Opinion ID: 6226542
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Resulting Proceedings

Text: Following their capture, a federal grand jury indicted Edward and Elaine, charging Edward on seven counts. Count I charged conspiracy to prevent officers of the United States from discharging their duties, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 372. Count II -- conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 111(a) & (b). Count III - 6 - charged him with carrying and possessing a firearm in connection with a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). Count V -- being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Count VII -- obstruction of justice, in violation of 18 U.S.C § 1503. Count IX charged Edward with failing to appear for his tax-fraud trial, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3146. And Count X -- failing to appear for sentencing in the tax-fraud case, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3146.5 Edward and Elaine went to trial, and they both were convicted on all counts. Following on from his occasional outbursts at the trial, Edward was rather combative at his original sentencing and accompanying competency proceeding. Throughout the proceedings, he often lodged his own objections, even though he was represented by counsel. He butted in to argue about a competency witness's testimony while he was still on the stand, interrupted the government's counsel (one time, for example, to call him a liar), and interrupted the judge to argue with him and call him beautiful. At one point when he was being removed from the courtroom, Edward accused the judge of being a criminal and a communist. After being returned to the courtroom following a timeout, Edward even told the judge that the district court 5Counts IV, VI, and VIII charged only Elaine, but the parties often describe the counts as they are numerated in the indictment, so we will follow the same trend. - 7 - readying to sentence him was not a court. After Edward exercised his allocution rights, the judge proceeded to explain the sentence he imposed. But interjecting himself during that process, Edward demanded to be taken out of the courtroom again, as in his telling, he had had enough of this trash. The court obliged his request. Speaking of his allocution, Edward went on an extended rant about what he sees as a crisis of our country. Edward revealed to the court that he is a member of a group called the United States Constitution Rangers, whose goal is to defend[] the Constitution and the people of the United States Republic. According to Edward, one core principle of the Rangers' philosophy is that its members will ignore . . . any laws or orders that violate certain constitutions and their Bill of Rights. And he openly questioned the authority of the federal laws, suggesting that the United States Constitution from 1789 was illegally replaced in 1879. Edward further informed the court that he intended to expose a [criminal] cell in the government. Addressing his crimes, Edward told the court that he could have killed all five of those agents [who came to arrest him] easily and lawfully. In handing down the sentence, the district court explained its rationale. Noting that Edward had engaged in a long period of lawlessness and endangered multiple government officials in the discharge of their duties, the court found Edward - 8 - (who, recall, was no longer in the courtroom at his own request) to be entirely unrepentant and concluded Edward would have killed multiple marshals if they hadn't dealt with him so effectively. The court went on to note how Edward had recruited others into his beliefs, all of whom ended up with lengthy prison sentences. And the court explained that it was imposing a severe punishment . . . to promote respect for the law and to deter others who attempted to engage in this type of conduct. Ultimately, and considering the severity of Edward's conduct, the judge handed down a sentence as follows: 72 months total on Counts I, V, and VII; 60 months on Count II, to run concurrently with the sentence on Counts I, V, and VII; 12 months total on Counts IX and X;6 and then the mandatory-minimum 360 months on Count III, the charge under § 924(c), to be served consecutively to the other sentences. As the court tallied that up, it meant a total term of 444 months['] imprisonment. And that term of imprisonment was to run consecutively to the term 6The transcript of the sentence orally announced by the court reflects that the 12-month sentence on Counts IX and X ran concurrently to the sentences on Counts I, II, V, and VII. The written judgment, though, specified that the 12-month sentence ran consecutively -- not concurrently -- to those other counts. More on that later. - 9 - that Edward was already serving for the tax-fraud convictions, which had begun running on October 4, 2007.7 Flash forward to 2016, when Edward filed his second motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. We granted him leave (and his wife, too) in 2019 to file this second or successive § 2255 motion, see 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h), attacking his § 924(c) conviction based on Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015). The district court granted Edward's motion with the government's assent, vacated the § 924(c) count based on United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019), and ordered resentencing.8 Before resentencing, Dr. Jill Durand, a licensed psychologist retained by Edward, evaluated him and issued a report. In it, Dr. Durand described Edward as self-confident, grandiose and strong in his convictions. Recounting her interviews with Edward, she noted that he maintained and expressed his unchanging beliefs regarding the US Government, distrust of the Court system, 7The court also sentenced Edward to three years of supervised release. 8 In Davis, the Supreme Court held that the residual clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (i.e., the clause defining a crime of violence as felonies that by their nature, involve a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense, 139 S. Ct. at 2323–24 (cleaned up)) is unconstitutionally vague, id. at 2336. Johnson found a similarly worded provision of the Armed Career Criminal Act unconstitutionally vague. 576 U.S. at 606. - 10 - and his position that he did not have a proper hearing in Court. Edward also described the court as unethical and immoral and part of a criminal justice system that is a racketeering organization with instructions from a European cartel, and stated that he views judges as unconstitutional. Regarding his crimes, he maintained that he didn't do anything wrong concerning his failure to pay his taxes. Edward, she noted, believes that he has been the victim of an unjust system and that his actions were warranted, justified or not unlawful. Nonetheless, Dr. Durand opined that there is little concern that Edward would pose a danger to others if released. Still, she cautioned of the possibility that Edward would ignore or evade a probation officer's attempts to supervise him upon his release from prison. Edward, represented by counsel, objected to being resentenced. He argued that it would violate the Double Jeopardy and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution to sentence him again, as, according to his math, he had already served the complete time he was sentenced on all but the § 924(c) sentence, which was vacated. We'll get into that more later, but the district judge rejected his argument. And putting that argument aside, Edward asked in the alternative that he be sentenced to time served. Conversely, the government sought a Guidelines-range sentence of between 360 months to life. - 11 - At the resentencing hearing, Edward, at the court's invitation, allocuted anew, with a couple of his recitals invoking a sense of déjà vu. He said he was investigating a criminal element within the government and that the U.S. government remains beholden to a European cartel. He also debuted a new claim -- the Department of Justice is a terrorist organization. When probed about the circumstances of his standoff with the Marshals, he told the court that he was going to defend [him]self, including with his .50-caliber rifle if he had to. When asked directly whether he thought he was violating the law with the months-long standoff, he responded No. Nor did he violate the law when he failed to pay his taxes, proclaiming those laws invalid. And, falling back on an old refrain, he questioned the authority of the judge to pass sentence on him under the criminal laws. Notwithstanding his views about the validity of the proceedings, Edward disavowed any intent to hurt anyone in the standoff and told the judge that he did not want or need his firearms anymore. And though he denied the validity of the laws, he conceded that he had no choice but to follow them and committed to the court to doing so. In the end, the district judge imposed a 300-month sentence -- that is, 144 months below the prior sentence and 60 months below the Guidelines range. The court explained that sentence was warranted due to the nature and seriousness of the - 12 - crime, the characteristics of Edward, the need to deter Edward and others from committing the same crime, the need for just punishment and to promote respect for the law, and the need to protect the public from any further crimes committed by Edward. Specifically, the judge focused on the fact that Edward not only harbors his beliefs about the validity of the government and the laws, but he went further, acting on those avowals and putting others in danger. Edward, he observed, was the ringleader of the standoff, recruiting others and brainwash[ing] one, leading them to incur lengthy prison sentences. Finally, the judge emphasized that Edward did not appear to show remorse for his actions. Rather, he continues to believe that he never did anything wrong. Standing at 78 years old at the time of resentencing, Edward objected to the substantive reasonableness of his sentence. His timely appeal followed.