Court Opinion

ID: 9906864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-12-05 16:00:41.55577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:31.199693
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 17-15276    Document: 46-1     Date Filed: 12/05/2023   Page: 1 of 5

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 17-15276
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       DANNY LEE HAMPTON,
       a.k.a. “Smoke”,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Middle District of Florida
                  D.C. Docket No. 6:16-cr-00234-ACC-KRS-1
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       2                     Opinion of the Court                 17-15276

                           ____________________

       Before LAGOA, BRASHER, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               Danny Lee Hampton pleaded guilty to conspiracy to dis-
       tribute and possess with intent to distribute a controlled sub-
       stance, see 21 U.S.C. § 846, and possession of a firearm by a con-
       victed felon, see 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). The district court sentenced
       him to ninety months’ imprisonment to be followed by four years
       of supervised release. En route to imposing that sentence, the dis-
       trict court concluded that Hampton was an armed career criminal
       under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) based on three prior state law convic-
       tions for “serious drug offense[s]”: one for possession with intent
       to sell or deliver cocaine; one for delivery of cocaine; and one for
       conspiracy to traffic cocaine.
               On appeal, Hampton says his state law conspiracy convic-
       tion is not a “serious drug offense” for purposes of Section 924(e)
       and he, therefore, did not deserve to be sentenced as an armed
       career criminal. He advances three arguments in support of that
       proposition: (1) conspiracy to traffic is not a serious drug offense
       because it does not require intent to distribute as an element of
       the crime; (2) his conspiracy conviction is not a serious drug of-
       fense because it did not involve a substance that was federally
       controlled at the time he committed the federal offense for which
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       17-15276                 Opinion of the Court                            3

       he was federally sentenced; 1 and (3) a mere conspiracy to sell or
       deliver cocaine can never be considered a serious drug offense.
       Hampton concedes that our decisions in United States v. James, 430
       F.3d 1150 (11th Cir. 2005), overruled on other grounds by Johnson v.
       United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), and United States v. Jackson, 55
       F.4th 846 (11th Cir. 2022), require us to reject his first and second
       arguments, respectively.
              Hampton’s third argument is not foreclosed by Circuit
       precedent, but it is foreclosed by his own forfeiture. He posits two
       reasons in this Court that a conspiracy conviction cannot be a se-
       rious drug offense: because a mere agreement to traffic a con-
       trolled substance does not “involv[e] . . . manufacturing, distrib-
       uting, or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute,” nor
       does it “involv[e]” the existence of an actual controlled substance.
       18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii). In sum, Hampton’s point is that until
       an actual controlled substance is in fact “manufacture[d], dis-
       tribut[ed], or possess[ed] with intent to manufacture or distrib-
       ute,” no “serious drug offense” has occurred under Section 924(e).
       But Hampton never made those arguments to the district court.
       Instead, those arguments were debuted in his opening brief in this
       Court. We have made clear that a defendant who wants to pre-
       serve a specific argument for appeal must make that argument to
       the district court at sentencing. E.g., United States v. Ramirez-Flores,

       1 Hampton contends that his state law conviction was “based on a derivative
       of cocaine—ioflupane—that was not federally controlled” when he commit-
       ted the federal crimes underlying the sentence at issue in this appeal.
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                  17-15276

       743 F.3d 816, 821 (11th Cir. 2014). Because Hampton failed to do
       so, we review only for plain error the district court’s conclusion
       that Hampton’s state law conspiracy conviction is a serious drug
       offense.
              Plain error review requires Hampton to persuade us that:
       “(1) an error occurred; (2) the error was plain; (3) it affected his
       substantial rights; and (4) it seriously affected the fairness of the
       judicial proceedings.” Id. Even if the district court did err below,
       the error was certainly not plain. “An error is plain if it is clear or
       obvious—that is, if the explicit language of a statute or rule or
       precedent from the Supreme Court or this Court directly resolves
       the issue.” United States v. Innocent, 977 F.3d 1077, 1081 (11th Cir.
       2020) (cleaned up). There was no binding precedent from this
       Court or the Supreme Court instructing the district court that
       conspiracies are never serious drug offenses for purposes of Sec-
       tion 924(e). Indeed, we recently declined to decide “whether and
       to what extent inchoate crimes”—including conspiracies, specifi-
       cally—“are ‘serious drug offense[s].’” United States v. Penn, 63
       F.4th 1305, 1316 (11th Cir. 2023) (brackets in original) (quoting 18
       U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(A)).
              Hampton contends that a more recent decision, United
       States v. Miles, 75 F.4th 1213 (11th Cir. 2023), settled the matter.
       See Henderson v. United States, 568 U.S. 266, 268–29 (2013) (an error
       can be “plain” even if the precedent resolving the issue came after
       the district court’s decision). Hampton is wrong. In Miles, we held
       that a possession conviction under a certain Florida statute was
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       17-15276              Opinion of the Court                       5

       not a serious drug offense because it did not “involve[e] manufac-
       turing . . . .” 75 F.4th at 1215–16. The question that Penn dodged—
       “whether and to what extent” a conspiracy conviction can ever be
       a “serious drug offense[]” under Section 924(e)—remains open. 63
       F.4th 1316–17. Absent precedent conclusively answering that
       question, any error by the district court was not “plain.”
             Accordingly, the district court is AFFIRMED.