Opinion ID: 199153
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Consideration of Police Reports and Complaint Applications

Text: 59 Dueno's reference to an admission by the defendant cannot be read apart from the inquiry framed in Harris: looking to the conduct in respect to which the defendant was charged and pled guilty, did the defendant and the government both believe[] that the generically violent crime . . . rather than the generically non-violent crime . . . was at issue. Harris, 964 F.2d at 1236. In fact, having reaffirmed Harris, Dueno describes the sentencing court's inquiry into the meaning of the defendant's guilty plea in a specific sense that reflects Harris--does the defendant's plea of guilty constitute an admission to a crime of violence? See Dueno, 171 F.3d at 7 (the evidence is insufficient for us to conclude, as a matter of law, that Dueno's 1994 guilty plea constituted an admission to the building invasion described by the police report) (emphasis added). The court's determination on the violent felony or crime of violence question does not turn on an explicit admission by the defendant to alleged conduct in the sense of yes, I struck the victim in the face, either at the time the defendant pled guilty to the earlier offense or when the enhancement issue arises at sentencing for a subsequent offense. Rather, the court's determination about the meaning of the guilty plea can be made on the basis of sufficiently reliable evidence independent of a fact-specific admission. See United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563, 570 (1989) (By entering a plea of guilty, the accused is not simply stating that he did the discrete acts described in the indictment; he is admitting guilt of a substantive crime.). 60 Nevertheless, Harris and Dueno leave open the question of what documents are sufficiently reliable evidence for determining whether a defendant's plea of guilty constitutes an admission to a generically violent crime under a statute that encompasses violent and non-violent conduct. In Harris, we allowed the district court to rely on an uncontradicted PSR. In Dueno, where the court had used faulty reasoning in making its crime of violence determination, we declined to rule that the uncontradicted narration of events in the PSR established that Dueno had pled guilty to a crime of violence. Rather, in concluding that the issue reasonably could be decided either way, we pointed out that the government did not offer the police report from which the facts in the PSR were taken, nor any other document that was before the judge who accepted Dueno's plea. 61 Here, noting the deficiencies cited in Dueno, the government offered certified copies of police reports and complaint applications. Based on our precedents, we see no justification for an absolute bar to the consideration of such documents when the sentencing court must determine whether the defendant and the government both believed that the defendant was entering a guilty plea to a generically violent crime. 10 Such a bar would make the use of prior convictions based on guilty pleas for purposes of the ACCA or criminal offender guideline enhancement hinge on the happenstance of state court record-keeping practices. The enhancement would only apply when a plea agreement or a plea transcript had been preserved that showed a defendant pled guilty to a violent felony or a crime of violence. Indeed, in Dueno, where we could have easily adopted a bright-line rule barring the use of police reports, we did not. We noted instead the absence in the record of a copy of the police report in question or of an explanation where the police report came from. Dueno, 171 F.3d at 7. These specific deficiencies made the PSR account insufficiently reliable for us to determine as an initial matter and as a matter of law that Dueno pled guilty to breaking and entering into a building. 62 The district court in this case did not attempt to evaluate the reliability of the police reports and complaint applications as a basis for the finding contemplated by both Harris and Dueno--whether the defendant and the government both believed that Shepard was entering guilty pleas to the generically violent crime of breaking and entering a building. In addressing that issue, the court should have asked the kind of questions suggested by our precedents. As discussed in Dueno, did the court taking the guilty plea have before it the police reports and complaint applications described in the PSR, or any other documents describing the defendant's conduct? Where did the police reports come from? What took place at Shepard's plea hearings? More specifically, as discussed in Harris, did the defendant provide anything at his plea hearings to contest the facts set forth in the police reports and complaint applications, thereby suggesting that the government and the defendant did not share an understanding that he was pleading guilty to an offense that had the elements of a generically violent crime? We cite these questions from our precedents as illustrative of the kind of inquiry that should be made. They are not offered as an exhaustive list. 63 The reference above to a defendant's contesting the facts set forth in a police report requires us to address a confusion relating to the concept of an admission when the enhancement issue arises at sentencing. The district court stated that if the relevant facts contained in the PSR are uncontested, the court may consider these as further admissions by the defendant. See also Dueno, 171 F.3d at 7; Harris, 964 F.2d at 1236-37. That statement is accurate. Such admissions would be important for the reasons they were important in Harris: 64 These two items of uncontested and uncontradicted information make clear that neither of the two assault and battery crimes for which Harris was charged and convicted were nonconsensual touching crimes, and both were of the physically harmful or potentially physical harmful variety. 65 Harris, 964 F.2d at 1237. These admissions during the sentencing process are an example of reliable evidence that would permit a sentencing court to conclude that the defendant's guilty plea to a prior offense constituted an admission to a generic violent felony or crime of violence. But it does not follow from this proposition that any objection posed by a defendant at the time of sentencing to the facts set forth in a PSR, or in an underlying police report or complaint application, precludes the court from finding that the defendant's guilty plea constituted such an admission. Such a result would be inconsistent with the preponderance of the evidence standard that generally applies when a court determines whether a defendant qualifies for an enhancement under the ACCA or career offender provision. See United States v. Spell, 44 F.3d 936 (11th Cir. 1995). 66 Therefore, the nature of the objection posed to a PSR, or to underlying documents relied upon by the government, must be considered carefully. The district court suggests that Shepard contested the accuracy of the facts in those documents that are relevant to whether he committed a generically violent crime. At no point--then or now, during the various plea colloquies, or at this sentencing--did Shepard concede the facts on which the government now relies. Indeed, Shepard expressly contested any characterizations of these convictions that went beyond the words of the complaint. However, Shepard's Taylor-based categorical objection to the use of the complaint applications and police reports does not challenge the accuracy of the statements in those documents describing entries into buildings. Shepard stated that these documents generally carry a high risk of unreliability without ever explaining why that was true in his case. Shepard's general challenge to the appropriateness of the PSR setting forth accounts of his past crimes, or to the reliance on police reports and complaint applications for those accounts, left those accounts uncontradicted, just as they were in Harris and Dueno. 67 We cannot anticipate the specific objections that Shepard might pose to the government's documents. We can emphasize, however, that the issue before the sentencing court is not what Shepard did to provoke the criminal charges to which he pled guilty. Rather, the issue, again, is the one framed in Harris: did the defendant and the government both believe at the time Shepard entered his pleas that the generically violent crime . . . rather than the generally non-violent crime . . . was at issue. Id. at 1236. To conclude otherwise would enmesh the district court in the kind of factually disputed archeological dig about the defendant's conduct that Taylor guards against, with all the attendant practical difficulties of holding mini-trials on a defendant's prior convictions. See Winter, 22 F.3d at 19. 68 Shepard's objections to the government's police reports and complaint applications might focus, for example, on any inconsistencies or ambiguities in their description of the defendant's conduct, or any circumstances relating to the creation or reproduction of the documents, that affect their usefulness for determining whether Shepard and the government both believed that an entry into a building was at issue when he entered the guilty pleas. Or Shepard might offer an account of what took place at his plea hearings, including the documents before the judge, that raises questions about that issue. If the government needs to respond to such objections, the response should usually be limited to examining easily produced and evaluated court documents, including the judgment of conviction, charging papers, plea agreement, presentence report adopted by the court, and the findings of a sentencing judge. Spell, 44 F.3d at 939. To that list we add transcripts of the plea hearing or other documents that were before the judge who accepted the guilty plea at issue. 69 In the face of plausible objections from Shepard, and in the absence of a sufficient response from the government, the court may decide that it cannot conclude by a preponderance of the evidence that his pleas of guilty constituted admissions to unlawful entries into buildings. The government, of course, bears the burden of proving the applicability of an upward adjustment under the guidelines [or the ACCA], Dueno, 131 F.3d at 7.