Court Opinion

ID: 9562346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:26:51.886355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:18.304449
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in this court’s opinion, but write separately regarding Part III, which deals with the reversal of Begay’s murder convictions. If I were writing on a clean slate in the Ninth Circuit, I would direct the district court in this case to enter a judgment of conviction on the lesser-included offense of second-degree murder. However, I am bound by United States v. Vasquez-Chan, 978 F.2d 546 (9th Cir.1992), which mandates a procedure that when, as in this case, the conviction for the greater offense is in issue and may be reversed, the government must request such possible relief in its opening brief.
This requirement is not the rule in similar cases in other circuits. In DeMarrias v. United States, 453 F.2d 211, 215 (8th Cir.1972), for example, the court determined that implicit in a jury’s finding of guilt on a second-degree murder charge was a finding of guilt on the lesser-included charge of manslaughter. Therefore, when the court set aside the second-degree murder conviction for insufficient evidence, it directed “a remand for resentencing on the voluntary manslaughter charge as an appropriate means to accomplish substantial justice.” DeMarrias, 453 F.2d at 215;1 see also United States v. Cobb, 558 F.2d 486, 489 (8th Cir.1977).
Additionally, the Supreme Court has stated concerning this issue:
Consistent with the views expressed by the District of Columbia Circuit, federal appellate courts appear to have uniformly concluded that they may direct the entry of judgment for a lesser included offense when a conviction for a greater offense is reversed on grounds that affect only the greater offense. This Court has noted the use of such a practice with approval.
Rutledge v. United States, 517 U.S. 292, 306, 116 S.Ct. 1241, 134 L.Ed.2d 419 (1996) (citations omitted). Both Rutledge and DeMarrias cite with approval the views of the D.C. Circuit in Austin v. United States, 382 F.2d 129, 140-43 (D.C.Cir.1967), overruled on other grounds, United States v. Foster, 783 F.2d 1082, 1085 (D.C.Cir.1986) (en banc).
As a visiting judge in the Ninth Circuit, I am bound by Vasquez-Chan, which obligates the government, in a case such as this one, to request on appeal a lesser-included offense before the court may enter such judgment. The Vasquez-Chan rule has been on the books for seventeen years, and other Ninth Circuit cases have availed themselves of this rule. See United States v. Jose, 425 F.3d 1237, 1247 (9th Cir.2005); United States v. Dinkane, 17 F.3d 1192, 1198 (9th Cir.1994). I do observe that this requirement may be a salutary one because it provides notice to the defendant that while a court might not sustain the greater offense, it might sus*554tain a lesser-included offense. However, such a requirement is not present in some other jurisdictions.
Accordingly, I concur in Part III of the opinion because I am bound by the Vasquez-Chan requirements relating to the entry of judgment for a lesser-included offense in appropriate cases. As the opinion of the court has observed, these requirements were not fully met by the government.

. DeMarrias, in which I was the author of the opinion, is the reason for this separate concurrence.