Opinion ID: 1434591
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The State Trial Sentencing Transcript

Text: The government concedes that the State PSR, without more, is unlikely to satisfy Shepard. It argues, however, that where a state trial court adopts the factual findings of a state presentence report, a defendant's failure to object to those factual findings amounts to an assent by the defendant to those facts. Extending this argument to the state sentencing transcript, the government also does not contend that the transcript, alone, is Shepard evidence. It asserts that in this case, it satisfies the Shepard requirements because Rosa assented to that court's statements suggesting that a firearm was used in the robbery. The Shepard Court ruled that in determining whether a prior plea of guilty admitted a particular fact, a district court is generally limited to examining the statutory definition, charging document, written plea agreement, transcript of plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding by the trial judge to which the defendant assented.  Shepard, 544 U.S. at 16, 125 S.Ct. 1254 (emphasis added). The government here points to the state judge's statement at sentencing that [Rosa] was not the one who wielded the gun, and contends that this constituted a factual finding by the judge that the wielded object was in fact a gun. It further argues that Rosa assented to this finding, both because he did not dispute the characterization of the object as a gun and because his lawyer stated that it was not Eduardo who had the gun in this particular incident. We disagree. In Shepard, the Court stated that the most appropriate sources for the district court to consult to determine whether a given fact was necessarily established in pleaded cases are the statement of factual basis for the charge, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11(a)(3), shown by a transcript of plea colloquy or by written plea agreement presented to the court, or by a record of comparable findings of fact adopted by the defendant upon entering the plea. With such material in a pleaded case, a later court could generally tell whether the plea had `necessarily' rested on the fact at issue. Shepard, 544 U.S. at 20-21, 125 S.Ct. 1254 (emphases added). The Court's repeated reference to the plea stage reflects both the conclusive effect of a plea as an adjudication of the defendant's guilt and the judicial care that goes into the court's acceptance of a plea. See generally Von Moltke v. Gillies, 332 U.S. 708, 719, 68 S.Ct. 316, 92 L.Ed. 309 (1948) (A plea of guilty differs in purpose and effect from a mere admission or an extrajudicial confession; it is itself a conviction. . . . Out of just consideration for persons accused of crime, courts are careful that a plea of guilty shall not be accepted unless made voluntarily after proper advice and with full understanding of the consequences. (quoting Kercheval v. United States, 274 U.S. 220, 223, 47 S.Ct. 582, 71 L.Ed. 1009 (1927))). At the joint plea hearing for Rosa and Warren, with both defendants placed under oath, the court was indeed careful to determine that they understood what it was they were admitting. No question was raised as to whether the object with which the defendants had threatened the victim was in fact a gun, because a conviction of First Degree Robbery required only that the object appeared to be a gun. Instead, the questioning at the plea hearing focused on who held the object; and the object was unvaryingly referred to by the court as what appeared to be a gun. Thus, the court asked, Mr. Rosa, do you freely and voluntarily admit that . . . you did display what appeared to be a pistol, revolver, or other firearm . . .? 1991 Plea Tr. at 14-15 (emphasis added). After Rosa's counsel interposed that Rosa could admit only to aiding and abetting, not to displaying, the court asked Rosa, And do you admit that while aiding and abetting . . . you did display what appeared to be a pistol, revolver, or other firearm . . .? Id. at 15 (emphasis added). When Rosa responded Not me, the court asked, So while you yourself may not have possessed what appeared to be a handgun, . . . was one displayed by the people with whom you were acting in concert and aiding and abetting? Id. (emphasis added). The court had used this same careful term for the displayed object in conducting the allocution of Warren. See id. at 14 (Mr. Warren, do you freely and voluntarily admit that . . . you did display what appeared to be a pistol, revolver, or other firearm . . .? (emphasis added)). The court never asked either Rosa or Warren whether what was displayed was in fact a gun. And after it had concluded its questioning of Rosa and Warren, the court noted that they have been asked very specific questions. Id. at 17. In light of the state court's punctilious framing of the very specific questions to be answered before he accepted the pleas of guilty, inquiring not whether the object displayed was a gun but only whether it appeared to be a gun, it would be unreasonable to infer that his statement at sentencing that he was imposing a lenient sentence on Rosa because Rosa was not the one who wielded the gun, was intended to constitute a finding that what had been wielded was in fact a gun. Such an offhand, or shorthand, reference is not the manner in which careful judges make findings, and we cannot conclude that this reference falls within the scope of what Shepard meant by an [] explicit factual finding by the trial judge. Put another way, we do not think that Rosa's failure to object when the state court said that [Rosa] was not the one who wielded the gun qualifies as an admission by silence. We have said that an admission by silence is admissible [as evidence] if `there are circumstances which render it more reasonably probable that a man would answer the charge made against him than that he would not.' United States v. Aponte, 31 F.3d 86, 87 (2d Cir.1994) (citations omitted). The state court made its statement in the course of giving Rosa a lesser sentence because he was not the one holding the gun. We hardly think that the statement charged Rosa. Cf. id. ([A] person ordinarily will respond to an incriminatory or defamatory statement with a denial. . . . (citation omitted)). And we do not think it more reasonably probable that someone in Rosa's position would have contradicted the judge at that moment to insist that the object that he was not holding was not a firearm. For all of these reasons, we conclude that the district court was not able to rely on the state sentencing transcript to find that Rosa's crime or act of delinquency involved a firearm.