Court Opinion

ID: 9499107
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:38:07.356725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:17.593903
License: Public Domain

McKEAGUE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion in full, but write separately to address two points related to the discussion of whether Caruthers’s waiver of appellate rights with regard to his sentencing argument was enforceable. First, the majority opinion states that one court, in dicta, has held that a defendant cannot waive the right to appeal a sentence above the statutory maximum because a district court is without jurisdiction to impose such a sentence. This decision misconceives the nature of jurisdiction. A district court either has jurisdiction to sentence a defendant or does not have such jurisdiction.1 A sentence imposed above the statutory maximum would certainly be legal error, but saying that a judge is wrong is not the equivalent of saying that a judge has acted beyond his or her jurisdiction. Fortunately, the majority *477opinion wisely refrains from relying on the jurisdictional rationale in support of its assumption in this case that Caruthers’s appellate waiver is unenforceable.
Second, while I agree with the approach of avoiding resolution of the waiver issue, both because it was not adequately addressed by the parties and because it is unnecessary to resolve it in this case, I write separately to briefly note my view on the issue. I do not believe that Caruthers’s appeal of his sentence should be characterized as a challenge on the grounds that it exceeds the statutory maximum. Instead, I adhere to the view that being a felon in possession of a firearm and being an armed career criminal in possession of a firearm are not two separate offenses, but simply recidivism-contingent variants of the same offense, and therefore the statutory maximum of this offense is life.2

. In this case, the district court had jurisdiction to sentence Caruthers pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231 which provides that "[t]he district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States.”

. I further note that where ACCA status is an issue, district courts are required to advise the defendant that the statutory maximum is life. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(b)(1)(H) (requiring the trial court to ascertain that a defendant understands “any maximum possible penalty” before accepting a guilty plea (emphasis added)).