Opinion ID: 2788235
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Career-Offender Enhancement

Text: Lastly, Richardson argues that the district court erroneously sentenced him as a career offender under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 because one of his predicate convictions—a 1999 conviction for armed robbery—was the product of an involuntary guilty plea. 17 Case: 13-31190 Document: 00512976614 Page: 18 Date Filed: 03/20/2015 No. 13-31190 For preserved error, we review a district court’s application of the Guidelines de novo and its factual findings for clear error. United States v. Ruiz, 621 F.3d 390, 394 (5th Cir. 2010) (per curiam). The proponent of an adjustment to the defendant’s sentence level “must establish the factual predicate justifying the adjustment . . . by a preponderance of the relevant and sufficiently reliable evidence.” United States v. Alfaro, 919 F.2d 962, 965 (5th Cir. 1990). However, “[t]he burden of proving the constitutional invalidity of a prior conviction rests on the defendant.” United States v. Howard, 991 F.2d 195, 199 (5th Cir. 1993). Richardson objected to the PSR’s career-offender sentence enhancement in both his first and second sentencing proceedings, but on different grounds. At his first sentencing, Richardson contended that there were no records of the armed-robbery arrest or plea agreement. At his second sentencing, Richardson contended that his guilty plea was involuntary, as his attorney had accepted the plea in his absence and had later advised him not to “make any protests about it.” In both cases, the probation office disagreed with Richardson’s objections and cited state-court records confirming the validity of the conviction, and the district court adopted the PSRs. 11 Richardson did not raise any error relating to his sentence in his first appeal. See supra note 3. Richardson argues that the state-court records that could corroborate his claims were presumptively destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, such that he cannot discharge his burden of establishing the constitutional infirmity of his conviction. He submits, without authority, that this Court should recognize an “act of God” exception to the ordinary allocation of burdens of proof. We find Richardson’s arguments unpersuasive. The probation office rebutted Richardson’s objection in its Supplemental Addendum to the PSR, 11 Richardson claims to have perfected an appeal of the armed-robbery conviction, but he does not provide any citation or record in support. 18 Case: 13-31190 Document: 00512976614 Page: 19 Date Filed: 03/20/2015 No. 13-31190 noting that it had obtained “a charging instrument, waiver of rights form, electronic sentencing minutes, and Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections documents” that belied Richardson’s claims. Although there is some ambiguity in the record as to which documents the district court had before it when ruling on Richardson’s objection, any of the records presented by the Government would tend to prove that Richardson personally appeared in court and entered a valid guilty plea. See supra note 4. Richardson has presented no competent evidence to the contrary (e.g., an affidavit by Richardson or by his attorney at the plea hearing), so even were we to apply the “act of God” exception Richardson advocates, we would reach the same result. In light of the Government’s evidence, we hold that district court committed no reversible error in ruling the predicate conviction valid.