Court Opinion

ID: 9499161
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:39:21.323342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:19.094994
License: Public Domain

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
While I concur in the judgment remanding this case for resentencing, I cannot concur in the majority’s reasoning in applying the harmless error standard.
Because the defendants were tried, convicted, and sentenced without preserving an Apprendi/Booker * Sixth Amendment error by making a timely objection at trial, see Fed.R.Crim.P. 51, they forfeited their objection except to the extent that they *561are able to persuade us to review the error under the plain error doctrine, see United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). In Olano, the Supreme Court noted:
No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right, or a right of any other sort, may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.
Id. at 731, 113 S.Ct. 1770 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Such forfeited rights, however, may be reviewed in “limited” circumstances as provided by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b). Id. at 731-32, 113 S.Ct. 1770.
In this case, the defendants did not— indeed could not — assert and therefore preserve their Apprendi/Booker Sixth Amendment objection during trial because neither Apprendi nor Booker had then been decided. The trial took place in November 1999, and sentencing took place in March 2000. Thus, the trial and sentencing were conducted in conformity with then-existing understandings of the Sixth Amendment’s requirements — the jury determined that the defendants trafficked in drugs in violation of 28 U.S.C. § 841(a), and the district court determined that the drug quantities involved exposed the defendants to sentences longer than 20 years’ imprisonment, as provided by 20 U.S.C. § 841(b). In accordance with this procedure, Robinson was sentenced to two life sentences, to run concurrently; Schuyler was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 60 months; and Parros was sentenced to 360 months’ imprisonment. Because the defendants failed, during those proceedings, to object to the error in procedure that the court, not the jury, was making drug-quantity findings, the defendants forfeited their right to object to the error. Accordingly, appellate review thereafter had to be conducted under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) for plain error, if at all. See Olano, 507 U.S. at 731-32, 113 S.Ct. 1770.
The proceedings that have followed entry of judgment in this case have involved solely the efforts of the district court and this court to review the district court’s original sentences and resentences in light of the newly emerging principles of Apprendi and Booker. On the defendants’ first appeal, we noticed plain error under Apprendi and remanded for resentencing. See United States v. Johnson, 26 Fed. Appx. 111 (4th Cir.2001). On the defendants’ second appeal, we affirmed the defendants’ sentences, relying on the plain error doctrine as applied in United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002). See United States v. Robinson, 390 F.3d 833, 838 (4th Cir.2004). Finally, the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated our last decision, and remanded to us to consider the sentences in light of its intervening decision in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). See Robinson v. United States, 544 U.S. 971, 125 S.Ct. 1875, 161 L.Ed.2d 719 (2005). All of these proceedings have been efforts to correct the Sixth Amendment error that had not been objected to at trial but which we noted as plain error.
To suggest now for the first time that our standard of review must be the harmless error standard is shocking — -indeed, no party has even challenged the application of plain error review. The error was originally forfeited at least as early as sentencing in March 2000 and then noticed by us under the plain error doctrine. To review it now under harmless error implies that the objection was made when the error could have- been corrected. See United States v. Hubbard, 603 F.2d 137, 142 (10th Cir.1979) (objections to error must be presented to the trial judge so as *562not to deprive the judge and opposing counsel the opportunity to take corrective action); United States v. Woodner, 317 F.2d 649, 651-52 (2d Cir.1963) (objection to error must be made “while there is still time to rectify the asserted error”). But the objection was not timely made. The defendants objected after sentencing and have merely reiterated their objection at every turn, including at resentencing and on appeal.
Of course, to apply a harmless error standard now has significant implications — it shifts the burden from the defendants to show prejudice to the government to show the absence of prejudice. See Olano, 507 U.S. at 741, 113 S.Ct. 1770. If the error had not been forfeited, the government might have been able to avoid the error by presenting evidence of drug quantities to the jury for determination. This is, at bottom, the motivation for making distinctions between plain error and harmless error — to avoid prejudicing a party who acted in conformity with the law as it existed at the time. So it is manifestly unfair now to impose on the government the burden to demonstrate an absence of prejudice from its failure to make a showing that it never had a chance to make. Because the defendants’ objections came too late, “[tjhis is a plain-error case,” and will always be a plain-error case, so “it is [the defendants] who must persuade the appellate court that the deviation from [the Sixth Amendment] was prejudicial.” Id.
The majority argues that, because the defendants raised Apprendi at their resentencing and cited Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004), during their second appeal to assert the Apprendi/Booker error, they “preserved” their Apprendi/Booker objection such that our review now must be for harmless error. This argument, as already noted, holds no water, and it defies the majority’s own logic. As the majority points out, an objection based on Apprendi is tantamount to making a Booker objection. See United States v. Sullivan, 455 F.3d 248, (4th Cir. July 11, 2006) (King, J., concurring and writing for the court on this issue). This equivalence necessarily means that the defendants have never raised a “new” error that might be amenable to harmless error review.
Not only is the majority’s recognition of a “new” error inconsistent with the observations made in Sullivan, the majority’s foundational assumptions fail to recognize the nature of the Apprendi/Booker error. At its core, the Apprendi/Booker error is grounded on the failure to submit to the jury for factfinding evidence that theretofore had been considered sentencing facts subject to the court’s factfinding. Only a new trial could provide the government with the opportunity to present such facts to the jury.
Thus, at the 2003 resentencing, the fact remained that the government had not been given the opportunity to present evidence of drug quantities to the jury. The 2003 resentencing proceeding was only an effort to work around this still-persistent Sixth Amendment failure through application of doctrines that might avoid the need of a new trial. Thus, the trial court applied the principle that because the evidence of drug quantity was uncontroverted and overwhelming, fact-finding by the court and not the jury did not affect substantial rights.
As we now again send this case back to the district court for resentencing under Booker-specific principles, the court will again determine sentencing facts, but now under a non-mandatory sentencing structure that avoids the Apprendi/Booker error. Even now, however, the 1999 Apprendi/Booker error persists, in that the jury was never given the responsibility of finding sentencing facts. But Booker itself *563will now allow the district court to find sentencing facts as an act of discretion, not as a mandate, which had rendered its earlier factfinding unconstitutional.
At bottom, the district court’s goal at the 2003 resentencing and now on remand will be to correct the 1999 Apprendi/Booker error that was forfeited but which we noticed on the first appeal. The defendants’ repetition of their objection to this error — made on the first appeal; made again to the district court at the 2003 resentencing; and made again to us in the second appeal — does not make the error a new error. Repeating a same, late objection more than once does not make it any more timely. Or stated otherwise, the same error once forfeited cannot be converted to one preserved simply by repeating the objection.
While I thus disagree with the majority’s application of harmless error at this stage of the proceedings, I agree that this case should be remanded for resentencing under our most recently announced jurisprudence under Booker. See, e.g., United States v. Hughes, 401 F.3d 540, 547-49 (4th Cir.2005); United States v. Green, 436 F.3d 449, 455-56 (4th Cir.2006); United States v. Moreland, 437 F.3d 424, 431-34 (4th Cir.2006).

 See Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000); United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005).