Opinion ID: 203139
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Class A Felony.

Text: The appellant's next assignment of error challenges the sentencing court's characterization of his underlying conspiracy conviction as a conviction for a Class A felony. We review this quintessentially legal determination de novo. See United States v. Robinson, 433 F.3d 31, 35 (1st Cir.2005). We begin with a sketch of the pertinent legal landscape. The governing statute authorizes reincarceration for violations of supervised release conditions. See 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). The statutory scheme also establishes ceilings on the lengths of new imprisonment terms. See id. These ceilings depend in part on the seriousness of the underlying offense of conviction. See United States v. Tapia-Escalera, 356 F.3d 181, 185 (1st Cir.2004). The sentencing guidelines contain a similar calibration. See USSG § 7B1.4. The gravity of an underlying offense, for both statutory and guideline purposes, is measured through the lens of 18 U.S.C. § 3559(a), which establishea a letter-grade classification regime. Under this taxonomy, offenses carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment are categorized as Class A felonies. Id. § 3559(a)(1). Those carrying maximum terms of twenty-five years or more but less than life imprisonment are categorized as Class B felonies. [2] Id. § 3559(a)(2). Supervised release violators who stand convicted of Class A felonies can receive additional sentences of up to five years. Id. § 3583(e)(3). Those who stand convicted of Class B felonies are subject to additional sentences of up to three years. Id. The district court determined that the appellant had committed a Class A felony because he had been sentenced under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A), which provides for a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. In endeavoring to impeach this determination, the appellant resurrects a claim advanced in his earlier appeal: that he was entitled to be sentenced under section 841(b)(1)(B), not section 841(b)(1)(A). Building on that foundation, he argues that since a life sentence was never authorized under the appropriate penalty provision, he should have been treated as having committed a Class B felony. [3] The appellant's attempt to pin his hopes on section 841(b)(1)(B) failed in his earlier appeal, and his arguments are no more robust the second time around. In Eirby I, we rejected this claim and affirmed the underlying conviction and sentence under section 841(b)(1)(A). See Eirby I, 262 F.3d at 37-39. The appellant cannot employ his present appeal as a vehicle for mounting a collateral attack on that holding. See, e.g., United States v. Pérez-Ruiz, 421 F.3d 11, 14 (1st Cir.2005); United States v. Moran, 393 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir.2004). In all events, the appellant's effort to countermand our earlier opinion rests on an insupportable premise: the misguided notion that Eirby I held that the appellant could not have been sentenced above the forty-year ceiling imposed by section 841(b)(1)(B). We made no such holding in Eirby I and the appellant's argument to the contrary entails a gross misreading of that decision. There, we emphasized that an Apprendi error cannot occur unless the sentence actually imposed is greater than the otherwise applicable statutory maximum. See Eirby I, 262 F.3d at 37. Since the sentence actually imposed by the district court fell below the maximum authorized by either section 841(b)(1)(A) or section 841(b)(1)(B), no Apprendi error occurred. Id. at 37, 39. We expressed no opinion about the constitutionality vel non of imposing a sentence above section 841(b)(1)(B)'s forty-year ceiling. Moreover, our decision never concludednor even intimatedthat section 841(b)(1)(B) was the correct sentencing provision. The opposite is true; we repeatedly characterized the indictment's reference to section 841(b)(1)(B) as mistaken. Id. at 37, 38. Although it may be frosting on the cake, we add that there could have been no Apprendi error in the original sentence. The record makes manifest that the sentence actually imposed was anchored in the appellant's own admission: before being sentenced on the conspiracy charge, he stipulated that he was responsible for between fifty and one hundred fifty grams of cocaine base. Thus, the factual finding that the appellant was responsible for a quantity of cocaine base sufficient to trigger section 841(b)(1)(A) was within the contemplation of the facts to which the appellant admitted. Factfinding premised on a defendant's admissions is not a practice invalidated by Apprendi. [4] See United States v. Buonocore, 416 F.3d 1124, 1134 (10th Cir.2005); United States v. Shelton, 400 F.3d 1325, 1329-30 (11th Cir.2005); see also Booker, 543 U.S. at 244, 125 S.Ct. 738.