Court Opinion

ID: 9498236
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:11:51.519012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:42.235237
License: Public Domain

*914BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately.
I am bound to concur by precedent, but I do protest against a holding where the court examines state judicial proceedings but refuses to credit the character of those proceedings as determined by the state itself.
Davis had previously been prosecuted for drug trafficking in Missouri. The Missouri court did not impose judgment and sentence, but placed Davis on probation and suspended further judicial proceedings pending Davis’ successful completion of probation. In other words, no judgment was entered against Davis. See generally Yale v. City of Independence, 846 S.W.2d 193, 194 (Mo.1993). The state court could have imposed judgment and sentence but then suspended the execution of the sentence to place Davis on probation. See id. In that case, a judgment would have been entered against Davis.
The state court deliberately chose not to enter a judgment of conviction against Davis. The federal courts should respect the character of state judicial proceedings, as determined by the states themselves. Respect for the dignity of the states in our federal system requires that we do so. See U.S. Const., Art. IV, § 1 (the Full Faith & Credit clause). We should not declare that state proceedings that did not, in the state’s eyes, result in a final conviction is nevertheless a final conviction under federal law.
Davis is now twenty-three years old. He was convicted in this case, at the age of twenty-one, of possessing one 78-gram rock of crack cocaine, with the intent to distribute it. Davis is not a drug kingpin. He does not have a long criminal record. Apart from the present case, he has one juvenile conviction (from when he was thirteen years old), one adult conviction for driving with a revoked driver’s license, and the non-conviction-conviction at issue in this appeal (for possessing marijuana and for second-degree drug trafficking).
A straight guidelines sentence would be approximately 12$ years to 15$ years (151 to 188 months). The federal court’s refusal to credit the Missouri court’s decision to suspend judicial proceedings rather than to convict Davis mandates an additional 4 $ to 7$ years in prison.
The straight guidelines sentence is itself very harsh. The additional prison term, premised on a refusal to credit the Missouri court’s characterization of its own judicial proceedings, is gratuitous and unjust. One need not take a sentimental view of drug dealers to see that this twenty-year mandatory minimum sentence comes disturbingly close to simply throwing away a young life.
This is a case well-suited for review by this court en bane, or by the United States Supreme Court.