Opinion ID: 2792884
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: O’Bryant’s Guilty Plea and Sentence

Text: O’Bryant pleaded guilty to count one pursuant to a written plea agreement. The parties agreed that O’Bryant was accountable for 510 grams of cocaine, but they did not agree on his offense level. The government maintained that O’Bryant’s base offense level should be 43 under Guidelines § 2D1.1 and its cross-reference to -9- § 2A1.1, which provides the base offense level for first-degree murder. The presentence investigation report (PSR) also recommended application of the crossreference. O’Bryant denied knowledge of any plan to murder Benson and argued that the cross-reference should not apply. The district court held a two-day sentencing hearing, during which Nettles, Stringfellow, and Compton testified. O’Bryant objected to Nettles’s testimony regarding his final conversation with Benson. The government argued that it was not eliciting the testimony for its truth, but rather to explain why Nettles decided to contact the police and report Benson as missing. The district court overruled the objection, explaining that the testimony would not be accepted as true and would not be used to establish relevant conduct. The district court also overruled the hearsay objection to Stringfellow’s testimony regarding what Jackson had said about killing Benson, holding that it was not hearsay because it was a statement by a coconspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy. At the close of the evidence, the district court addressed the PSR and O’Bryant’s objections to the Guidelines calculations. The district court rejected O’Bryant’s arguments that the application of the cross-reference violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process and his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. It also found that the government had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the conspiracy involved the killing of Benson under circumstances that would constitute first-degree murder: [T]here is quite a substantial amount of evidence supporting a finding that there was in fact a conspiracy involving the defendant[;] that the defendant Mr. O’Bryant, was in fact the individual calling the shots on this conspiracy; that he was the person directing how it happened and when [it] happened except to the extent that events transpired that were beyond his control, such as the sudden rainstorm and such as Mr. Jackson killing Mr. Benson inside the car instead of outside the car. -10- .... I believe that the facts here well support a finding that this defendant caused the killing of another human being, and did so in a premeditated manner as part of a fairly elaborate, but at times misguided scheme. The district court thus applied the cross-reference to § 2A1.1 and determined that O’Bryant’s base offense level was 43 “because this was a knowing, willful, premeditated matter, a conspiracy to commit such a murder that continued and was ongoing, and about which this defendant had never withdrawn.” The district court granted O’Bryant a 3-level decrease for acceptance of responsibility and found that O’Bryant’s total offense level was 40, his criminal history category was I, and his sentencing range was 292 to 365 months’ imprisonment. After considering the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), the district court sentenced O’Bryant to 330 months’ imprisonment.
O’Bryant argues that the district court should not have applied the first-degreemurder cross-reference set forth in § 2A1.1. We review the district court’s interpretation and application of the Guidelines de novo and its factual findings for clear error. United States v. Muckle, 755 F.3d 1024, 1025 (8th Cir. 2014). Guidelines § 2D1.1 sets forth the base offense level for possessing with intent to distribute cocaine and the specific offense characteristics that increase or decrease the base offense level. Section 2D1.1(d) is entitled “Cross References” and instructs the district court as follows: (1) If a victim was killed under circumstances that would constitute murder under 18 U.S.C. § 1111 had such killing taken place within the territorial or maritime jurisdiction of the United States, -11- apply § 2A1.1 (First Degree Murder) or § 2A1.2 (Second Degree Murder), as appropriate, if the resulting offense level is greater than that determined under this guideline. 18 U.S.C. § 1111(a) defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.” The statute provides that first-degree murder includes “[e]very murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing.” Id. O’Bryant argues that the application of the § 2A1.1 first-degree-murder crossreference violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process and his Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. Specifically, he contends that the district court’s application of the § 2A1.1 cross-reference sentenced him “for a murder he was never charged with, a murder he denies being involved in, and a murder that was never proven, to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt.” O’Bryant acknowledges that our precedent holds that a defendant’s constitutional rights are not violated when a district court applies the first-degree-murder cross-reference set forth in § 2A1.1, see United States v. Clay, 579 F.3d 919, 929-30 (8th Cir. 2009), but argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151 (2013), casts doubt on our panel decision. Alleyne held that any fact that increases the mandatory minimum sentence to which a defendant is exposed is an “element” of the crime and must be submitted to the jury. Id. at 2155. Alleyne does not prevent the application of the § 2A1.1 cross-reference in this case. We addressed this precise issue in United States v. Davis, 753 F.3d 1361 (8th Cir. 2014) (per curiam), a decision issued after this appeal was filed. In Davis, the district court applied the § 2A1.1 cross-reference and sentenced the defendant to the statutory maximum term of imprisonment for being a felon in possession of a firearm. We rejected the defendant’s argument that the district court violated Alleyne by applying the § 2A1.1 cross-reference without having a jury act as the fact-finder. -12- Application of the § 2A1.1 cross-reference neither increases the penalty beyond the statutory maximum, see Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000), nor increases the mandatory minimum, see Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2155. Regarding whether a jury is required, application of a statutory maximum or minimum [is] to be distinguished from “factfinding used to guide judicial discretion in selecting punishment within limits fixed by law. While such findings of facts may lead judges to select sentences that are more severe than the ones they would have selected without those facts, the Sixth Amendment does not govern the element of sentencing.” Davis, 753 F.3d at 1361-62 (quoting Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2161 n.2 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). Davis thus forecloses O’Bryant’s Alleyne argument.3 O’Bryant next argues that the evidence was insufficient to support the application of § 2A1.1. O’Bryant argued at sentencing and continues to argue on appeal that any conspiracy to kill Benson and steal his cocaine ended in the woods, when the downpour interrupted the ruse drug deal, and that Jackson later acted alone and without premeditation when he shot Benson. O’Bryant also contends that Stringfellow’s testimony should have been excluded as incredible. Stringfellow was involved only in the conspiracy that ended with the downpour and not in any later conspiracy, O’Bryant argues, and his testimony regarding the statements that Jackson allegedly had made were not in furtherance of the first conspiracy. 3 O’Bryant argues in passing that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses when the district court admitted Nettles’s testimony regarding his last conversation with Benson and Stringfellow’s testimony regarding what Jackson said. Assuming, arguendo, that the testimony was hearsay, the district court did not err in admitting it. “We have held that the admission of hearsay during sentencing proceedings does not violate a defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause.” United States v. Pepper, 747 F.3d 520, 525 n.4 (8th Cir. 2014) (citing United States v. Brown, 430 F.3d 942, 944 (8th Cir. 2005)). -13- The district court did not clearly err in finding that the conspiracy continued after the rain-interrupted ruse drug deal and that it included the killing of Benson. Moreover, the district court found the witnesses credible, observing that it “had the opportunity to observe these witnesses, to observe their demeanor, to carefully attempt to assess the degree to which their testimony was corroborated by other testimony.” We have no basis upon which to question the district court’s credibility determination. See United States v. Battle, 774 F.3d 504, 517 (8th Cir. 2014) (“Credibility determinations are squarely within the discretion of the district court and are given special deference.” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). We conclude that a preponderance of the evidence supported its finding that Benson’s murder was willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated. Accordingly, we hold that the district court did not err in applying § 2A1.1.4
O’Bryant contends that his 330-month sentence is substantively unreasonable. He continues to argue that the first-degree-murder cross-reference should not have applied, that he was not involved in any conspiracy to kill Benson, that Benson’s murder was not premeditated, and that the witnesses who testified at the sentencing hearing were unreliable. The district court considered the arguments O’Bryant now advances on appeal, and we have addressed them above. Our review of the record satisfies us that this is not the “unusual case when we reverse a district court sentence—whether within, above, or below the applicable Guidelines range—as substantively unreasonable.” Feemster, 572 F.3d at 464 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 4 Having decided that the evidence was sufficient to support application of § 2A1.1, we reject O’Bryant’s argument that—at most—the evidence supported the cross-reference to § 2A1.2, second-degree murder. -14-