Opinion ID: 1362483
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Constitutional Right to a Jury Trial

Text: Bradford next argues that the district court's upward departure violated his Sixth-Amendment right to a jury pursuant to Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), and United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005), because any fact that increased his sentence should have been found beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury. Bradford also contends that, under the Due Process Clause, the court was required to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he had sold heroin to J.H. and that the heroin resulted in J.H.'s death because these findings resulted in a considerable increase in his sentence. We review constitutional challenges to a sentence de novo. United States v. Gallimore, 491 F.3d 871, 874-75 (8th Cir.2007). Our cases are clear that, post- Booker, courts can find sentence-enhancing facts based on a preponderance of the evidence, see, e.g., United States v. Okai, 454 F.3d 848, 851-52 (8th Cir.2006); United States v. Garcia-Gonon, 433 F.3d 587, 593 (8th Cir.2006), without violating the defendant's Sixth-Amendment rights. One exception exists, however, for situations in which the defendant's due-process rights are implicated because the magnitude of a proposed departure dwarfs the guideline range applicable to the substantive offense[] of conviction. United States v. Kikumura, 918 F.2d 1084, 1089 (3d Cir. 1990). In such a case, the sentencing enhancement becomes the `tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense.' Okai, 454 F.3d at 852 (quoting United States v. Townley, 929 F.2d 365, 369 (8th Cir.1991)); see also McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 88, 106 S.Ct. 2411, 91 L.Ed.2d 67 (1986) (The statute gives no impression of having been tailored to permit the visible possession finding to be a tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense.). However, while a number of circuits have acknowledged that this exception exists, [5] very few have actually applied it. [6] The Third Circuit found the preponderance standard inadequate in Kikumura, and held that due process required clear and convincing evidentiary support for the facts relied upon to enhance the sentence. Kikumura, 918 F.2d at 1102. In Kikumura, the Guidelines dictated a range of 27 to 33 months' imprisonment (level 18, category I) for passport offenses and possession of explosives. Id. at 1094. However, after finding that the defendant acquired the explosives as an international terrorist and planned to kill large numbers of people, the district court departed upward and imposed a sentence of thirty years (equivalent to level 40, category I). Id. at 1098. The Ninth Circuit [7] has also applied the exception and has required a district court to find certain sentence-enhancing facts by clear and convincing evidence when a judicial finding of fact has a disproportionate impact on the defendant's sentence. See, e.g., United States v. Jordan, 256 F.3d 922, 929 (9th Cir.2001) (holding that the failure to apply the clear and convincing evidence standard of proof to sentence-enhancing facts was erroneous); United States v. Mezas de Jesus, 217 F.3d 638, 643 (9th Cir. 2000) (same); United States v. Hopper, 177 F.3d 824, 833 (9th Cir.1999) (same). Our court has often alluded to this exception, but has never found a case with facts sufficient to fall within the exception. See, e.g., Okai, 454 F.3d at 852; United States v. Archuleta, 412 F.3d 1003, 1007-08 (8th Cir.2005); United States v. Anderson, 243 F.3d 478, 485-86 (8th Cir. 2001). All we can glean from these cases regarding how high a sentencing enhancement would need to be for the tail to wag the dog is dicta in Townley stating that an eighteen-level increase in the defendant's base offense level and a seven-fold increase in the permissible sentencing range is an extreme case where due process requires clear and convincing evidentiary support. Townley, 929 F.2d at 369-70. Bradford was subject to the equivalent of a twelve-level enhancement based on the court's finding by a preponderance that Bradford distributed heroin to J.H. resulting in J.H.'s death, and the new range/actual sentence constituted nearly a four-fold increase in his sentencing range. His actual sentence (after a downward variance outside the new, hypothetical Guidelines range) was 210 months  113 months above the high-end of his original Guidelines range (before the upward departure). Our court has upheld a sentence based on facts found by a preponderance that have raised a sentencing range four-fold. See United States v. Alvarez, 168 F.3d 1084, 1088 (8th Cir.1999). Thus, based on our precedents, we cannot say that the district court's finding of fact in this case raised Bradford's sentence high enough to require a finding based on clear and convincing evidence.