Opinion ID: 2731239
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lewis’s due process, automatic reversal, and

Text: constructive amendment arguments Before we apply the harmless error test, we must address Lewis’s remaining arguments that, even if Alleyne error is not structural, reversal and remand is necessary in his case. He asserts three arguments: First, that due process considerations require reversal where a defendant was charged and convicted of a crime different than that for which he was sentenced; second, that the “automatic reversal” rule requires remand in this case; and third, that his sentence 12 Lewis cites extensively to the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Lara-Ruiz, but we find that his reliance is misplaced in the context of his structural error argument. That case explicitly rejected the application of structural error with respect to both Apprendi and Alleyne. Lara-Ruiz, 721 F.3d at 557 (“This circuit has held that Apprendi errors do not create structural error that would require per se reversal. . . . Given this background, and considering that Alleyne was decided to reconcile statutory minimums with the Court’s reasoning in Apprendi . . . it follows that review pursuant to Rule 52’s standards should be applied to this case.” (citations omitted)). Structural error was therefore not at issue in Lara-Ruiz. 23 reflects an impermissible constructive amendment of the indictment. We address each argument below. Due process Lewis first relies upon the Supreme Court’s decision in Dunn v. United States for the proposition that “appellate courts are not free to revise the basis on which a defendant is convicted simply because the same result would likely obtain on retrial.” 442 U.S. 100, 107 (1979). Dunn, he contends, identifies due process concerns in this case that require reversal. We disagree. Dunn is distinguishable because it involved a challenge to the defendant’s conviction on grounds that the indictment was insufficient to support the conviction. Dunn turned on whether an interview in an attorney’s office constituted an “ancillary” proceeding as used in 18 U.S.C. § 1623. 13 442 U.S. at 102. The indictment charged that the statements made in the attorney’s office were false because they were inconsistent with the defendant’s prior testimony before a grand jury. Id. at 103-04. The district court and the court of appeals upheld the conviction based instead on inconsistencies between the defendant’s grand jury testimony and his testimony at an evidentiary hearing (not his statements in the attorney’s office). Id. at 104-05. The Supreme Court reversed, concluding that the statements made in the attorney’s office were not “ancillary” to a court proceeding. Id. at 113. Because the indictment 13 Section 1623 states, in pertinent part, that “[w]hoever under oath . . . in any proceeding before or ancillary to any court or grand jury of the United States knowingly makes any false material declaration . . . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a). 24 relied solely on the statements in the attorney’s office, it failed to state an offense within the scope of the statute. Id. at 107. The facts alleged in the indictment against Dunn therefore did not support a finding of any criminal conduct, even though other facts developed at trial did. Lewis, on the other hand, does not challenge his conviction in this appeal. Indeed, there is no dispute over whether the indictment stated an offense. This fact alone is sufficient to distinguish Dunn and render it inapplicable to this case. Moreover, although Dunn did recognize the potential due process pitfalls associated with an insufficient indictment, its holding is consistent with ours today for two reasons. First, Dunn was decided before the acknowledgement in Neder that most constitutional errors can be harmless. Courts now apply harmless error review even where the indictment fails to include a sentencing factor. See Recuenco, 548 U.S. at 221-22. To the extent that Dunn did not recognize that constitutional errors can be harmless, it should be limited to its facts and not be broadly applied to situations like Lewis’s. Second, neither Neder nor Apprendi cited Dunn, nor has the Supreme Court found reversal to be necessary when an indictment fails to charge an element of the offense. See, e.g., Cotton, 535 U.S. at 629-33 (holding that failure to allege an element in the indictment is not a “jurisdictional defect” that requires automatic reversal where evidence of the missing element was “overwhelming” and “essentially uncontroverted”). In light of the subsequent Supreme Court precedent, we conclude that the due process concerns addressed in Dunn only arise in situations where an indictment fails to charge any offense. It is thus not controlling in this case. 25 Automatic reversal Lewis’s second argument is that we should apply the so-called “automatic reversal rule” to the Alleyne error in this case. He again relies upon decisions that predate Neder and Apprendi in support, and we reject it on the basis that none of the decisions he cites are analogous to this case. Much like Dunn, the decisions Lewis cites in support of automatic reversal involved defective indictments that failed to allege any criminal conduct. See United States v. Wander, 601 F.2d 1251, 1258-59 (3d Cir. 1979) (failure to allege a subsequent overt act in a prosecution for violation of the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a)); United States v. Beard, 414 F.2d 1014, 1015 (3d Cir. 1969) (failure to allege “unlawful or fraudulent intent” in prosecution for interstate transport of stolen property, 18 U.S.C. § 2314); United States v. Manuszak, 234 F.2d 421, 422-23 (3d Cir. 1956) (failure to allege “the specific place or facility from which the goods were taken” in prosecution for theft of goods from an interstate shipment of freight pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 659); see also United States v. Pickett, 353 F.3d 62, 67-68 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (failure to allege that false statements were made “within an ‘investigation or review’” in a prosecution for making false statements, 18 U.S.C. § 1001); United States v. Du Bo, 186 F.3d 1177, 1179 (9th Cir. 1999) (failure to allege that defendant acted knowingly or willingly in a prosecution under the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951). Lewis’s reliance on these cases misses the mark because they all address situations where there was no criminal conduct alleged, and thus the indictment was susceptible to dismissal pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3), or arrest of 26 judgment pursuant to Rule 34(a). 14 That is not the situation here, where Lewis does not challenge his indictment or conviction, and where both assert a valid § 924 offense. Because courts of appeals almost universally apply harmless error in Apprendi and Alleyne situations, we reject Lewis’s contention that automatic reversal is appropriate in this case. Constructive amendment Lewis’s final argument is based upon the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Lara-Ruiz, which addressed Alleyne error under the plain error standard and found that substantial rights were affected where the defendant “was sentenced for a statutory crime different from that which the jury found him guilty.” 721 F.3d at 558 (addressing situation where the defendant was convicted of using a firearm under § 924 but was sentenced for brandishing). We reject Lewis’s argument because we find Lara-Ruiz’s reasoning to be inconsistent with our interpretation of the substantial rights inquiry under harmless error. 14 Courts have even applied harmless error where a defect in the indictment could be grounds for dismissal. See, e.g., United States v. Cor-Bon Custom Bullet Co., 287 F.3d 576, 580-81 (6th Cir. 2002) (failure to allege an affirmative act in a tax evasion case is harmless error); United States v. Corporan-Cuevas, 244 F.3d 199, 201-02 (1st Cir. 2001) (finding that failure to allege an element when there is question as to whether the element is “essential” is subject to harmless error); United States v. Mojica-Baez, 229 F.3d 292, 311 (1st Cir. 2000) (finding that the failure to allege an essential element of the offense in the indictment is subject to harmless error review where the indictment otherwise gives the defendant notice of the charges against him). 27 Without explicitly characterizing it as such, the court in Lara-Ruiz appears to have arrived at the outcome in that case by finding a constructive amendment of the indictment. Constructive amendment “occurs where a defendant is deprived of his ‘substantial right to be tried only on charges presented in an indictment returned by a grand jury.’” United States v. Syme, 276 F.3d 131, 148 (3d Cir. 2002) (quoting United States v. Miller, 471 U.S. 130, 140 (1985)). We have found constructive amendments to be “‘per se reversible under harmless error review.’” United States v. Daraio, 445 F.3d 253, 259-60 (3d Cir. 2006) (quoting Syme, 276 F.3d at 136); see also Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 217-19 (1960) (seminal decision recognizing constructive amendment). 15 In essence, the Eighth Circuit emphasized the dissonance between the indictment and conviction, on the one hand, and the sentence imposed, on the other. We are not persuaded by Lewis’s argument based upon Stirone and its progeny because we have suggested in dictum that constructive amendments are not structural errors. Syme, 276 F.3d at 155 n.10 (“We note, however, that it is doubtful that constructive amendments are structural errors as the Supreme Court has defined that category. . . . Notably, 15 Stirone relied heavily upon the earlier decision in Ex Parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1 (1887). Bain, however, was later overruled by Cotton “insofar as [Bain] held that a defective indictment deprives a court of jurisdiction.” Cotton, 535 U.S. at 631. Lewis relies on United States v. Spinner, which, like Bain, found automatic reversal to apply on grounds that “the indictment in [Spinner’s] case was jurisdictionally defective.” 180 F.3d 514, 516 (3d Cir. 1999). Reversal for jurisdictional reasons is now prohibited by the holding in Cotton, and Spinner is thus of limited utility in this case. 28 neither Johnson nor Neder cited Stirone or listed constructive amendments as one of the narrow class of recognized structural errors.”). “Courts viewing the Apprendi-element pleading error as essentially presenting a constructive amendment issue . . . distinguish the Stirone precedent . . . in the course of supporting application of a harmless error standard.” LaFave et al., Criminal Procedure § 19.3(a) (citing, inter alia, McCoy v. United States, 266 F.3d 1245, 1253-54 (11th Cir. 2001) (finding that Apprendi errors are not constructive amendments subject to automatic reversal under Stirone, but instead represent, at most, a variance subject to harmless error review)). We agree with this approach and likewise reject Lara-Ruiz’s constructive amendment argument. Multiple courts of appeals have similarly rejected the notion that the Stirone constructive amendment rule requires per se reversal in Apprendi cases. See McCoy, 266 F.3d at 1253-54; Mojica-Baez, 229 F.3d at 310-11 (rejecting an argument seeking automatic reversal under Stirone and noting that “there is no reason to think the grand jury would have had any trouble in rendering an indictment specifying the weapons used, and there was no variance”). McCoy provides two reasons why automatic reversal is not necessary in Apprendi/Alleyne error situations. First, Apprendi errors do not present “typical” indictment problems, i.e., where the indictment fails to state any offense; instead, the indictment in an Apprendi case “still charges a complete federal offense.” McCoy, 266 F.3d at 1253. Second, the court rejected the notion that any variance in an Apprendi case is so substantial as to require automatic reversal. Id. at 1253-54. Specifically, the court noted that “Stirone involved a material difference between the facts alleged in the indictment in support of that element—extortion in the transportation of sand from other 29 states into Pennsylvania—and the facts shown at trial— extortion in the transportation of steel from Pennsylvania into Michigan and Kentucky.” Id. at 1253 (citing Stirone, 361 U.S. at 213-14). This difference in proof “materially broadened and altered [the indictment] to such a significant extent as to constitute an entirely new or different theory of the case.” Id. No such difference in proof exists in Alleyne or Apprendi cases, where the only difference is with respect to a particular statutory subsection that aggravates the punishment imposed, not the entire “theory of the case.” Id. We agree with the reasoning in McCoy that constructive amendment does not apply to the facts of this case and ultimately conclude that Lewis’s substantial rights were not affected.