Opinion ID: 167492
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Scope of Prior Conviction Exception

Text: 12 Harris first argues that the district court violated his Sixth Amendment rights by determining that his prior crimes were committed on different occasions. This argument asks us to define the scope of the prior conviction exception to the rule announced in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000). The scope of the prior conviction exception is critical to the proper application of the ACCA, which requires sentencing courts to enhance a defendant's sentence based on his prior criminal record. The ACCA applies where the defendant has three previous convictions . . . for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, committed on occasions different from one another. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). Thus, imposition of the ACCA requires: (1) that at least three prior convictions exist, (2) that those convictions were either for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, and (3) that the prior offenses were committed on different occasions from one another. 13 Harris claims these facts must be submitted to a jury. In Apprendi, however, the Supreme Court expressly excluded a defendant's prior criminal history as a matter for jury deliberation:  Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court reaffirmed this holding last year in Booker: Any fact ( other than a prior conviction ) which is necessary to support a sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the facts established by a plea of guilty or a jury verdict must be admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. 543 U.S. at 244, 125 S.Ct. 738 (emphasis added). 14 Applying this authority, we have recently held that all three elements of the ACCA are properly assessed by the sentencing court. 1 First, the requisite number of convictions of the defendant is a question for the court. United States v. Moore, 401 F.3d 1220, 1226 (10th Cir. 2005). Second, whether a particular conviction was for a violent felony under § 924(e) is also a question of law for the court since it involves an inquiry intimately related to whether a prior conviction exists, and therefore falls within the prior convictions exception to the Apprendi rule. Id. at 1225. Finally, we most recently held that whether prior convictions happened on different occasions from one another is not a fact required to be determined by a jury but is instead a matter for the sentencing court. United States v. Michel, 446 F.3d 1122 (10th Cir.2006). 15 As we explained in Michel, every circuit court to consider the issue has concluded the question is one for the sentencing court, not a jury. United States v. Thompson, 421 F.3d 278, 284-85 (4th Cir. 2005); United States v. Wilson, 406 F.3d 1074, 1074 (8th Cir.2005); United States v. Burgin, 388 F.3d 177, 186 (6th Cir.2004); United States v. Morris, 293 F.3d 1010, 1012 (7th Cir.2002); United States v. Santiago, 268 F.3d 151, 156-57 (2d Cir.2001). 16 We found two cases particularly persuasive. In Thompson, the Fourth Circuit explained the logic of the prior convictions exception: 17 A conviction cannot . . . be reduced to nothing more than that the defendant was at some prior time convicted of some crime. This bare fact is certainly at the nucleus of the conviction. But that nucleus also contains other operative facts, such as the statute which was violated and the date of the conviction. The Supreme Court has declined to attempt extraction of the mere fact of a prior conviction, stripped of all content. We cannot be willfully blind to that content — date, statutory violation, and the like — where it is properly established by one of the sources approved [by the United States Supreme Court]. It is as much a part of the conviction as the fact that twelve jurors agreed about the defendant's guilt. 18 421 F.3d at 282-83 (emphasis added). Thus, the issue was whether the facts necessary to support the enhancement inhere in the fact of conviction or are extraneous to it. Id. at 283. 19 In concluding the former, the court made the commonsense observation: [The] ACCA's use of the term `occasion' requires recourse only to data normally found in conclusive judicial records, such as the date and location of an offense, upon which [Supreme Court precedents] say we may rely. Id. at 286. Thus, the `different occasions' requirement of § 924(e) cannot be significantly distinguished from `the fact of a prior conviction.' Id. at 286 (quoting Burgin, 388 F.3d at 186). 20 The Second Circuit expressed a similar view in Santiago: 21 The determination of the fact of a prior conviction implicitly entails many subsidiary findings, not the least of which is that the defendant being sentenced is the same defendant who previously was convicted of those prior offenses, a fact that could be quite controversial indeed.. . . Thus, the separateness of the convictions is not a fact which is different in kind from the types of facts already left to the sentencing judge. 22 268 F.3d at 156. The court concluded that the different occasions language of § 924(e) falls safely within the range of facts traditionally found by judges at sentencing and is sufficiently interwoven with the facts of the prior crimes that Apprendi does not require different fact-finders and different burdens of proof. Id. at 157. 23 The teaching of these cases is that the separateness of prior crimes is inherent in the fact of conviction. The time, place, and substance of the prior convictions can ordinarily be ascertained from court records associated with those convictions, and the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution allows sentencing courts to rely on such records to make findings about prior convictions. Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 16, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005). Like the number of prior crimes and whether they are violent felonies, separateness is an inquiry intimately related to whether a prior conviction exists. See United States v. Moore, 401 F.3d 1220, 1225 (10th Cir.2005). Therefore, separateness falls within the prior crimes exception. Michel, 446 F.3d at 1132. 24 Accordingly, the district court properly concluded the Sixth Amendment did not prevent it from deciding whether Harris's prior convictions were committed on occasions different from one another under the ACCA.