Court Opinion

ID: 9494413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:37:23.149995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:24.053302
License: Public Domain

BRUNETTI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority reaches the unsupportable conclusion that a juvenile adjudication is not a “conviction” for sentencing enhancement purposes because, in essence, juveniles have no constitutional right to a trial by jury. I respectfully dissent from Part I.B of the opinion because it fails to recognize the full force of Supreme Court precedent, our case law, and congressional intent.
I begin with 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the relevant statute under which Tighe was convicted. That provision makes it unlawful for a prior felon to possess a firearm. When an individual violates the substantive crime set forth in section 922(g), he is subject to an enhanced penalty under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), if he has suffered three previous convictions for “a violent felony or a serious drug offense.” Congress specifically included in section 924(e)’s definition of a countable conviction any “finding that a person has committed an act of juvenile delinquency involving a violent felony.” Id. § 924(e)(2)(C).
This court has clearly held that section 924(e) is a penalty enhancement statute and does not create a new substantive federal crime. United States v. Dunn, 946 F.2d 615, 619 (9th Cir.1991) (citing United States v. West, 826 F.2d 909, 911 (9th Cir.1987)); see also Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990) (referring repeatedly to § 924(e) as a “sentence enhancement provision”). We have further held that the fact of the predicate felony convictions required for a sentencing enhancement under section 924(e) need not be included in the indictment nor proved at trial. Id. The judge may find the fact of the requisite predicate convictions at the sentencing hearing under a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. United States v. Phillips, 149 F.3d 1026, 1033 (9th Cir.1998).
With this backdrop in mind, I turn to the facts of this case relevant to my concern. The district court determined at sentencing that Shannon Wayne Tighe had been convicted of at least three prior violent felonies, requiring an ACCA enhancement. One of these prior convictions is a 1988 Oregon juvenile adjudication for reckless endangerment, first-degree robbery, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Over Tighe’s constitutional objections, the district court included the Oregon juvenile adjudication as a countable felony under section 924(e) by relying, in great part, on our decision in United States v. Williams, 891 F.2d 212 (9th Cir.1985).
In Williams, the defendant contended that his due process rights were violated because his adult criminal sentence was enhanced due to prior juvenile adjudications for which he did not have a right to jury trial. Id. at 213. Relying on McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 91 S.Ct. 1976, 29 L.Ed.2d 647 (1971), in which the Supreme Court held that jury trials are not constitutionally required for juvenile adjudications, we allowed the juvenile conviction to support the sentence enhancement. We observed that while “juvenile delinquency proceedings must conform to the due process guarantees of the Constitution ... these due process guarantees do not include the right to a jury trial for delinquency adjudications.” Williams, 891 F.2d at 214 (citations omitted). Thus, where a juvenile received all the process constitutionally due at the delinquency proceeding stage, we found the later use of the juvenile adjudication for an adult enhancement to be constitutionally sound because “the conviction was constitutionally valid for purposes of imposing a *1199sentence of imprisonment for the [juvenile] offense itself.” Id. at 215. To hold otherwise would have required the court “to hold that the enhancement of an adult criminal sentence requires a higher level of due process protection than the imposition of a juvenile sentence”-a notion the court squarely rejected. Id.
Tighe’s case should be straightforward under Williams because, as explained above, there is no constitutional problem with using a juvenile delinquency adjudication to support a sentencing enhancement. But the majority suggests that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Almendarez-Toires, Jones, and Apprendi direct a different result than the one Williams demands. I disagree.
Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 143 L.Ed.2d 311 (1999) was a precursor to the Court’s decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), which held that “[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348; see also Jones, 526 U.S. at 243 n. 6, 119 S.Ct. 1215. The “other than a fact of a prior conviction” language in Appren-di hearkens back to the Court’s decision in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998).
Almendarez-Torres held that where a legislature crafts a penalty provision which simply authorizes a court to increase a sentence for a recidivist, the Constitution does not require the government to charge the fact of the prior conviction in the indictment. Id. at 226-227, 118 S.Ct. 1219. There, the Court examined whether a provision in an illegal re-entry statute, which raised the penalty for illegal re-entry from two to twenty (20) years based on recidivism, was a sentencing factor or an element of the crime. In concluding that it was a sentencing factor, the Court rejected the argument that, because the fact of recidivism increased the maximum penalty to which a defendant was exposed, Congress was constitutionally required to treat recidivism as an element of the crime that must be charged in an indictment and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 239, 118 S.Ct. 1219; see also United States v. Pacheco-Zepeda, 234 F.3d 411, 413-14 (9th Cir.2001) (explaining that Almenda-rez-Torres “stands for the proposition that not every fact expanding a penalty range must be stated in a felony indictment, the precise holding being that recidivism increasing the maximum penalty need not be so charged.”) (citation and internal quotations omitted).
In United States v. Pacheco-Zepeda, we had occasion to address whether Almenda-rez-Torres remained good law after the Court in Apprendi expressed some concern over its continuing validity. Pacheco-Zepeda, 234 F.3d at 414. We observed that Apprendi
reasoned that any due process or Sixth Amendment concerns' — arising out of the judicial determination of a “fact” that increased punishment beyond the statutory maximum — were mitigated in Almendarez-Torres by “[b]oth the certainty that procedural safeguards attached to any ‘fact’ of prior conviction, and the reality that [the defendant] did not challenge the accuracy of that ‘fact’ in his case.”

Id.

Thus, we found that the Court in Ap-prendi chose not to overrule Almendarez-Torres, and unmistakably carved out an exception for “prior convictions” that specifically preserved the holding of Almen-darez-Torres. Id. (emphasis added).
The majority acknowledges, as it must, that Almendarez-Torres is still part of *1200“the current state of the law.” However, it proceeds to make the tortured argument that prior juvenile adjudications, which do not afford the right to a jury trial, do not fall within the “prior conviction” exception to Apprendi’s general rule that a fact used to increase a defendant’s maximum penalty must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The majority does so by relying on language in Jones (and later reiterated in Apprendi) that explains why it is constitutionally permissible to use prior convictions to increase the possible penalty for an offense without treating the fact of the convictions themselves as elements of the crime. I repeat the specific Jones language here:
“One basis for that constitutional distinctiveness [of prior convictions] is not har'd to see: unlike virtually any other consideration used to enlarge the possible penalty for an offense ... a prior conviction must itself have been established through procedures satisfying the fair notice, reasonable doubt and jury trial guarantees.”
Majority Opinion at 1193 (quoting Jones, 526 U.S. at 249,119 S.Ct. 1215.)
The majority takes this language and makes the quantum leap to hold, in effect, that in order for a prior conviction to support a sentencing enhancement, it must have been “subject to the fundamental triumvirate of procedural protections intended to guarantee the reliability of criminal convictions: fair notice, reasonable doubt and the right to a jury trial.” Majority Opinion at 1193. Because part of this so-called “fundamental triumvirate of procedural protections” is absent for juvenile adjudications, the majority takes juvenile adjudications out of the equation, even though Congress specifically made them part of it.
I do not believe the language plucked from Jones provides sufficient authority to overrule (albeit implicitly) this court’s decision in Williams, nor do I think the majority’s attempt to distinguish Williams is valid. In my view, the language in Jones stands for the basic proposition that Congress has the constitutional power to treat prior convictions as sentencing factors subject to a lesser standard of proof because the defendant presumably received all the process that was due when he was convicted of the predicate crime. For adults, this would indeed include the right to a jury trial. For juveniles, it does not. Extending Jones ’ logic to juvenile adjudications, when a juvenile receives all the process constitutionally due at the juvenile stage, there is no constitutional problem (on which Apprendi focused) in using that adjudication to support a later sentencing enhancement. Our decision in Williams recognizes just that.
The majority does not make clear how its decision today will work in practice, but it is obvious that it will be troublesome. If a juvenile adjudication (without the right to a jury trial) does not fall within the Almendarez-Torres exception, then, to comply with Apprendi prosecutors will be required to prove the fact of the prior convictions to the jury in order to support the sentencing enhancement. While, as the majority notes, some states treat prior convictions as elements of the related crime and submit the fact of a prior conviction to a jury, it overlooks the fact that the Supreme Court has long recognized “that the introduction of evidence of a defendant’s prior crimes risks significant prejudice.” Almendarez-Torres, 523 U.S. at 235, 118 S.Ct. 1219 (citing Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 560, 87 S.Ct. 648, 17 L.Ed.2d 606 (1967)); see also United States v. Dunn, 946 F.2d 615, 619-620 (9th Cir.1996) (commenting that including information regarding three prior violent felonies in the defendant’s indictment “probably would have introduced an unacceptable level of prejudice into his trial”). Thus, a *1201defendant with a prior juvenile adjudication will be put to the Hobson’s choice of stipulating to the priors or parading them before a jury. But, as Almendarez-Torres recognized, “[e]ven if a defendant’s stipulation were to keep the name and details of the previous offense from the jury, ... jurors would still learn, from the indictment, the judge, or the prosecutor, that the defendant had committed [three violent felonies].” Id. at 235, 118 S.Ct. 1219 (citation omitted). This approach seems to wreak havoc on the very due process rights Apprendi sought to vindicate.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from Part I.B and the ultimate result, but concur in all other respects.