Court Opinion

ID: 9363863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-17 21:00:28.559243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:34.671157
License: Public Domain

FOR PUBLICATION

  UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
       FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

FREDDIE CRESPIN,                         No. 18-15073

         Petitioner-Appellee,           D.C. No. 2:15-cv-
                                           00992-SPL
 v.

CHARLES L. RYAN; ATTORNEY                   ORDER
GENERAL FOR THE STATE OF
ARIZONA,

         Respondents-Appellants.

                Filed January 3, 2023

Before: Michael Daly Hawkins, Milan D. Smith, Jr., and
         Andrew D. Hurwitz, Circuit Judges.

                        Order;
              Dissent by Judge VanDyke
2                         CRESPIN V. RYAN

                          SUMMARY *

                         Habeas Corpus

   The panel denied a petition for panel rehearing and
denied on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc.
     Judge VanDyke, joined by Judges Callahan, Ikuta,
Bennett, R. Nelson, and Bumatay, dissented from the denial
rehearing en banc. Judge VanDyke wrote that the term
“clearly established Federal law” under the Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act only refers to the holdings,
as opposed to the dicta, of the Supreme Court’s decisions;
and that the Supreme Court has emphasized that if this court
must extend a rationale before it can apply to the facts at
hand, then by definition the rationale was not “clearly
established.” Judge VanDyke wrote that this court has once
again transgressed this command, this time by extending the
rationale of Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), which
held that the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing
scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of
parole for juvenile offenders, to a case that involved a state
with a discretionary sentencing scheme and a habeas
petitioner who had accepted in his plea agreement a sentence
of life-without-parole (LWOP). Judge VanDyke wrote that,
even so, the panel improperly extended Miller as having
“clearly established” that a non-mandatory LWOP sentence
for juveniles—be it voluntary or discretionary—violates the
Eighth Amendment; and that, particularly given the
Supreme Court’s repeated admonitions directed at this court

*
 This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
                       CRESPIN V. RYAN                     3

to stop misapplying AEDPA, the panel’s improper extension
of Miller merited en banc correction. He wrote that the court
should have taken the case en banc to vacate the panel
decision and dismiss the appeal as moot on account of
Crespin’s death.

                         ORDER

    The panel has voted to deny the petition for panel
rehearing. The full court was advised of the petition for
rehearing en banc. A judge requested a vote on whether to
rehear the matter en banc. A majority of the non-recused
active judges did not vote to rehear the case en banc. Fed.
R. App. P. 35.
   The petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc,
Dkt. 65, is DENIED.

VANDYKE, Circuit Judge, with whom Judges
CALLAHAN, IKUTA, BENNETT, R. NELSON, and
BUMATAY join, dissenting from denial of rehearing en
banc:

    Because the Supreme Court has frequently needed to
remind us, our court is well acquainted with the demanding
standard for granting federal habeas relief from state court
convictions. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), a federal court may grant
such relief for claimed constitutional violations only if the
underlying state court adjudication “resulted in a decision
that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application
4                      CRESPIN V. RYAN

of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the
Supreme Court of the United States.”              28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1). The term “clearly established Federal law”
only “refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of th[e]
Court’s decisions.” Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70, 74
(2006) (citation omitted). The Supreme Court has also
emphasized that if our court “‘must extend a rationale before
it can apply to the facts at hand,’ then by definition the
rationale was not ‘clearly established.’” White v. Woodall,
572 U.S. 415, 426 (2014) (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado,
541 U.S. 652, 666 (2004)).
    Our court has once again transgressed this command,
this time by extending the rationale of Miller v. Alabama,
567 U.S. 460 (2012). Miller “h[e]ld that the Eighth
Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life
in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile
offenders.” Id. at 479 (emphases added). That was not what
this case presented to our court. Instead, in a state with a
discretionary sentencing scheme, we were confronted with
a habeas petitioner who had accepted in his plea agreement
a sentence of life-without-parole (LWOP). Even so, the
panel improperly extended Miller as having “clearly
established” that a non-mandatory LWOP sentence for
juveniles—be it voluntary or discretionary—violates the
Eighth Amendment. Particularly given the Supreme Court’s
repeated admonitions directed at our court to stop
misapplying AEDPA, the panel’s improper extension of
Miller merited en banc correction. See, e.g., Lopez v. Smith,
574 U.S. 1, 6 (2014) (per curiam) (“We have before
cautioned the lower courts—and the Ninth Circuit in
particular—against ‘framing our precedents at such a high
level of generality.’” (emphasis added) (quoting Nevada v.
Jackson, 569 U.S. 505, 512 (2013) (per curiam))); Marshall
                             CRESPIN V. RYAN                               5

v. Rodgers, 569 U.S. 58, 64 (2013) (per curiam) (“The
[Ninth Circuit] Court of Appeals’ … conclusion rested in
part on the mistaken belief that circuit precedent may be used
to refine or sharpen a general principle of Supreme Court
jurisprudence into a specific legal rule that this Court has not
announced.”). I respectfully dissent from our failure to do
so. 1
I. BACKGROUND
    A. Factual History
    Sixteen-year-old Freddie Crespin murdered Betty
Janecke, the mother of his friend Barry Bjorgo, on August
31, 1995. Crespin struck Janecke in the head with a weight
while her son strangled her with a belt and another friend
held down her feet on her bed. Another co-conspirator later
recalled that Betty had yelled, “I can help you guys, I can
help you,” and “Listen Barry, I am your mother, I can help
you.” The assailants discovered they had initially botched
the murder because, a few minutes after they had emerged
from Betty’s room covered in blood, they heard noises
coming from her room. Crespin finished the job by
reentering with a knife and stabbing Betty repeatedly in the
face through a pillow. Crespin took Betty’s car and credit
cards and drove to California, where he was apprehended
and charged back in Arizona with multiple felonies
including first degree murder.
    At the time of Crespin’s 1998 plea, the three sentences
statutorily available for his crime were listed in his
agreement: (i) “Death by Lethal Injection”; (ii) “Life

1
 The panel compounded its error when, upon learning of Crespin’s death
shortly after issuing its opinion, the panel declined to vacate its erroneous
opinion as moot.
6                      CRESPIN V. RYAN

imprisonment without the possibility of parole (natural life)”
(LWOP); or (iii) “Life imprisonment with no parole until at
least 25 years have been served.”
    To avoid the possibility of the death penalty, Crespin
pleaded guilty to first degree murder in exchange for an
LWOP sentence. The pre-sentence report, which listed
Crespin’s date of birth, stated that “[t]he age of the
defendant” was a mitigating factor, but noted as an
aggravating factor that the offense had been committed in an
“especially heinous and cruel manner.”           The report
recommended LWOP as appropriate under the
circumstances because: the murder was premeditated; it was
“painfully evident that he ha[d] no remorse”; two
psychological evaluators agreed he showed signs of “serious
psychopathology and very little if any remorse”; and the
psychologists agreed that Crespin was likely to commit more
crimes of the same nature.
    B. Legal and Procedural History
    Crespin’s sentencing judge acknowledged he had
discretion to reject the plea agreement if he found the
stipulated sentence inappropriate. Ariz. R. Crim. P. 17.4(d).
He explicitly found the sentence appropriate. The judge
asked Crespin whether he had been “forced to enter into this
plea agreement improperly by … [his] attorneys or anybody
else.” Having sought and obtained repeated confirmations
that Crespin’s plea was voluntary, the judge explained that
“there is no sentence to be given other than what’s called for
in the plea agreement.” In approving the plea deal and
imposing the agreed-to sentence, the judge allowed family
to speak, assured Crespin’s attorney “I have reviewed the
presentence report,” and explained to Crespin and his mother
that of the three available sentences, it was the judge’s
                      CRESPIN V. RYAN                     7

“independent view of the underlying facts of this offense,”
as well as the “mitigating and aggravating factors,” that
LWOP was justified.
    More than a decade later, the Supreme Court decided
Miller. Miller concerned juveniles in two jurisdictions who,
upon being convicted of murder, were given LWOP
sentences mandated by their states’ laws. 567 U.S. at 465–
69. The Court was concerned that the “mandatory penalty
schemes at issue here prevent the sentencer from taking
account of” a defendant’s “mitigating qualities of youth,”
and held that “mandatory [LWOP] sentences for juveniles
violate[d] the Eighth Amendment.” Id. at 470, 474–76
(internal quotations and citations omitted).
    Crespin then filed a state petition for post-conviction
relief arguing that, under Miller, his LWOP sentence
violated the Eighth Amendment even though “Arizona does
not have a mandatory statutory sentencing scheme.” The
reviewing court denied relief because Arizona’s sentencing
scheme was not mandatory. Crespin appealed to the Arizona
Court of Appeals which rejected his arguments for several
reasons: not only was LWOP not mandatory under Arizona
law, but the sentencing judge had considered aggravating
and mitigating factors before imposing the “second highest
of the three penalties allowed and that [were] provided in
[Crespin’s] plea agreement.” Crespin’s petition for review
was subsequently denied by the Supreme Court of Arizona.
    Crespin then filed a federal habeas petition. During the
pendency of that petition, the Supreme Court decided
Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016). As with
Miller, Montgomery concerned a minor who, upon being
convicted of murder, was mandatorily given an LWOP
sentence by automatic force of state law, precluding any
8                      CRESPIN V. RYAN

sentencer from considering mitigating factors such as the
defendant’s youth. Montgomery, 577 U.S. at 194–95.
Although Montgomery had been sentenced before Miller
issued, the Court held that Miller announced a substantive
rule requiring “a sentencer to consider a juvenile offender’s
youth and attendant characteristics,” and that the rule applied
retroactively. Id. at 195, 209–10, 212. In light of
Montgomery, the federal district court granted habeas relief
to Crespin in November 2017, holding that the Arizona court
of appeals had unreasonably applied Miller.
     A few years later, the Supreme Court decided Jones v.
Mississippi, 141 S. Ct. 1307 (2021). Like its predecessor
cases, Jones concerned a minor who, upon being convicted
of murder, received a mandatory LWOP sentence. Id. at
1311–12. But when Jones was resentenced after Miller, the
sentencing court declined to disturb the LWOP sentence
after acknowledging that Miller required it to consider
Jones’s youth and holding that despite his youth, LWOP was
still appropriate for Jones. Id. at 1311–13. The dispute in
Jones was whether a sentencer’s discretion to impose a
lesser sentence satisfies Miller, or whether a sentencer must
actively find a juvenile “permanently incorrigible” before
imposing an LWOP sentence. Id. The Supreme Court
clarified that no fact-finding requirement exists under Miller
and Montgomery, that Miller only “required a discretionary
sentencing procedure,” and that the requirement that a
sentencer consider a defendant’s youth is implicitly satisfied
when it has the discretion to do so. Jones, 141 S. Ct. at
1313–14, 1318–19.
    The common denominator between Miller, Montgomery,
and Jones is that they all concerned defendants whose
mandatorily imposed LWOP sentences automatically
flowed out of state law sentencing requirements. The
                       CRESPIN V. RYAN                      9

Supreme Court has clearly held that such regimes
unconstitutionally deprive sentencers of the discretion to
consider a defendant’s age.
    In August 2022, our court affirmed the district court in
this case, concluding that Crespin’s sentencer’s
discretionary adherence to a voluntary plea agreement in a
state with multiple sentencing options violated Miller.
Crespin v. Ryan, 46 F.4th 803, 810–11 (9th Cir. 2022). The
panel relied heavily on the sentencer’s statements that,
notwithstanding the favorable testimony by Crespin’s
mother and letters submitted on his behalf, “there is no
sentence to be given other than what’s called for in the plea
agreement,” and again that “there is no option on the nature
of the sentence.” Id. at 806. Our court inferred from those
statements that Crespin’s sentencer was prevented from
considering Crespin’s youth as a mitigating factor. Our
court tried to distinguish its decision from Jones—which it
admits “narrowed the potential sweep,” id. at 808, of the
holdings in Miller and Montgomery—by construing Jones to
support the proposition that all three cases mandated that
sentencers must enjoy broad discretion to reduce LWOP
sentences whenever a defendant’s youth is a factor. See id.
at 810–11.
    Although the sentencer in this case was allowed by state
law to reject the plea agreement if he found it inappropriate,
our court was nonetheless dissatisfied with the remaining
limitations on the sentencer: “The trial judge simply
considered whether the stipulated LWOP sentence could be
‘justified.’ Miller requires more. Under Miller, a sentencer
must also have the discretion to impose a lesser sentence
than LWOP.” Id. at 810–11. The panel further reasoned that
“[a]lthough the judge had the discretion to determine
whether this was a plea agreement that he could accept, he
10                     CRESPIN V. RYAN

did not have the discretion to choose which sentence he felt
was best for Crespin.” Id. at 811. Thus, purporting to
directly apply Miller’s holding, the panel found that
“[b]ecause the judge quite correctly recognized that his only
sentencing option was LWOP, Crespin’s sentencing violated
the Eighth Amendment.” Id.
    The State of Arizona filed a petition for review en banc.
One month later, the State of Arizona notified the court that
Crespin had died. The panel “remand[ed] to the district
court with instructions to dismiss the petition for writ of
habeas corpus as moot,” but nevertheless “decline[d] to
vacate the filed opinion.” That same day, the State of
Arizona moved for vacatur, but the motion was denied by
text order.
II. ANALYSIS
    AEDPA required our court to deny habeas relief,
because the underlying state court proceedings did not
“result[] in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an
unreasonable application of,” Miller’s holding. 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1); Musladin, 549 U.S. at 74. Instead, in granting
habeas relief our court extended Miller’s rationale to apply
to a sentence imposed against the backdrop of a voluntary
sentencing scheme. But the Supreme Court’s holding in
Miller is clear, and clearly not about sentences arising out of
plea agreements: “the Eighth Amendment forbids a
sentencing scheme that mandates [LWOP] for juvenile
offenders.” 567 U.S. at 479 (emphases added). Miller’s
forty-two uses of the word “mandatory” in the majority
opinion painstakingly underscore the limited nature of its
                           CRESPIN V. RYAN                            11

holding. 2 And Montgomery and Jones likewise addressed
only compulsory sentencing regimes, not plea agreements.
    The contrasts between this case and the trifecta of Miller,
Montgomery, and Jones are stark. The latter cases all
involved defendants who, following their murder
convictions, automatically received LWOP as a minimum
sentence under legal regimes that prevented sentencers from
rejecting those sentences. Those cases expressed no concern
with plea agreements—which are by nature voluntary—
much less plea agreements entered into against the backdrop
of sentencing schemes that allow judges and juries to select
from several sentences.

2
  See, e.g., Miller, 567 U.S. at 465 (“We … hold that mandatory [LWOP]
for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the
Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on ‘cruel and unusual punishments.’”),
470 (“[M]andatory [LWOP] sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth
Amendment.”), 474 (explaining that “the mandatory penalty schemes at
issue here prevent the sentencer from taking account of” youth’s
mitigating qualities), 476 (“[M]andatory penalties, by their nature,
preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender’s age and the
wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it.”), 477
(“Mandatory [LWOP] for a juvenile precludes consideration of his
chronological age and its hallmark features—among them, immaturity,
impetuosity, and failure to appreciate the risks and consequences.”), 478
(“[M]andatory punishment disregards the possibility of rehabilitation
even when the circumstances most suggest it.”), 479 (“We therefore hold
that the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates
[LWOP] for juvenile offenders.”), 483 n.10 (“Here, we consider the
constitutionality of mandatory sentencing schemes—which by definition
remove a judge’s or jury’s discretion—so no comparable gap between
legislation and practice can exist.”), 487 (“[M]andatory [LWOP] for
juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment.”), 489 (“[T]he mandatory-
sentencing schemes before us violate th[e] principle of proportionality,
and so the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.”).
12                      CRESPIN V. RYAN

    Nevertheless, our court attempted to shoehorn its
decision into the holdings of Miller, Montgomery, and Jones
by suggesting that Crespin’s sentencer lacked a meaningful
choice when he chose to accept the stipulated sentence,
simply because his discretion to accept or reject the sentence,
while not removed by law, was nonetheless constrained by
the parties’ agreement. Crespin, 46 F.4th at 810–11. By
latching onto that one detail to the exclusion of all others, the
panel ignored and extended the holding of Miller.
     In so doing, our court committed several errors. First,
Arizona’s discretionary sentencing law is different from the
mandatory regimes addressed by Miller, Montgomery, and
Jones. The panel even acknowledged that “Arizona law
provided three possible sentences for those convicted of
first-degree murder,” which included a lesser sentence of life
with the possibility of release. See id. at 805–06 & n.1.
    Second, the dissimilarities widen because unlike the
defendants in Miller, Montgomery, and Jones, Crespin
entered into a plea agreement that a judge had the discretion
to reject. See Ariz. R. Crim. P. 17.4(d). Indeed, the
sentencer accepted the agreed-to sentence as justified,
expressly based on his “independent view of the underlying
facts of [Crespin’s] offense” and the “mitigating and
aggravating factors.” That is not the language of a sentencer
foiled by a mandatory sentencing scheme; it is the language
of a responsible judge weighing whether to accept a plea
agreement on the understanding that multiple sentences were
available. Id.
   Third, even ignoring that those differences alone were
more than enough to constitute an impermissible extension
of Miller in violation of AEDPA, the differences are even
more stark because Crespin’s sentencing judge did, in fact,
                       CRESPIN V. RYAN                     13

take all the evidence into consideration, including Crespin’s
youth, before accepting the plea deal as justified. By
accepting the plea deal, the judge simply endorsed a sentence
that both parties had already agreed to. And if the sentencer
had rejected the plea agreement because he disagreed with
the sentence, the case would have gone to trial where a range
of possible sentences awaited. See Crespin, 46 F.4th at 811.
    Ultimately, a state’s discretionary sentencing process
does not somehow become a mandatory regime covered by
Miller the moment the defendant is permitted to voluntarily
pick a sentence that everyone (including the judge) agrees is
appropriate. Miller nowhere “clearly established” that
principle. See Musladin, 549 U.S. at 74. Our court’s
conclusion that “Miller requires more”—that a sentencing
judge must have unlimited discretion to refashion a plea
agreement “to choose which sentence he felt was best,”
Crespin, 46 F.4th at 811—is not even contemplated, much
less required, by Miller or any of the other cases that our
court purported to apply here.
    Miller, Montgomery, and Jones are completely silent as
to sentences imposed as part of a plea agreement. Only a
transparent extension of those cases could support our
court’s conclusion in this case.
III. CONCLUSION
    Our court misapplied the facts of Crespin’s record to a
misinterpretation of Miller and its progeny that forcibly
extends Supreme Court precedent, committing a clear
violation of AEDPA. Miller, 567 U.S. at 479, 483 n.10, 489;
Montgomery, 577 U.S. at 195; Jones, 141 S. Ct. at 1312. If
our court’s decision was so important that it merits continued
publication notwithstanding Crespin’s death, then surely it
was important enough to get right. Instead, this decision
14                     CRESPIN V. RYAN

constitutes the latest in a regrettably long line of cases
flaunting the Supreme Court’s repeated admonitions,
creating impermissible extensions of the Court’s precedents.
See, e.g., Lopez, 574 U.S. at 6; Marshall, 569 U.S. at 64. We
should have taken this case en banc to vacate the panel
decision and dismiss the appeal as moot on account of
Crespin’s death.