Opinion ID: 2737438
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Fact Finding Relevant to Guidelines Range

Text: Appellant next argues that the District Court violated his Sixth Amendment right to jury trial by applying Sentencing Guidelines enhancements based on conduct not proved to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. We exercise plenary review over this claim. See United States v. Williams, 235 F.3d 858, 861 (3d Cir. 2000). 7 In a seminal opinion, the Supreme Court held that district courts may consider acquitted conduct at sentencing. United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148, 157 (1997). Following Watts, this Court held that “a jury’s verdict of acquittal does not prevent the sentencing court from considering conduct underlying the acquitted charge.” United States v. Ciavarella, 716 F.3d 705, 735 (3d Cir. 2013) (quoting Watts, 519 U.S. at 157) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under our precedent, “[j]udicial factfinding in the course of selecting a sentence within the permissible range does not offend the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to a jury trial and proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Grier, 475 F.3d 556, 562 (3d Cir. 2007) (en banc). Here, the District Court made factual findings relevant in selecting a sentence within the prescribed statutory range. Because the jury verdict merely demonstrates that there was a reasonable doubt of at least one of the elements of Section 924(c), this did not preclude the District Court from making factual findings at sentencing under the preponderance of the evidence standard. Id. Moreover, contrary to Appellant’s claim, the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncement in Alleyne v. United States “did not curtail a sentencing court’s ability to find facts relevant in selecting a sentence within the prescribed statutory range.” United States v. Smith, 751 F.3d 107, 117 (3d Cir. 2014); see also Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151, 2161 n.2 (2013) (“While [factfinding used to guide judicial discretion in selecting punishment] may lead judges to select sentences that are more severe than the ones they would have selected without those facts, the Sixth 8 Amendment does not govern that element of sentencing.”). Therefore, the District Court did not violate Appellant’s Sixth Amendment right.