Opinion ID: 1262661
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: calculation of langford's criminal history category

Text: Langford argues that the District Court should not have imposed a criminal history point for his juvenile adjudication for attempted auto theft because it resulted in a discontinuance of the delinquency petition. He maintains that a discontinuance is not a sentence within the meaning of U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(a). Because no sentence was imposed, the adjudication should not have been counted, and the proper criminal history category was III, not. IV. Accordingly, the Sentencing Guidelines range should have been 37 to 46 months. U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(a)(1) defines a prior sentence as any sentence previously imposed upon adjudication of guilt, whether by guilty plea, trial, or plea of nolo contendere, for conduct not part of the instant offense. To be sure, as the government argues, juvenile adjudications are not exempted from the calculation of a defendant's criminal history score. United States v. Bucaro, 898 F.2d 368, 373 (3d Cir.1990). Not all juvenile adjudications, however, result in criminal history points, largely because [a]ttempting to count every juvenile adjudication would have the potential for creating large disparities due to the differential availability of records. U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2, cmt. n. 7. Therefore, for offenses committed prior to age eighteen, the Guidelines comments limit criminal history points to those that resulted in adult sentences of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month, or resulted in imposition of an adult or juvenile sentence or release from confinement on that sentence within five years of the defendant's commencement of the instant offense. Id. (emphasis added). Because the other categories of juvenile adjudications that are to be counted are not relevant here, the imposition of an adult or juvenile sentence is a prerequisite to using Langford's auto theft adjudication in the calculation of his criminal history score. The key question is whether the discontinuance of Langford's auto theft adjudication constitutes a sentence under the Guidelines. We must review the operations of the Pennsylvania juvenile system to determine whether a discontinuance falls within the definition of a prior sentence set forth in U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2. See United States v. McKoy, 452 F.3d 234, 238-40 (3d Cir.2006) (noting that while we use federal, rather than state, law definitions and terminology, the state proceeding and statutory scheme is relevant to determining whether the adjudication actually resulted in a sentence as defined by the Guideline and its commentary); accord U.S. v. Morgan, 390 F.3d 1072, 1074 (8th Cir.2004). In Pennsylvania, a juvenile delinquency adjudication requires a court to find beyond a reasonable doubt that a child committed acts that would constitute crimes if committed by an adult. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 6341(b). Typically, the court then orders a disposition. Completed with the aid of a comprehensive social study and investigation, a disposition may operate as the functional equivalent of an adult sentence. See id. § 6339. However, [i]f the court finds that the child is not in need of treatment, supervision or rehabilitation it shall dismiss the proceeding and discharge the child from any detention or other restriction theretofore ordered. See id. ¶ 6341(b). Here, the juvenile court adjudicated Langford delinquent in connection with the attempted auto theft offense. Thereafter, however, it ordered that the petition be discontinued. In the PSR for Langford's sentencing, the probation officer added one criminal history point for this adjudication in reliance on U.S.S.G. 4A1.2(a)(3), which provides that [a] conviction for which the imposition or execution of sentence was totally suspended or stayed shall be counted as a prior sentence under § 4A1.1(c). Langford objected on the ground that no sentence had actually been imposed. In response, the probation officer admitted that the adjudication had resulted in the imposition of no sentence, yet reached the improbable conclusion that it could be counted as a prior sentence because [t]he imposition of no sentence, as occurred here, is akin to a `suspended' sentence. PSR 2d Addendum. On appeal, the government asks us to use this analogy to find that the discontinuance was a sentence. [1] If in fact the juvenile court had imposed probation or a suspended sentence, our review would end here. The juvenile court, however, did not impose a sentence and then suspend its operation; it discontinued the action. Refusing to impose a sentence is not the same as suspending a sentence. Black's Law Dictionary 1446 (6th ed.1992) (defining a suspended sentence as [a] conviction of a crime followed by a sentence that is given formally, but not actually served). Even if we understood the juvenile court to have continued the disposition hearings under 42 Pa.C.S. § 6341(e) (which we do not), we would not count a continuance as a sentence under the Guidelines as this is, in essence, a juvenile diversion. See U.S.S.G. 4A1.2(f) (noting that [a] diversionary disposition resulting from a finding or admission of guilt, or a plea of nolo contendere  from a juvenile court is not considered a sentence under § 4A1.1(c)); United States v. McKoy, 452 F.3d 234, 238 (3d Cir.2006). The government refers us to no authority from which we can find that a discontinuance by a juvenile court constitutes a sentence. Instead, it cites numerous cases where courts reached the unremarkable conclusion that a suspended or probationary sentence constitutes a sentence under U.S.S.G. 4A1.2(a). See, e.g., United States v. Holland, 195 F.3d 415 (8th Cir. 1999) (examining a suspended sentence imposed by juvenile court); United States v. Holland, 26 F.3d 26 (5th Cir.1994) (same). Lastly, the government urges us to assume that the juvenile court discontinued Langford's attempted auto theft adjudication only because Langford had already been committed to a juvenile institution on a separate offense, so that there was simply no reason for the juvenile court to impose such a sentence once again a few weeks later. Appellee's Br. at 17. We decline the government's invitation to engage in conjecture. Even if we were able to ascertain the juvenile court's motives, they are irrelevant; the essential fact here is that the court discontinued the petition and did not impose a sentence. In light of the foregoing, we hold that the discontinuance of the juvenile adjudication here is not a sentence for the purposes of U.S.S.G. 4A1.2(a) and should not have been used in the calculation of the defendant's criminal history under the Guidelines. [2] Since the discontinuance of a juvenile adjudication cannot be considered a sentence for the purpose of U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(a), adding a point to Langford's criminal history on the basis of this adjudication was error. This error, in turn, affected the calculation of the overall criminal history categorymoving it from category III to IVand the subsequent Guidelines range calculationchanging it from a range of 37 to 46 months for Counts One and Two to a range of 46 to 57 months.