Opinion ID: 175117
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: State Appellate Court Opinion

Text: The unpublished state appellate court opinion affirming Espinoza's convictions and summarizing the facts underlying those convictions likewise does not establish that the jury necessarily convicted him of conduct that would amount to a crime of violence. Indeed, the state court opinion does not even purport to describe the facts or elements that the jury necessarily found. The opinion examines whether Espinoza was denied his right under the Vienna Convention to consult with consular representatives after his arrest. The facts of Espinoza's crime were not relevant to this question, and the state court presented them only as background. The opinion nowhere states or even suggests that the jury necessarily found the facts recited to be true. [13] The state court opinion therefore clearly does not satisfy Taylor 's requirement that a document must reflect what the jury necessarily had to find in order to establish that an offense constituted a crime of violence under the modified categorical approach. Because the state court opinion does not satisfy this requirement, we need not consider whether such an opinion, if it did show what the jury necessarily found, would be sufficiently reliable for a court to consider when applying the modified categorical approach. See United States v. Strickland, 601 F.3d 963, 968 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc); Snellenberger, 548 F.3d at 701-02. The dissent suggests that Taylor permits us to look to the facts underlying a conviction so long as we do not put the Defendant on trial for his earlier convictions, re-weigh the evidence, or make witness credibility determinations. Dissent at 1154. This misapprehends Taylor. To be sure, the Court in Taylor expressed concern that inquiring into the facts underlying a defendant's prior conviction could result in such re-trials and accordingly would pose practical difficulties and potential unfairness. See Taylor, 495 U.S. at 601, 110 S.Ct. 2143. In particular, the Taylor Court noted that a court often would have to look to the Government's actual proof at trial to determine the defendant's actual conduct in the prior case. Id. This would lead to many tricky questions, as the Court explained: Would the Government be permitted to introduce the trial transcript before the sentencing court, or if no transcript is available, present the testimony of witnesses? Could the defense present witnesses of its own and argue that the jury might have returned a guilty verdict on some theory that did not require a finding that the defendant committed [the generic crime [14] ]? If the sentencing court were to conclude, from its own review of the record, that the defendant actually committed [the generic crime], could the defendant challenge this conclusion as abridging his right to a jury trial? Id. Contrary to the dissent's suggestion, the Court did not avoid these daunting problems by simply barring mini-trials at which evidence would be re-weighed and witnesses's credibility re-evaluated. Id. Rather, to avoid these types of problems, the Court expressly held that a trial court applying the modified categorical approach must generally look only to the fact of conviction and the statutory definition of the prior offense. Id. at 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143. The Court did, however, allow for a very limited inquiry into the underlying facts. Specifically, the Court authorized trial courts to look beyond the mere fact of conviction in a narrow range of cases where a jury was actually required to find all the elements of [the generic crime]. Id. For example, a court could conclude that a conviction was for the generic crime where the indictment or information and jury instructions show that the defendant was charged only with[the generic crime], and that the jury necessarily had to find [the generic element] to convict. Id. In other words, a conviction would qualify as a conviction for the generic crime under the modified categorical approach only if the court could ascertain, without looking to the underlying facts, that the jury necessarily found that the defendant engaged in conduct amounting to the generic crime. Because a jury cannot convict a defendant of conduct not charged in the indictment or information, we know that a jury necessarily convicted a defendant of the generic crime where the indictment or information charges only the generic crime. Similarly, where the jury instructions require the jury to find the elements of the generic crime, we know that the jury necessarily convicted the defendant of those elements. Here, by contrast, where we do not have such limiting charging papers and where the jury instructions do not narrow the charge to the generic crime, we cannot know what the jury necessarily convicted the defendant of, and we cannot know the conduct in which the defendant engaged without looking to the underlying facts. Taylor precludes us from doing so. See id. at 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143. Indeed, the Court in Shepard rejected the suggestion that courts should be permitted to look at a transcript of a jury trial to conclude that the defendant was convicted of the conduct shown by the evidence presented at trial. Id. at 22, 125 S.Ct. 1254. If we may not look to a jury trial transcript, we certainly may not look to a state court's description of the facts of a crime, which simply summarizes the testimony and evidence reflected in that transcript. Because neither the state court opinion nor the criminal information and abstract of judgment establish that the jury necessarily convicted Espinoza of using force, the government has not met its burden to establish that either of Espinoza's convictions qualify as a crime of violence under the modified categorical approach. The district court accordingly erred in applying the 16-level crime of violence enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii) in calculating Espinoza's advisory Guidelines range.