Court Opinion

ID: 9499001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:35:04.666062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:13.406700
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge, concurring.
While I agree with much in the majority opinion, and concur in the result, I cannot agree with my colleagues that “it was not unreasonable for [government] counsel to so interpret” the district court’s statement as a finding of fact. Maj. op. at 7374. In fact, no reasonable lawyer would have tried to pass off the district court’s remark as a finding; government counsel was trying to pull a fast one.
To begin with, the district judge did not find — and could not have found — the serial number was obliterated because the matter was not submitted to him for decision. While the defendant objected to the PSR’s claim that one of the guns in Clark’s possession had an obliterated serial number, the on-the-record colloquy on this matter centered entirely on whether Clark had admitted that fact when he pleaded guilty. After hearing from defense counsel, the prosecutor and the probation officer, the district court overruled the objection, apparently on the ground that defendant’s admission was sufficient — a proposition the government does not defend on appeal. If the district court had also made an independent finding that the serial number was obliterated, this is the point in the proceedings where one would expect to see it. But no evidence was presented to support such a finding and no one asked the judge to make it. So, of course, he did not.
Which brings up the second reason why the government’s claim is patently unreasonable: The statement on which the government relies was made by the district judge much later in the proceedings when he explained the basis of his sentence, after the defendant had exercised his right to allocution. Allocution is the penultimate scene in the sentencing drama; it is the defendant’s traditional right to plead to the court for leniency after the legal and factual issues affecting sentencing have been resolved. United States v. Gunning, 401 F.3d 1145, 1148-49 (9th Cir.2005) (allo-cution must be allowed on remand after new findings of fact). After allocution, the only thing left for the court to do is exercise its sentencing discretion. See Fed. R.Crim. Pro. 32(i)(4)(A)(ii).
It is unthinkable that a district court would make a finding of fact at that point in the proceedings, as every criminal law*1087yer well understands. Nor is there any reason to suspect that the careful and experienced district judge upset the expected order here. After all, he had made his ruling based on what he believed was defendant’s admission earlier in the proceedings. What possible reason would he have had for making a factual finding, sua sponte, without a factual record, in the midst of pronouncing sentence? To articulate the proposition is to ridicule it. ■
Finally, one need only read what the district court actually said — I mean the full sentence rather than just selected parts of it — to discard the possibility of any reasonable reliance on it as a finding. The court didn’t use “I find ...” or another suitable synonym. Rather, the judge— in articulating the reasons for his sentence — notes that “[y]ou[Clark] weren’t charged with any-conduct, other than that of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and one of those firearms has an obliterated serial number .... ” Of course, if one quotes only the underscored portion of the sentence, and leaves out the introductory language, one might be able to squeeze out a “finding” by the district court that the serial number was obliterated. But no reasonable lawyer would play doctor with quotes in this fashion.
Yet, astonishingly, this is precisely what the government did. In its brief, the government argued that Clark wasn’t entitled to a jury finding that the serial number was obliterated because the district court could rely on its own finding to this effect: “Accordingly, the [jury] claim is moot because under Booker, the district court could impose any reasonable sentence up to 10 years based on its own finding of sentencing factors under a preponderance standard.” This “mootness” argument is necessarily and expressly predicated on the existence of such a finding by the district judge. Unprofessionally, the government’s brief gives no citation to the record where the district court made such a finding.
“Where is the finding?” I — and no doubt my colleagues — wondered while leafing aimlessly through page after page of the record in pursuit of support. Not finding anything, the issue naturally became the subject of questioning at oral argument:
Q. Was there a finding by the district court that the serial number was obliterated?
A. Yes there was.
Q. Tell me where.
A. Page 229 of the excerpts of record.
Q. What line?
A. Oh, excuse me, page 228 of the excerpts of record.
Q. What line?
A. And that’s lines 22 and 23. So there’s actually a find—
Q. Could you read me the language on which you’re relying?
A. Yes. Line 22. “One of those firearms has an obliterated serial number.” Begins on line 22 and ends on line 23.
As the perspicacious reader will already have recognized, the passage on which government counsel relies is the partial sentence underscored above. Counsel twice attempted to focus the court’s attention on lines 22 and 23 of the transcript; yet the court’s full sentence — -including the crucial introductory phrase “[y]ou weren’t charged with any conduct, other than .... ” — spans lines 21 to 25. When a member of the panel pointed out that the sentence merely articulated what Clark was charged with, counsel insisted:
A. I believe it’s a finding....
And again:
Q. What the court is saying, “you weren’t charged with anything but this.” So what he’s saying is “you were *1088charged with this.” I can’t see how you can take a piece of a judge’s sentence that lists the charges and characterize it as a finding.
A. I have to differ with that, your Hon- or. I think it stands alone....
I don’t believe that quoting portions of a sentence while leaving out key qualifiers is reasonable conduct for an attorney of this court. I don’t believe that making assertions in a brief regarding disputed factual points, without providing a citation to the record, amounts to reasonable attorney conduct. I don’t believe that ignoring the context of statements in the record — the timing, circumstances and purpose— amounts to reasonable conduct. In short, I don’t believe that it is appropriate or reasonable for a lawyer to pluck a few words from the middle of a sentence and pretend that they say something very different from what they mean in context. This is true of every lawyer who appears before us, but it goes doubly for lawyers who represent the government in criminal cases. See United States v. Kojayan, 8 F.3d 1315, 1323 (9th Cir.1993) (“Prosecutors are subject to constraints and responsibilities that don’t apply to other lawyers. While lawyers representing private parties may — indeed, must — do everything ethically permissible to advance their clients’ interests, lawyers representing the government in criminal cases serve truth and justice first.” (internal citation omitted)).
I don’t understand why my colleagues believe that the government’s conduct here was reasonable. I cannot join in the encomium and thereby encourage government lawyers appearing before us to try to get away with more of the same. I therefore respectfully — but decisively — distance myself from that portion of the majority’s opinion suggesting that government counsel was reasonable in behaving as he did.