Court Opinion

ID: 9931684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-09 18:01:19.467953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:18.329838
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                   UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                         FEB 9 2024
                                                                     MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                              FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ADAN DIAZ MORENO,                                No.   19-72403

                Petitioner,                      Agency No. A047-253-666

  v.
                                                 MEMORANDUM*
MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney
General,

                Respondent.

                     On Petition for Review of an Order of the
                         Board of Immigration Appeals

                              Submitted January 8, 2024 **
                               San Francisco, California

Before: SILER,*** TASHIMA, and BRESS, Circuit Judges.

       Last year, we held that Arizona’s statute criminalizing the possession of drug

paraphernalia, A.R.S. § 13-3415, is divisible by drug type. Romero-Millan v.

       *     This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
       **    The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
       ***  The Honorable Eugene E. Siler, United States Circuit Judge for the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.
Garland, 46 F.4th 1032 (9th Cir. 2022). As a result, if a noncitizen is convicted of

violating the statute and his offense relates to a drug regulated under the Controlled

Substance Act (CSA), he is removable. 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i).

      Such is the case with Adan Diaz Moreno, who was convicted of violating

A.R.S. § 13-3415, admitted during his plea colloquy that his offense related to his

possession of cocaine, and was later subject to removal proceedings. Diaz Moreno

asks us to overturn Romero-Millan and find A.R.S. § 13-3415 indivisible. He also

asks us to conclude that, even if the Arizona statute is divisible, his plea colloquy

alone cannot establish his violation of the CSA. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C.

§ 1252 and consider de novo the question of whether Diaz Moreno’s conviction

renders him removable. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D); Romero-Millan, 46 F.4th at

1040. The parties are familiar with the facts, so we discuss them here only where

necessary. We deny Diaz Moreno’s petition.

      1. Our decision in Romero-Millan is binding, and a three-judge panel cannot

overrule binding circuit precedent unless it is clearly irreconcilable with intervening

Supreme Court authority. Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en

banc). Because Romero-Millan was not overturned by an en banc decision and Diaz

Moreno cites no intervening Supreme Court authority, we are bound by Romero-

Millan’s holding that A.R.S. § 13-3415 is divisible. Our analysis of the divisibility

of A.R.S. § 13-3451 in Romero-Millan was not dicta. It was the central issue of the

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case. It is therefore not appropriate to “re-visit” or “correct” the issue without en

banc review or intervening Supreme Court authority.

      It is true that the question of divisibility “remains a question of state law as to

which the Supreme Court of Arizona remains the ultimate authority. Should it later

decide the underlying question differently, such as by deciding that jury unanimity

as to drug type was not required for a conviction under § 13-3415, it is that court’s

decision that must be followed.” Romero-Millan, 46 F.4th at 1044 n.7. But the two

sources that Diaz Moreno cites—his own conviction record and a statement by the

Arizona Attorney General’s Office—are not decisions of the Arizona Supreme Court

and therefore do not affect our holding in Romero-Millan.

      Nor do new facts allow us to disregard binding law. Diaz Moreno cites

Lorenzo v. Whitaker, 752 F. App’x 482, 485 (9th Cir. 2019) and United States v.

Rodriguez-Gamboa, 972 F.3d 1148, 1155 (9th Cir. 2020) alongside the “concrete

facts” of his own conviction record and a statement by Arizona’s Attorney General.

In Lorenzo—an unpublished, nonbinding decision—we determined that a California

criminal statute prohibiting optical and geometric isomers of methamphetamine was

not a categorical match for the CSA, because the CSA only prohibited optical

isomers. 752 F. App’x at 485-86. Later, in Rodriguez-Gamboa, we held that

because geometric isomers of methamphetamine do not exist, the statutes were, in

fact, categorical matches. 972 F.3d at 1151-55. Diaz Moreno takes these two

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decisions to mean that we can “correct” legal determinations without calling for an

en banc hearing. But Diaz Moreno misses a crucial issue here: because Lorenzo

was unpublished, its holding was not binding precedent, see Ninth Cir. Rule 36-3(a)

(“Unpublished dispositions . . . are not precedent . . .”), and the Rodriguez-Gamboa

panel had nothing to “correct.”

       Because this panel is bound to our decision in Romero-Millan that A.R.S. §

13-3415 is divisible, Diaz Moreno’s argument fails.

       2. Diaz Moreno was convicted of an offense involving cocaine. Yet he argues

that because his record does not identify a specific drug as an element of his offense,

the DHS cannot sustain its deportability charge. The government points out that

Diaz Moreno admitted to possessing cocaine in his plea colloquy, but Diaz Moreno

claims this cannot by itself show that his offense involved a drug regulated by the

CSA.

       Because A.R.S. § 13-3415 is divisible, we apply a modified categorical

approach.    To determine “what crime, with what elements, a defendant was

convicted of,” we may look to the “statutory definition, charging document, written

plea agreement, transcript of plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding by the

trial judge to which the defendant assented.” Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13,

16 (2005); Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. 500, 505–06 (2016). The question,

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then, is whether Diaz Moreno’s colloquy alone is sufficient to show that he pleaded

guilty to a crime involving cocaine.

      It is. Admissions made during a plea colloquy are enough to satisfy the

modified categorical approach. United States v. Martinez-Lopez, 864 F.3d 1034,

1043 (9th Cir. 2017) (applying the modified categorical approach and determining

that a defendant’s affirmative response to whether he sold cocaine base is sufficient

to show his conviction was for selling cocaine).           Diaz Moreno answered

affirmatively when the court asked him whether he was stopped while driving with

a baggie of cocaine, whether he knew the baggie was there, and whether he knew

that it contained cocaine. Therefore, his plea colloquy makes clear that his offense

involved cocaine.

      United States v. Marcia-Acosta, 780 F.3d 1244, 1250 (9th Cir. 2015), is

distinguishable. There, we held that a plea colloquy cannot narrow a state conviction

when it provides facts extraneous to the conviction. Id. at 1255. In Diaz Moreno’s

case, the drug type was not extraneous to the conviction, but rather an element of the

offense. See Romero-Millan, 46 F.4th at 1047 (“[W]e conclude that drug type is an

element of the offense under § 13-3415.”). That cocaine was not mentioned in his

charging documents, plea agreement, or judgment is inconsequential.

      United States v. Sahagun-Gallegos, 782 F.3d 1094, 1100 (9th Cir. 2015), is

likewise distinguishable. There, we held that a defendant’s attorney could not

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provide the factual basis of conviction when the record did not show that the

defendant assented to the factual basis provided by his attorney. Id. Diaz Moreno,

on the other hand, personally affirmed that 1) when he was arrested, his vehicle had

a baggie of cocaine in it, 2) he knew he had the baggie with him, and 3) he knew the

baggie contained cocaine.1 The plea colloquy is clear: Diaz Moreno admitted that

his conviction involved cocaine, an element of the offense. This admission was not

“based only on the prosecutor’s recitation of underlying conduct” as Diaz Moreno

claims, but was based on his own affirmation that his arrest involved his possession

of cocaine.

      Because A.R.S. § 13-3415 is divisible by drug type, Diaz Moreno’s plea

colloquy established the drug type for which he was convicted, and that drug type is

a controlled substance under the CSA, the agency properly determined that Diaz

Moreno was convicted of a § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i) controlled substance offense.

      PETITION DENIED.

1 Diaz Moreno argues that his “silence does not turn facts into elements[.]”
                                                                      But Diaz
Moreno was not silent—he answered the judge’s questions with three verbal “yes”
answers. Nor were the questions all “compound questions identifying seven
different facts[.]”

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