Opinion ID: 1460334
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Second or Subsequent Conviction

Text: The Porrellos cross-appeal, alleging that the district court erred by construing § 924(c) as a sentencing enhancement provision rather than as an independent element of the offense. We review de novo the district court's interpretation of § 924(c). United States v. Allee, 282 F.3d 997 (8th Cir.2002). Section 924(c) provides, inter alia, that a defendant's second or subsequent conviction for a using a firearm during a crime of violence triggers a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison. In Deal, the Supreme Court determined that these multiple convictions can occur in a single proceeding. Deal v. United States, 508 U.S. 129, 113 S.Ct. 1993, 124 L.Ed.2d 44 (1993). The Porrellos acknowledge this holding but aver that more recent cases from the Court have clarified Deal 's holding, averring that the second-or-subsequent-conviction provision is properly viewed as an element of the charged offense, not as a sentencing enhancement as we have implied. See e.g. Allee, 282 F.3d at 997; United States v. Street, 257 F.3d 869, 870 (8th Cir.2001). In support of their proposition, the Porrellos rely upon Castillo v. United States, 530 U.S. 120, 120 S.Ct. 2090, 147 L.Ed.2d 94 (2000), where the Court found that the firearm provision of § 924(c) constituted an element of the offense rather than a sentencing enhancement. The Porrellos aver that the logic of Castillo requires that the second-or-subsequent-conviction provision should be treated as an elementthe same as the firearms provision. We disagree. The Court in Castillo differentiated firearms provisions that consider the type of firearm used from provisions addressing repeated offenses. Id. (We cannot say that courts have typically or traditionally used firearm types as sentencing factors . . .). Recidivism provisions, such as the second-or-subsequent-conviction provision at issue here, are commonly sentencing factors. Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 244, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998) ([R]ecidivism-is a traditional, if not the most traditional, basis for a sentencing court's increasing an offender's sentence.). Indeed, Castillo itself notes that factors (such as recidivism) [] ordinarily pertain only to sentencing. Castillo, 530 U.S. at 124, 120 S.Ct. 2090 (parenthesis in original). Further, as Castillo acknowledges, turning this recidivism provision into an element of the offense would complicate a trial or risk unfairness, because the government would be required to prove to the jury the commission of prior offenses. Id. at 126, 120 S.Ct. 2090. The introduction of relevant sentencing facts during the guilt phase could be unnecessarily prejudicial to criminal defendants and, like the Court, we do not believe, other things being equal, that Congress would have wanted to create this kind of unfairness in respect to facts that are almost never contested. Almendarez-Torres, 523 U.S. at 235, 118 S.Ct. 1219. For these reasons, we reaffirm that the recidivism provision of § 924(c) is a sentencing factor rather than an element of an offense. United States v. Anglin, 284 F.3d 407 (2d Cir.2002) (The Court's decision in Deal makes sense only if the fact of a previous `conviction' [] is a sentencing factor, and not an element of an additional offense that Congress intended to create.). We reject the Porrellos' argument that they are not recidivists because their multiple convictions occurred in a single prosecution. Deal 's main holdingthat multiple convictions in a single proceeding trigger the second-or-subsequent-conviction enhancementremains good law. The defendants played significant roles in the armed robbery of eleven businesses, including five jewelry stores. Just because the defendants were not apprehended and prosecuted in sequential proceedings for their various offenses does not make their repeated conduct less recidivist for sentencing purposes. Deal controls.