Opinion ID: 201515
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Conviction on Count Three.

Text: 15 The appellant's next attack is more narrowly focused. He asseverates that the district court erred in imposing a 300-month sentence on count three because the sexual assault of G.K.L. did not result from the Morales carjacking. This asseveration rests on the premise that the district court should have sentenced the appellant in accordance with section 2119(1), which defines the crime of simple carjacking and caps sentences at fifteen years, rather than section 2119(2), which defines the crime of aggravated carjacking (i.e., carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury) and caps sentences at twenty-five years. 16 This argument is beset with problems. Most prominently, it ignores the decision in Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 143 L.Ed.2d 311 (1999), in which the Supreme Court held that section 2119 does not define a single crime with a choice of penalties dependent on sentencing factors but, rather, establish[es] three separate offenses [section 2119(1), section 2119(2), and section 2119(3)] by the specification of distinct elements, each of which must be charged by indictment, proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and submitted to a jury for its verdict, id. at 252, 119 S.Ct. 1215. Just as the Jones Court recognized that a defendant found guilty of an offense under section 2119(1) could not be sentenced under section 2119(2), see id. at 229, 119 S.Ct. 1215, so too we recognize that a defendant who pleads guilty to a violation of section 2119(2) cannot claim an entitlement to be sentenced under the more forgiving penalty provisions of section 2119(1). 17 This is an important distinction for the purposes of this case. 18 U.S.C. § 2119 contains three separate sections, defining three separate crimes (we have not mentioned section 2119(3) because that provision has no bearing on this case). Inasmuch as the three sections of 18 U.S.C. § 2119 limn separate offenses, the appropriate forum for contesting the applicability of any one section to the facts of a particular case is the guilt phase of the proceeding — not the sentencing phase. 18 Here, however, the appellant bypassed that opportunity by electing to enter an unconditional guilty plea. That plea waived all non-jurisdictional challenges to the resulting conviction under section 2119(2), save claims that the plea was not knowing and voluntary. See United States v. Rodriguez-Castillo, 350 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.2003) (An unconditional guilty plea waives any and all independent non-jurisdictional claims arising out of alleged errors antedating the plea.); United States v. Cordero, 42 F.3d 697, 698 (1st Cir.1994) (observing that an unconditional guilty plea insulates virtually all earlier rulings in the case from appellate review). 19 The appellant tries to parry this thrust in two different ways. First, he notes that he did raise a challenge to the applicability of section 2119(2) in his motion to dismiss count three. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. The appellant failed to preserve the issue for review when he entered an unconditional guilty plea to count three. He could have attempted to avail himself of the procedure described in Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2), which allows a criminal defendant, with the consent of the court and the government, to preserve the right to appeal an adverse determination on a specific pretrial motion by entering a conditional guilty plea, but he did not do so. Under these circumstances, his motion to dismiss died a natural death and he cannot now resurrect it. 20 The appellant also seeks, albeit somewhat perfunctorily, to make an end run around the waiver that normally would flow from the entry of an unconditional guilty plea. The waiver doctrine does not apply to jurisdictional claims, see Cordero, 42 F.3d at 699, so the appellant labors to cast his challenge to the conviction on count three as jurisdictional in nature. He argues, in effect, that the stipulated facts do not establish a necessary element of the offense, namely, that the rape resulted from the carjacking and that, because the admitted conduct does not amount to a violation of the statute of conviction, the district court lacked jurisdiction to convict him. 21 The most gaping hole in this argument is that it cannot properly be classified as jurisdictional (and, therefore, as subject to review notwithstanding the appellant's unconditional guilty plea). In arguing to the contrary, the appellant clings to United States v. Rosa-Ortiz, 348 F.3d 33 (1st Cir.2003), in which we recognized that a guilty plea does not preclude [a defendant] from arguing on appeal that the statute of conviction does not actually proscribe the conduct charged in the indictment, id. at 36. We added that a federal court has jurisdiction to try criminal cases only when the information or indictment alleges a violation of a valid federal law, id. (quoting United States v. Saade, 652 F.2d 1126, 1134 (1st Cir.1981)), and that jurisdictional challenges to an indictment may be raised at any time, regardless of the defendant's guilty plea, id. 22 The case at hand is a horse of a different hue. The appellant has not argued that the district court lacked authority to hear the case in the first instance because the indictment failed to charge a cognizable federal offense. Nor could such an argument prevail. Each of the five counts charged crimes within the competence of the district court; count three charged in plain terms that a carjacking occurred, which result[ed] in serious bodily injury by reason of the appellant's sexual assault of G.K.L. That language sufficiently alleged a violation of section 2119(2). This is dispositive of the appellant's argument because, with few exceptions (none applicable here), a federal criminal case is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the district court if the indictment charges ... that the defendant committed a crime described in [a federal criminal statute]. United States v. Gonzalez, 311 F.3d 440, 442 (1st Cir.2002). 23 Even if the appellant's allegation that the admitted facts are insufficient as a matter of law to satisfy the results element of aggravated carjacking were accurate — and we doubt that it is 2 — that allegation would not raise a cognizable jurisdictional defect. In United States v. Valdez-Santana, 279 F.3d 143 (1st Cir.2002), we rebuffed an attempt to shoehorn what was, in essence, a contention that admissible evidence could not establish a violation of the charged crime into the narrow exception that only jurisdictional issues may be appealed following an unconditional guilty plea. Id. at 145-46. That holding followed inexorably from our statement in Cordero, 42 F.3d at 699, in which we said that a jurisdictional defect is one that calls into doubt a court's power to entertain a matter, not one that merely calls into doubt the sufficiency or quantum of proof relating to guilt. See also United States v. Cruz-Rivera, 357 F.3d 10, 14 (1st Cir.2004) (noting that the characterization of the argument that the factual underpinnings of a guilty plea do not establish an element of the offense as a jurisdictional challenge confuses the constitutional limits on Congress's power with the jurisdiction of the federal courts); Gonzalez, 311 F.3d at 443 (determining that the category of jurisdictional defects that are not waived by a guilty plea does not include routine questions as to the reach and application of a criminal statute because such questions have nothing whatever to do with the subject matter [jurisdiction] of the federal district court). These precedents are controlling here. 24 To say more on this issue would be to paint the lily. We find, without serious question, that the appellant's argument that his admitted conduct does not satisfy the results element of section 2119(2) is not jurisdictional in nature. Consequently, further consideration of it is foreclosed by the appellant's unconditional guilty plea.