) is at least five years." The reference was clearly to the term imposed and not to the statutory minimum. Although the 1996 amendments created a typographical error by inadvertently removing the verb, there is no evidence that Congress intended to begin relying on the statutory minimum rather than the sentence actually imposed for a convic