Opinion ID: 72149
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Career-Offender Criteria and Section 994

Text: Williams first contends that United States v. Gomez-Herrera, 523 F.3d 554 (5th Cir. 2008) establishes that only those who meet the career-offender criteria should receive sentences at or near the statutory maximum. His interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 994(h) and § 4B1.1 means that Congress intended to exclude noncareer offenders from receiving similar penalties (sentences at or near the statutory maximum). However, Williams’s first argument fails. Gomez-Herrera dealt with a defendant who argued that the district court should be permitted to consider the sentencing disparities between courts that participated in the 6 Case: 09-10205 Document: 00511076548 Page: 7 Date Filed: 04/12/2010 No. 09-10205 No. 09-10206 “fast track” disposition program for defendants charged with illegal re-entry and those courts, like the one he was in, that did not. Gomez-Herrera, 523 F.3d at 557. We noted that Congress had intended to create a sentencing disparity on the basis of a whether a district participated in the program; thus, a district court could not deviate from the USSG because of disparity intended by Congress. Id. at 563. The fast-track program at issue in Gomez-Herrera is distinguishable because Congress expressed its intent that certain sentencing benefits would be given to one class of defendants to the exclusion of another. See id. at 562-63. Section 994(h) does not suggest that only those who meet the career-offender criteria should receive such a sentence; thus, non-career-offender defendants may receive similar sentences. B. Shepard’s Prohibition on Using Facts Outside the Charging Document Next, Williams argues that the district court considered documents prohibited by Shepard to depart upwardly and sentence him as a career offender even though he did not qualify for the career-offender sentencing enhancement. Shepard prohibits a district court from considering facts not contained in the charging documents. Shepard, 544 U.S. at 26; United States v. Mohr, 554 F.3d 604, 607 (5th Cir. 2009); see United States v. Garza-Lopez, 410 F.3d 268, 273-74 (5th Cir. 2005) (noting that a district court may not rely on a PSR’s characterization of an offense to support an enhancement). We recently held in Guiterrez-Hernandez, that a district court could not circumvent the Shepard rule by supporting its decision to upwardly depart on facts it was prohibited from considering when determining whether sentencing enhancements were 7 Case: 09-10205 Document: 00511076548 Page: 8 Date Filed: 04/12/2010 No. 09-10205 No. 09-10206 warranted. Gutierrez-Hernandez, 581 F.3d at 255. In that case, the district court stated that it was prohibited from considering a police report in deciding whether the defendant’s drug crime qualified for a felony drug-trafficking enhancement under § 2L1.2, but then relied on the facts in the police report to conclude that the defendant sold cocaine and justified an upward departure under § 5K2.0 based on these facts. Id. We determined that procedural error had occurred because no valid basis to support the upward departure existed. Id. Here, Shepard controlled which documents the district court could consider for purposes of using Williams’s prior Texas convictions to enhance his sentence, and the court relied on these prior Texas convictions to depart upward under § 4A1.3 after finding inadequate bases to support the enhancement. This occurred after the district court correctly decided that it could not consider information outside the charging documents to determine if the Texas convictions constituted crimes of violence, which would qualify him as a career offender. Moreover, the district court explicitly noted that paragraphs 43 and 44 of the PSR were taken into consideration. These paragraphs contain facts about the Texas convictions not included in the charging document. Finally, the district court justified Williams’s greater risk to the community “based on those things [bank robberies and indecency convictions] mentioned” in the PSR. The Government correctly points out that Williams’s criminal history of four felony convictions (the two Texas convictions and the two bank robberies), a misdemeanor and admitting to four additional bank robberies, supports an upward departure or a non-Guideline sentence. These bank robberies included 8 Case: 09-10205 Document: 00511076548 Page: 9 Date Filed: 04/12/2010 No. 09-10205 No. 09-10206 notes that threatened violence to the bank tellers and were committed within a short time after his release from prison. However, as previously mentioned, a look at the whole record shows the district court focused on the indecency convictions,2 as well as the bank robberies, to upwardly depart as a justification for its guideline sentence. Because the district court computed the upward departure by considering facts prohibited by Shepard and this Court’s subsequent rulings,3 it committed procedural error requiring new sentencing proceedings. II. The Consecutive Sentence for Violation of Supervised Release Williams’s final argument asks this Court to review the district court’s decision to impose a 24-month prison term to run consecutively, not concurrently, to his prison term for the bank robbery conviction. The purpose of a sentence imposed for violating the terms of supervised release is to punish the defendant for his breach of trust, and not for any criminal offense resulting in the revocation of his release. See United States v. Payan, 992 F.2d 1387, 129697 (5th Cir. 1993); U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual ch. 7, pt. A(3)(b), 2 Notably, (1) the court expressed its displeasure that it could not consider information outside the charging documents to impose career-offender enhancements throughout the proceedings, (2) it found it “too risky” to impose the career enhancements under § 4B1.1, (3) it then imposed the same guideline sentence as a career offender only using § 4A1.3 as justification, (4) it repeatedly expressed its intent to consider all available information and to impose a significant upward departure, and (5) the court made reference to the prohibited findings in the PSR’s detailed description of the charges. 3 We note, without comment, that the district court retains discretion on remand to make a determination on the propriety of a non-guideline sentence but must first compute a proper guideline sentence before attempting to make a proper non-guideline sentence or upward guideline departure otherwise in conformity with the law. 9 Case: 09-10205 Document: 00511076548 Page: 10 Date Filed: 04/12/2010 No. 09-10205 No. 09-10206 introductory cmt. (2009). The USSG recognizes that the sanction for violation of trust should be consecutive (in addition) to the sentence imposed on the basis of the defendant’s new criminal conduct. See U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual ch. 7, pt. A(3)(b); id. § 7B1.3(f) (requiring that a prison term imposed pursuant to a supervised release violation “shall be ordered to be served consecutively to any sentence of imprisonment that the defendant is serving”); see also United States. v. Zamora-Vallejo, 470 F.3d 592, 596 n.6 (5th Cir. 2006) (noting that while conduct which results in revocation of a supervised release might constitute a new criminal offense, that conduct is not being punished twice if the defendant receives two sentences). Here, Williams received a sentence for his 2008 bank robbery conviction and a sentence for “breach of trust” by violating the terms of his supervised release for his 2000 bank robbery conviction. The 24-month sentence for the supervised-released violation, while the maximum recommended, is still within the range recommended by the guideline policy statements. Because the district court followed the policy mandates of § 7B1.3(f), it did not err for imposing a consecutive sentence for Williams’s supervised-release violation. The district court committed procedural error when computing the upward departure, guideline sentence. Accordingly, the sentence imposed for the later conviction in appeal number 09-10206 is VACATED, and we REMAND for resentencing consistent with the opinion. We find no error in the district court’s decision to impose a consecutive sentence for Williams’s supervised-release violation. Accordingly, the sentence imposed in the revocation hearing in appeal number 09-10205 is AFFIRMED. 10