Opinion ID: 795153
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Kurt Cousins's sentencing appeal

Text: 29 Under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B)(vii), a conviction under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a) involving more than 100 marijuana plants is subject to a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. However, a defendant can exempt himself from the mandatory minimum sentence if he meets the following safety valve requirements: 30 (1) the defendant does not have more than 1 criminal history point, as determined under the sentencing guidelines; 31 (2) the defendant did not use violence . . . or possess a firearm or other dangerous weapon . . . in connection with the offense; 32 (3) the offense did not result in death or serious bodily injury to any person; 33 (4) the defendant was not an organizer, leader, manager, or supervisor of others in the offense . . . and was not engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise . . .; and 34 (5) . . . the defendant has truthfully provided to the Government all information and evidence the defendant has concerning the offense . . . . 35 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(1)-(5). If the district court makes these five findings, the defendant is eligible instead for the range proscribed by the United States Sentencing Guidelines. 36 Here, the district court sentenced Kurt Cousins to five years in prison, pursuant to the statutory mandatory minimum. If, however, Kurt's criminal history category had been level I instead of level II, he may have been eligible for a safety-valve reduction. See id. Kurt's criminal history category classification was due, in part, to a 1996 South Carolina misdemeanor conviction for receiving stolen goods where he was sentenced to a $500 fine or, in the alternative, to 30 days in prison. 5 Kurt contends that he was deprived of the right to counsel at these state court proceedings and that therefore the district court in the instant case should not have included the conviction in his criminal history category calculation.
37 We review de novo both the legality of a sentence and the constitutionality of a state court conviction used in sentencing proceedings. See United States v. Wicks, 995 F.2d 964, 975-76 (10th Cir.1993). 38 B. Whether a Defendant may collaterally challenge the validity of his state-court conviction at a federal sentencing proceeding 39 In its answer brief, the Government asserts that it is improper for Kurt to challenge the constitutionality of his prior state court conviction in a federal sentencing proceeding. The proper route, according to the Government, would have been to challenge the conviction within the South Carolina state court system. 40 The Supreme Court has held that a defendant may not generally challenge the constitutionality of his prior state court conviction by objecting at a federal sentencing hearing to the use of that prior conviction as part of a sentencing enhancement. Custis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485, 487, 114 S.Ct. 1732, 128 L.Ed.2d 517 (1994). However, an exception to this general rule is that challenges to the constitutionality of a conviction based upon a violation of the right to counsel are permitted in sentencing proceedings, even though the defendant is attacking the prior state conviction collaterally in federal court. Id. Thus, on its face, the Government's argument appears to be meritless. 41 However, there is a slight distinction between the instant case and Custis. In Custis, the defendant raised his constitutional challenge to the prior state conviction as part of his objections to a sentence enhancement. 511 U.S. at 487, 114 S.Ct. 1732. Here, by contrast, the objection is to the non-application of the safety-valve provision. That provision does not enhance a sentence; rather, it makes a defendant eligible for exemption from the statutory mandatory minimum. 42 Thus, while it is clear that a defendant may challenge his state conviction in federal court when it is used to enhance his sentence, the question before us is whether he may do so when he seeks a safety valve exemption from the statutory mandatory minimum to reduce his likely sentence. In Lewis v. United States, the Court stated: We recognize, of course, that under the Sixth Amendment an uncounseled felony conviction cannot be used for certain purposes. The Court, however, has never suggested that an uncounseled conviction is invalid for all purposes. 445 U.S. 55, 66-67, 100 S.Ct. 915, 63 L.Ed.2d 198 (1980) (citations omitted). With this in mind, the Court in Lewis held that it was permissible to use an uncounseled conviction for the purposes of imposing a civil restriction against owning a firearm, even though the conviction could not be used to enhance a criminal sentence. Id. at 67, 100 S.Ct. 915. This was because prohibiting the use of uncounseled convictions in sentencing enhancements is based on a concern about the reliability of an uncounseled conviction. Id. The federal gun laws, by contrast, focus on the mere fact of conviction (or even indictment) in order to keep firearms away from potentially dangerous people. Id. 43 The instant case is closer to Custis than it is to Lewis. Whether or not we are enhancing a sentence based on a conviction or determining on the basis of that prior conviction that a defendant is not eligible for a safety-valve reduction, the principle concern is whether the prior conviction being used against him is accurate and reliable. There is no principled reason that the Sixth Amendment would protect someone from a sentence enhancement yet deny that person the benefit of an exemption from a mandatory minimum on the basis of the same prior conviction, particularly since both challenges seek to reduce the amount of prison time a defendant has to serve. 44 Thus, we hold that Kurt may challenge the constitutionality of his state court conviction on Sixth Amendment grounds in a federal sentencing proceeding where the purpose of the challenge is to establish eligibility for safety valve consideration under § 3553(f). 45 C. Whether the South Carolina conviction violated the Sixth Amendment 46 In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 344-45, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the right to appointed counsel applies to state criminal prosecutions through the Fourteenth Amendment. Clarifying the scope of Gideon, the Court later held that an indigent defendant must be appointed counsel in any criminal prosecution, regardless of its classification as a misdemeanor or a felony, that actually leads to imprisonment even for a brief period . . . . Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 33, 92 S.Ct. 2006, 32 L.Ed.2d 530 (1972). Seven years later, in Scott v. Illinois, 440 U.S. 367, 99 S.Ct. 1158, 59 L.Ed.2d 383 (1979), the Court established the outer limit of the right first enunciated in Argersinger. Id. at 373, 99 S.Ct. 1158. Although the statute under which the defendant in Scott was charged authorized up to a one-year jail term, the Court held that the defendant had no right to state-appointed counsel because the sole sentence imposed on him was a $50 fine. Id. at 368, 373-74, 99 S.Ct. 1158. 47 The next major development in this area of law was Alabama v. Shelton, 535 U.S. 654, 122 S.Ct. 1764, 152 L.Ed.2d 888 (2002). The defendant in Shelton was sentenced to 30 days' imprisonment after a conviction for misdemeanor assault. Id. at 658, 122 S.Ct. 1764. The trial court suspended that sentence, however, and placed the defendant on two years' unsupervised probation. Id. If the defendant violated his terms of probation, he would be subject to the 30 days' imprisonment. Id. The Court held that a suspended sentence that may end up in actual deprivation of a person's liberty fit under the Argersinger-Scott actual imprisonment rule and thus entitled the defendant to the benefit of counsel. Id. at 674, 122 S.Ct. 1764. 48 The instant case is analogous to Shelton in the sense that the sentence imposed by the South Carolina court was essentially a suspended sentence: either Defendant paid the $500 fine or he went to jail for 30 days. Therefore, by depriving Kurt of the benefit of counsel, South Carolina appears to have violated Kurt's Sixth Amendment rights. 49 The Government on appeal contends that Shelton does not apply to Kurt's South Carolina conviction because the Supreme Court issued Shelton after Kurt's state court conviction had taken effect and Shelton did not apply retroactively to that conviction. See Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989) (holding that a new rule does not retroactively apply to cases on collateral review unless it falls within one of a narrowly-defined set of exceptions). 6 Thus, argues the government, since the conviction was valid at the time it was made, it could be used for the purposes of denying a safety-valve exemption. See Nichols v. United States, 511 U.S. 738, 748-49, 114 S.Ct. 1921, 128 L.Ed.2d 745 (1994). 50 However, the Teague bar is not jurisdictional and it may be waived. See Schiro v. Farley, 510 U.S. 222, 228, 114 S.Ct. 783, 127 L.Ed.2d 47 (1994). In reviewing the record, it appears that the Government did not raise a Teague -style objection to the application of Shelton below. Therefore, we decline to address this issue. See Duckett v. Godinez, 67 F.3d 734, 746, n. 6 (9th Cir.1995); Hanrahan v. Greer, 896 F.2d 241, 245 (7th Cir.1990). 51 Having concluded that the South Carolina conviction violated Kurt's Sixth Amendment rights, we must also conclude that it was error for the district court to use this conviction in calculating Kurt's criminal history category. 7