Court Opinion

ID: 9488593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:49:33.470076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:58.588973
License: Public Domain

EMILIO M. GARZA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The plurality1 holds that it was not objectively unreasonable for Seyfert’s attorney not to raise the d-methamphetamine issue at sentencing because (1) there was no reference to d,l-methamphetamine in the Sentencing Guidelines, and (2) there was no ease law on the subject at the time of Seyfert’s sentencing. I would decline to so hold based on the limited record before us. See United States v. Acklen, 47 F.3d 739, 742-43 (5th Cir.1995) (declining to hold as a matter of law that counsel’s assistance was not deficient and remanding for further proceedings where § 2255 movant alleged that his counsel had failed “to object at sentencing to the assump*550tion that the methamphetamine involved in th[e] ease was d-methamphetamine and not 1-methamphetamine”).
I recognize that the sentencing issue underlying the ineffective assistance of counsel claim in Acklen (whether the government was required to prove that a sample of seized methamphetamine was d- as opposed to 1-methamphetamine) was arguably more obvious than the specific issue presented in Seyfert’s appeal (whether the Government must prove the quantity of d-methamphetamine in a sample of d,1-methamphetamine). The issue in Acklen had been previously addressed by at least one circuit in United States v. Koonce, 884 F.2d 349, 353 (8th Cir.1989), and the Sentencing Guidelines explicitly referred to 1-methamphetamine, see id. In contrast, no court had addressed the specific question of whether the Government must prove the quantity of d-methamphetamine in a sample of d, 1-methamphetamine, a question which depends on whether d,1-methamphetamine is equivalent to d-methamphetamine for purposes of section 2D1.1. However, the two issues are similar; the argument in favor of requiring the Government to prove the quantity of d-methamphetamine in a sample of d,1-methamphetamine, like the argument in favor of requiring the Government to prove whether a sample of methamphetamine is d- or 1-methamphetamine, depends on the fact that the Sentencing Guidelines explicitly refer to 1-methamphetamine and treat it differently. See United States v. Bogusz, 43 F.3d 82, 91 (3rd Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 1812, 131 L.Ed.2d 736 (1995).
Contrary to the plurality’s position, I do not believe it would be “a leap in reasoning” for an attorney to conclude that, based on the fact that 1-methamphetamine is treated differently than d-methamphetamine when determining a defendant’s sentence under the Guidelines, d,1-methamphetamine might also be treated differently than d-methamphetamine for sentencing purposes. Moreover, given the drastically different sentencing consequences between d- and 1-methamphet-amine, it seems an even more objectively reasonable argument for an attorney to make.
The plurality concedes that if Seyfert’s counsel had not seen the laboratory report and had failed to request it, they would be prepared to find that his performance was deficient. Instead of remanding to determine what the critical facts were, the plurality assumes that Seyfert’s attorney actually received the Government’s laboratory report prior to Seyfert’s sentencing, and that he reasonably decided not to object to a lack of proof regarding whether the methamphetamine was d- or 1-methamphetamine. However, the record does not contain evidence to support this contention.
If the Government did not produce the laboratory report, Seyfert’s counsel stood in the same position as counsel in Acklen. In Acklen, the Government had not produced a laboratory report reflecting the results of testing to determine whether the methamphetamine at issue was d- or 1-methamphet-amine, and the § 2255 movant faulted his counsel for not objecting to the assumption that the methamphetamine was d-methamphetamine. 47 F.3d at 742.2 We refused to find that Acklen’s counsel was not deficient for failing to object at sentencing because merely reading the commentary to the Sentencing Guidelines “would have alerted counsel to the potentially significant impact on sentencing that the type of isomers involved,” d or 1, can have. Id. at 743.
Whether Seyfert can demonstrate prejudice under the Strickland standard depends on how d,1-methamphetamine should be treated under the Sentencing Guidelines. Therefore, I conclude that a remand is necessary because, unlike both courts of appeals *551that have addressed the question of how d,l-methamphetamine should be treated under section 2D1.1, we lack a record of expert testimony regarding the characteristics of d, 1-methamphetamine. See United States v. Carroll, 6 F.3d 735, 745 (11th Cir.1993), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 1234, 127 L.Ed.2d 577 (1994) (relying on the testimony of the Government’s expert witness that d,l-methamphetamine is a distinct form of methamphetamine and not a mixture of methamphetamine’s stereoisomers, d- and 1-metham-phetamine). But see id. at 749 (Bright, J., dissenting) (characterizing majority’s holding as “in contravention of the expert testimony”). Similarly, the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Decker, 55 F.3d 1509, 1512 (10th Cir.1995) based its holding on the testimony of the Government’s expert which the defendant did not dispute.
In contrast, we lack any record whatsoever regarding the characteristics of the d,l-methamphetamine which formed the basis for Seyfert’s sentence. Without such a record, I would decline to resolve either how the Guidelines’ mixture rule should apply to this ease, as the special concurrence does, or whether Seyfert was prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to raise the d-methamphetamine issue.
To this extent, my reasoning is consistent with the Tenth Circuit’s approach in United States v. Cook, 49 F.3d 663 (10th Cir.1995). In Cook, a § 2255 movant contended that his counsel’s assistance had been ineffective because counsel had failed to challenge the sentencing court’s treatment of d,l-methamphetamine as “pure methamphetamine.” Id. at 664-65. The district court assumed that the assistance of movant’s counsel had been ineffective and rejected his claim on the grounds that he could not show prejudice under Strickland. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit decided that:
to determine whether the district court applied the guidelines correctly, we must first determine whether Carroll correctly concluded that DL-methamphetamine is a third “molecular form” of methamphetamine. To make that determination, we need expert testimony and evidence defining the chemical nature of DL-methamphetamine. Such expert testimony and evidence is entirely absent from the record before us. We therefore remand the case to the district court....
Id. at 666. Three months later, the Tenth Circuit reached the issue in Decker based on the undisputed testimony of the Government’s expert. See Decker, 55 F.3d at 1512 (“In the instant case, the undisputed factual record prepares us to venture where Cook could not.”).
Acklen also supports my contention that potential prejudice is sufficient to support a remand of Seyfert’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim. 47 F.3d at 744. As in Acklen, it is clear that 1-methamphetamine was contained in the laboratory sample for which Seyfert was sentenced, and that the district court below, as in Acklen, failed to take that into account. In Acklen we believed the potential prejudice to the defendant was too great to decide the prejudice issue without a remand to develop a more complete record. Id. at 744.
Because the district court’s dismissal of Seyfert’s § 2255 motion was based on an erroneous finding that the methamphetamine for which Seyfert was convicted was d-methamphetamine, I would vacate the district court’s judgment. Further, because the record does not reflect whether Seyfert’s attorney knew about the laboratory report nor is there evidence regarding the characteristics of d,1-methamphetamine, I would remand to the district court for further consideration of Seyfert’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim.3

. I refer to Judge Prado’s decision as the plurality opinion since both he and Judge Reavley join in affirming the district court's denial of Seyfert’s petition for writ of habeas corpus, although for different reasons. Both Judge Prado and I reject the special concurrence’s use of the mixture rule to decide Seyfert's claim. I would decline to reach this issue until there is evidence in the record regarding the characteristics of the d,l-methamphetamine which formed the basis for Seyfert's sentence.

. If the Government did in fact produce the laboratory report to Seyfert's counsel prior to sentencing, it is unclear whether Seyfert’s counsel should be held more or less responsible for not raising the issue. On one hand, the laboratory report answered the question of what form of methamphetamine the samples contained. On the other hand, the laboratory report's indication that the methamphetamine was d,I-methamphetamine might have suggested, more clearly than no laboratory report at all, that the samples contained some quantity of 1-methamphetamine. Regardless, under the reasoning of Acklen, even assuming Seyfert's counsel received the Government's laboratory report before Seyfert's sentencing, I would be unable to hold as a matter of law that Seyfert’s counsel’s representation was not deficient.

. I concur with the plurality in its holding that the district court properly refused to consider the merits of Seyfert's first claim, in which he contends that the sentencing court erroneously calculated his sentence. Because Seyfert's sentencing claim is not of constitutional dimension and because it could have been raised on direct appeal, Seyfert is barred from asserting it in his *552§ 2255 motion. Acklen, 47 F.3d at 741, 742 n. 4.