Court Opinion

ID: 9482896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:04:03.578723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:16.325324
License: Public Domain

BRORBY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, joined by TACHA and BALDOCK, Circuit Judges.
Certainly more futile exercises exist than dissenting, but at the moment I can think of none. Nevertheless, the conclusion reached by the majority compels my comment by way of dissent.
The two cases decided are legally identical. Each defendant committed multiple offenses, Thornbrugh having a propensity to commit bank robberies and Abreu a propensity to commit drug offenses. Both defendants utilized firearms in the perpetration of their multiple crimes. Ultimately, each was apprehended, charged with the multiple offenses in a single indictment and convicted of multiple felonies.
At sentencing, the district court applied 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which reads: “In the case of his second or subsequent conviction ... such person shall be sentenced to_” Thus, the district court enhanced each defendant’s sentence for the second conviction which the jury returned simultaneously with the first conviction.
The sole issue to be decided is whether § 924(c) mandates an enhanced sentence when a defendant is convicted of two or more distinct § 924(c) offenses when the offenses are charged in the same indictment.
The majority rejected the analysis employed by all six circuits that have previously considered the question presented. Instead, the majority concluded the statute was ambiguous, applied the rule of lenity, and held the statute applies only when the commission of a second offense is preceded by the entry of a judgment of conviction. The majority has thus rewritten 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) to read:
Whoever, having been previously charged and convicted under 924(c) which conviction is evidenced by the entry of a judgment of conviction, then commits another § 924(c) offense shall be sentenced to_
All six of the circuits that have previously considered this question have decided the statute is not ambiguous and have held a second conviction charged in the same indictment as the first triggers the enhancement provision of § 924(c).1 The analysis employed by the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Raynor, 939 F.2d 191 (4th Cir.1991), is illustrative. The Raynor court said:
The plain meaning of the statute supports the conclusion that a conviction on a second firearms count, even though charged in the same indictment as the first, gives rise to the enhanced sentence. The statute directs enhancement for a “second or subsequent conviction.” The second conviction is the one that follows the first, either in time or in a number sequence, and the subsequent conviction is any that follows the second, either in time or in a number sequence. The enhancement that is mandated by the statute does not depend on satisfying conditions that the second or subsequent conviction be by reason of a different indictment, or that the sentence be imposed on the first conviction before the enhancement can apply to the second, or that the defendant have served the sentence on the first. To construe the statute with such conditions would interject terms not included, and surely not intended, by Congress.
Id. at 193. I am persuaded by this reasoning.
Our six sister circuits have likewise delved into the collateral issues including the legislative history, Congressional intent, Sentencing Guidelines, rules of statutory construction and analogous cases, and have come to the opposite conclusion from that enunciated by our majority. I em*1455brace the reasoning and analysis as set forth by our sister circuits. I can add nothing to their analysis.
The majority’s application of the rule of lenity deserves special comment. A statute is not deemed ambiguous “for purposes of lenity merely because it [is] possible to articulate a construction more narrow than that urged by the Government.” Moskal v. United States, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 461, 465, 112 L.Ed.2d 449 (1990). Instead, lenity is reserved “for those situations in which a reasonable doubt persists about a statute’s intended scope.” Id. The rule of lenity applies only “ ‘at the end of the process of construing what Congress has expressed, not at the beginning as an overriding consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers.’ ” Chapman v. United States, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 1926, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991) (quoting Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 596, 81 S.Ct. 321, 326-27, 5 L.Ed.2d 312 (1961), and citing Moskal). The majority has, in effect, decided that § 924(c) is draconian and meant to apply only to a recidivist. This reasoning has driven the majority into the corral formed by Moskal and Chapman.
The fatal flaw in the majority’s analysis may best be illustrated by a hypothetical factual scenario. Suppose a defendant commits two separate and distinct § 924(c) violations one year apart. Subsequently, he is apprehended and convicted of the first. Under the majority’s holding, once the second crime is solved and defendant is charged and convicted, his sentence may not be enhanced because the commission of the second crime occurred prior to his conviction for the first. Even more extreme would be the defendant who escapes during his trial and commits a second § 924(c) offense prior to the entry of the judgment of conviction. Neither could his sentence for a second conviction be enhanced. But if the majority employed a plain language analysis to § 924(c), sentence enhancement would apply under either scenario.
Assuming, arguendo, the majority is correct in concluding § 924(c) may be read in more than one way, it is still impossible to reach the interpretation they suggest. The only other logical way to read this statute is that it requires the second or subsequent conviction to be charged in an indictment separate from the first. As the Fourth Circuit has aptly pointed out, reading that requirement into § 924(c) does nothing more than require prosecutors to go through the additional ministerial task of charging repeat offenders in separate indictments. See Raynor, 939 F.2d at 193. The only legitimate interpretation remaining allows a second or subsequent conviction charged in the same indictment as the first to trigger the enhancement provisions of § 924(c).
If you pump enough water into a dry creek it becomes a river. The majority has pumped sufficient conditions into § 924(c) to transform it into a lenient vehicle for wrongdoers to ride.
I would affirm the enhanced sentences given to Mr. Abreu and Mr. Thornbrugh for their second and subsequent convictions.

. The majority opinion cites to these decisions.