Opinion ID: 4508991
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Rosales-Diaz’s Second Claim

Text: Alternatively, Rosales-Diaz claims that, even if his 10-year sentence does not exceed the permissible statutory maximum criminal penalty for his illegal reentry conviction, the Johnson–Dimaya constitutional error still “caused him prejudice because had the district court known his proper range, it may have sentenced him to less than the 120-month statutory maximum for his offense.” Rosales-Diaz claims he has shown that his sentence “may have been different if the district court knew he had never been convicted of an ‘aggravated felony’ and his 4 On appeal, the government claims that Rosales-Diaz’s § 2255 motion is both untimely and procedurally defaulted. We need not reach these issues because, in any event, the district court did not err in denying Rosales-Diaz’s § 2255 motion on the merits. 12 Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 13 of 17 maximum term of imprisonment was only 120, and not 240, months.” RosalesDiaz asserts that the fact that the district court was misinformed about his statutory maximum penalty violated his due process right to a fair and accurate sentencing hearing. Because a § 2255 motion is a collateral attack, “habeas relief will be granted only if the constitutional violation at the trial level resulted in ‘actual prejudice’ to the [movant].” Phillips v. United States, 849 F.3d 988, 993 (11th Cir. 2017) (quotation marks and alterations omitted). Even if a movant has sufficiently alleged a cognizable error under § 2255, the district court’s error is nevertheless subject to harmless error analysis. See Rivers, 777 F.3d at 1316. 5 In the § 2255 context, an error is harmless “if it had no substantial influence on the outcome and sufficient evidence uninfected by error supports the decision.” Id. (quotation marks and alterations omitted). Stated another way, a § 2255 movant “is entitled to reversal only when [the] error resulted in actual prejudice because it had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining” the final 5 Harmlessness is a legal question we review de novo. Phillips, 849 F.3d at 993. Our above precedent largely involves direct appeals of sentencing errors where the defendant must show actual prejudice and where the harmless error standard applies. See id.; Rivers, 777 F.3d at 1316; Vines, 28 F.3d at 1130. To some extent, our § 2255 precedent suggests that Rosales-Diaz, as a § 2255 movant here, would need to show the alleged sentencing error not only prejudiced him but also constituted “a fundamental defect which inherently results in a complete miscarriage of justice.” Spencer, 773 F.3d at 1138 (quotation marks omitted). Since the sentencing error here was harmless and Rosales-Diaz has not shown actual prejudice, we need go no further than the direct appeal standard to decide this case. 13 Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 14 of 17 result. Vines v. United States, 28 F.3d 1123, 1130 (11th Cir. 1994) (quotation marks omitted). Contrastingly, the “error is not harmless if there is a reasonable likelihood that it affected the defendant’s substantial rights.” Rivers, 777 F.3d at 1316 (quotation marks and alterations omitted). Importantly, a sentencing error is harmless, and remand is unnecessary, if the record as a whole shows that the district court would have imposed the same sentence absent the erroneous factor. See United States v. Williams, 503 U.S. 193, 203, 112 S. Ct. 1112, 1120-21 (1992); see, e.g., United States v. Keene, 470 F.3d 1347, 1348-50 (11th Cir. 2006) (concluding that any sentencing error in applying the threat-of-death enhancement was harmless and “did not affect the district court’s selection of the sentence imposed” because the district court explicitly stated that it would have imposed the same sentence anyway and the sentence was reasonable under the § 3553(a) factors (quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Blas, 360 F.3d 1268, 1270, 1272-74 (11th Cir. 2004) (holding that any sentencing error in applying a two-level increase to the defendant’s base offense level for knowingly misrepresenting his identity was harmless because the district court departed upward from the guidelines range such that the enhancement had no effect on the sentence imposed and the upward departure was justified and reasonable). Again, Rosales-Diaz bears the burden of proving his § 2255 constitutional claim and showing that any error was not harmless. Rivers, 777 14 Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 15 of 17 F.3d at 1316. Here, Rosales-Diaz has not carried his § 2255 burden to prove that a constitutional error “resulted in actual prejudice.” See Phillips, 849 F.3d at 993 (quotation marks omitted). Rather, the record as a whole shows that the district court chose to keep the same 10-year sentence even after recognizing, in light of Johnson and in anticipation of Dimaya, that Rosales-Diaz’s statutory maximum penalty was only 10 years, instead of 20 years. See Williams, 503 U.S. at 203, 112 S. Ct. at 1120-21. For starters, as noted earlier, the same district court judge who sentenced Rosales-Diaz originally in 2009 also reviewed and ruled on his § 2255 motion in 2016. Back in 2009, the judge highlighted each of Rosales-Diaz’s prior crimes, how he had 26 criminal history points, and how that was double the minimum amount to qualify for a criminal history category VI. In the same vein, the district court judge characterized Rosales-Diaz as a “career criminal,” a “one-man crime wave,” a “menace to the community,” a “burglar,” a “thief,” and someone who “assault[s] people,” “resist[s] law enforcement’s [apprehension] efforts,” “cause[s] accidents,” and “leave[s] the scene of accidents.” The district court judge found that Rosales-Diaz had no regard for the safety and welfare of the community, had no respect for the law, and had not been deterred by his prior sentence, such that an upward variance was “more than in order.” Although the top end of Rosales- 15 Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 16 of 17 Diaz’s advisory guidelines range was 96 months (8 years), the district court varied upward and imposed a 10-year sentence—two years above that top end. Then, in 2016, that same district court judge denied Rosales-Diaz’s § 2255 motion to vacate his 10-year sentence. Before doing so though, the district court judge explicitly recognized: (1) that Rosales-Diaz’s original statutory maximum was 20 years under § 1326(b)(2); (2) that the court itself had varied upward in imposing Rosales-Diaz’s original 10-year sentence; and (3) most importantly, that if Johnson invalidated § 16(b)’s residual clause, Rosales-Diaz’s statutory maximum would now be only 10 years’ imprisonment under § 1326(b)(1), rather than the original 20-year statutory maximum. 6 Only after recalling its prior upward variance and that Rosales-Diaz’s statutory maximum would now become 10 years did the district court choose to deny Rosales-Diaz’s § 2255 motion and to not change his original 10-year sentence. In doing so, the district court explicitly pointed out that its earlier 10year sentence still did not exceed the now-applicable 10-year statutory maximum. 6 We recognize that Rosales-Diaz claims that the initial misinformation about his 20-year statutory maximum penalty alone was “misinformation of a constitutional magnitude,” citing United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 92 S. Ct. 589 (1972). In Tucker, the defendant demonstrated that his sentence “might have been different if the sentencing judge had known that at least two of [his] previous convictions had been unconstitutionally obtained” without the benefit of legal counsel. Id. at 448, 92 S. Ct. at 592. In contrast here, the misinformation was corrected as the district court learned that Rosales-Diaz’s statutory maximum was only 10 years. Thus, when it denied the § 2255 motion, the district court was no longer laboring under a misapprehension of the correct statutory maximum for Rosales-Diaz’s conviction. Simply put, Tucker does not help Rosales-Diaz. 16 Case: 16-17304 Date Filed: 02/20/2020 Page: 17 of 17 Given the district court judge’s earlier thorough explanation of his reasons for the upward variance, it is not at all surprising that the same judge in the later § 2255 case concluded, in effect, that its 10-year sentence was still warranted even if Rosales-Diaz’s statutory maximum was reduced from 20 to 10 years. In short, the record as a whole demonstrates that the district court would have imposed the same 10-year sentence if it had known Rosales-Diaz’s statutory maximum penalty was 10 years, and thus Rosales-Diaz has not carried his burden to show the required actual prejudice. Indeed, after learning the correct statutory maximum, the district court did, in effect, reimpose the same 10-year sentence by denying Rosales-Diaz § 2255 relief. Accordingly, we cannot say the district court committed any reversible error in denying Rosales-Diaz’s § 2255 motion.7 AFFIRMED. 7 We recognize Rosales-Diaz argues that he may later suffer collateral consequences from being “incorrectly labelled” an aggravated felon under § 1326(b). Because the district court chose not to change his 10-year sentence and that sentence remains legal, the question becomes whether that incorrect designation alone is sufficient to demonstrate actual prejudice warranting a resentencing. We conclude that it does not. In any event, at oral argument, Rosales-Diaz’s counsel was pressed to acknowledge that if this Court itself concluded “there is no realistic chance [the sentence] would be different” then there would be no reason to remand RosalesDiaz’s case back to the district court, but counsel insisted that, on this record, Rosales-Diaz had shown that the sentence “may have been different.” As explained above, Rosales-Diaz has not carried his burden to show his sentence may have been different. Nonetheless, although not required and because the correction here is more in the nature of a clerical one, we exercise our discretion and instruct the district court on remand to correct clerically Rosales-Diaz’s judgment to substitute § 1326(b)(1) for § 1326(b)(2), in this phrase in the judgment: TITLE & SECTION 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) & (b)(2) 17