Opinion ID: 3037884
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Challenges to Almendarez-Torres and 8 U.S.C.

Text: § 1326(b) [1] We first dispose of two of Beng’s sentencing challenges, which are foreclosed by our case law. Under § 1326(b)(2), the maximum penalty for illegal reentry is increased from two years to twenty years in prison if the defendant was previously removed subsequent to a conviction for an aggravated felony.1 In Almendarez-Torres, the Supreme Court held that “subsection [(b) of 8 U.S.C. § 1326] is a penalty provision, which simply authorizes a court to increase the sentence for a recidivist. It does not define a separate crime. Consequently, neither the statute nor the Constitution requires the Government to charge the factor that it mentions, an earlier conviction, in the indictment.” 523 U.S. at 226-27. On appeal, Beng abandons his claim that AlmendarezTorres implicitly has been overruled by subsequent Supreme Court precedent, but renews his argument that recent decisions of the Supreme Court limit Almendarez-Torres’s holding to cases where a defendant has admitted his prior convictions during a guilty plea. He cites Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005), and Dretke v. Haley, 541 U.S. 386 (2004), in support. Because Beng did not admit his prior convictions, and because they were neither charged in his indictment nor proved to a jury, he asserts that they could not be used to enhance his offense level or calculate his Criminal History Category. 1 Subsections (b)(1), (3), and (4) increase the maximum penalty to ten years in prison if other factors not at issue in Beng’s case apply. UNITED STATES v. BENG-SALAZAR 7485 Beng makes a separate but related argument that 8 U.S.C. § 1326(b) is unconstitutional because it permits a judge to increase a defendant’s statutory maximum sentence for a § 1326 violation from two years to ten or twenty years, in violation of Apprendi. In adopting the PSR’s recommendations, the court effectively increased Beng’s maximum potential sentence to twenty years, based on § 1326(b)(2). [2] Our decision in United States v. Rodriguez-Lara, 421 F.3d 932, 949-50 (9th Cir. 2005), affirming the continued validity of Almendarez-Torres and rejecting a challenge to § 1326(b), forecloses these arguments. See also United States v. Lopez-Torres, 443 F.3d 1182, 1185 (9th Cir. 2006) (“We have repeatedly rejected [the] argument [that subsequent cases undermine the holding in Almendarez-Torres], and do so again here.”); United States v. Quintana-Quintana, 383 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2004) (reaffirming the constitutionality of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(b) in the wake of Apprendi and Blakely), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 1130 (2005).