Court Opinion

ID: 9490913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:58:25.583338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:23.564781
License: Public Domain

DAVID A, NELSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Under the literal language of 18 U.S.C. §§ 3146 and 3147, as the district court pointed out at the sentencing hearing in this case, “the effect of what happens, if you apply both of the statutes, is that the defendant gets punished for failure to appear and then he gets punished again for failure to appear.” The district judge repeatedly said that he did not think this was what Congress had intended. In his view, § 3146 ‘Vas intended to encompass all the punishment” for the offense of failure to appear. In effect, however, the district judge concluded that multiple punishments were required under the plain language of the statutes.
I am aware of nothing in the legislative history suggesting that Congress intended to impose multiple punishments in a case such as this, and I do not read the statutory language as clearly manifesting such an intent. For one thing, the reading adopted by the district court would be problematic in light of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment — a clause that “protects not only against a second trial for the same offense, but also ‘against multiple punishments for the same offense.’ ” Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 688, 100 S.Ct. 1432, 1436, 63 L.Ed.2d 715 (1980), quoting North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 2076, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969).
Like any case presenting a possible constitutional problem, a case that raises the prospect of double jeopardy ought to be decided on other than constitutional grounds if possible. Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 11-12, 98 S.Ct. 909, 912-913, 55 L.Ed.2d 70 (1978). The problem in Simpson was that the plain language of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(d) prescribed an enhanced penalty for bank robbery where the robbery was committed by use of a dangerous weapon, while the plain language of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) prescribed an enhanced penalty for use of a firearm to commit a felony of any kind. Id. at 7-8, 98 S.Ct. at 910-911. Holding both statutes applicable to the Simpson defendants, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the imposition of an increased penalty under § 2113(d) and the imposition of an additional consecutive penalty under § 924(e). Id. at 8-9, 98 S.Ct. at 910-911 The Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit decision, using several tools of statutory construction to conclude that Congress had simply not authorized the additional penalty of § 924(e) for an offense already subject to enhanced punishment under § 2113(d). Id. at 12-13, 98 S.Ct. at 913.
Among the tools of statutory construction employed by the Supreme Court in Simpson was “the principle that gives precedence to the terms of the more specific statute where a general statute and a specific statute speak to the same concern_” Id. at 15, 98 S.Ct. at 914, citing inter al., Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 489-90, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 1836-37, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973). This principle, the Court continued,
“has special cogency where a court is called upon to determine the extent of the punishment to which a criminal defendant is subject for his transgressions. In this context, the principle is a corollary of the rule of lenity, an outgrowth of our reluctance to increase or multiply punishments absent a clear and definite legislative directive.” Simpson, 435 U.S. at 15-16, 98 S.Ct. at 914.
If the Supreme Court could not find a “clear and definite legislative directive” to impose multiple punishments in the Simpson situation, I am not sure I see how it could be expected to find such a directive in the situation presented here. The logic of Simpson— and of Busic v. United States, 446 U.S. 398, 100 S.Ct. 1747, 64 L.Ed.2d 381 (1980), which followed Simpson — suggests to me that when Congress enacted a specific statute criminalizing failure to appear and prescribing a specific punishment therefore, Congress should be presumed to have intended the specific statute to take precedence over the general statute that prescribes an enhanced punishment for offenses committed while on re*790lease.1
In United States v. Lofton, 716 F.Supp. 483 (W.D.Wash.1989) — a case which, as the majority opinion notes, is factually similar to the present ease — the court relied on Busic and its progenitors in concluding that “[a]s the more specific statute, Section 3146 must be given precedence over Section 3147.” Lofton, 716 F.Supp. at 485. This reliance on Busic and similar cases was appropriate, in my view, and I see nothing in United States v. Lewis, 991 F.2d 322 (6th Cir.1993), that would compel a contrary conclusion.
U.S.S.G. § 2J1.7 mandates a three-level increase in the defendant’s offense level if an enhancement under 18 U.S.C. § 3147 applies, but not otherwise. Because I do not believe that § 3147 applies in this case, I think the district court erred in using an increased offense level to calculate Mr. Benson’s sentencing guideline range. I would therefore vacate the 24-month sentence imposed under the elevated range, and I would remand the ease for imposition of a sentence within the range (15-21 months) prescribed for a violation of § 3146 simpliciter.

. Subsequent to the decisions in Simpson and Busic, Congress amended § 924(c) to make the section applicable to federal crimes that already include enhanced penalties for the use of weapons. See U.S. v. Moore, 917 F.2d 215, 228-230 (6th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 963, 111 S.Ct. 1590, 113 L.Ed.2d 654 (1991). The amendment does not detract from the logic of Simpson and Busic as it relates to other statutes. The amendment merely shows that when it wishes to do so, Congress is capable of finding language to make a more general statute applicable in addition to a more specific one.