Court Opinion

ID: 9407250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-06 15:00:44.248862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:36.546255
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-10502    Document: 32-1      Date Filed: 07/06/2023   Page: 1 of 13

                                                              [PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 22-10502
                           ____________________

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                       Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
        versus
        DEUNATE TAREZ JEWS,

                                                    Defendant-Appellant.

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Alabama
                  D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cr-00211-CLM-SGC-1
                           ____________________
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        22-10502                   Opinion of the Court                                2

        Before WILSON, NEWSOM, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges.
        NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:
               It’s an axiom of American sentencing law and policy: You
        do more crimes, you do more time. The United States Sentencing
        Guidelines observe that norm. But they make certain allowances
        for juvenile convictions. Sometimes, those get excused—erased
        from the rap sheet, as it were. Accordingly, distinguishing adult
        from juvenile convictions can be important. So it is here.
               Deunate Jews, who pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a
        firearm in violation of federal law, was sentenced to 60 months in
        prison based on a Guidelines range of 70–87 months. In calculating
        Jews’s range, though, the district court concluded that an earlier
        Alabama youthful-offender adjudication constituted an “adult”
        conviction within the meaning of the applicable Guidelines
        provisions. Jews contends that the court erred in doing so.
              Jews is right. His Alabama YO adjudication wasn’t an adult
        conviction. Because the district court miscalculated Jews’s
        Guidelines range, we vacate his sentence and remand for
        resentencing. 1
                                               I
              After Jews pleaded guilty in 2021 to being a felon in
        possession of a firearm in violation of federal law, see 18 U.S.C.

        1Because Jews is scheduled to complete his sentence in August 2023, the
        parties and the district court are directed to proceed to next steps immediately.
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        22-10502                   Opinion of the Court                                3

        § 922(g)(1), the district court sentenced him to 60 months in prison.
        In arriving at that number, the court began (as it should have) by
        consulting the Sentencing Guidelines. See Rosales-Mireles v. United
        States, 138 S. Ct. 1897, 1904 (2018) (“District courts must begin their
        analysis with the Guidelines.”). To derive a Guidelines range, the
        court had to compute Jews’s “offense level” and then sort him into
        a “criminal history category.” See U.S.S.G. ch. 5.
               The district court initially set Jews’s base offense level at
        24—applicable to defendants with “at least two [prior] felony
        convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance
        offense.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2). According to the Guideline’s
        commentary, a qualifying “felony conviction[]” must (for someone
        in Jews’s situation) be an “adult federal or state conviction for an
        offense punishable” by at least a year in prison. Id. § 2K2.1 cmt. 1. 2
        Jews’s two predicate “felony convictions,” the court concluded,
        were (1) a 2014 Alabama adult conviction for assault and (2) a 2004
        Alabama youthful-offender adjudication for robbery that earned
        him a three-year sentence. The court thereafter reduced Jews’s
        base level from 24 to 21 as a reward for his acceptance of
        responsibility.
               The district court then placed Jews in criminal-history
        Category V—applicable to defendants with 10, 11, or 12 criminal-
        history points. Of Jews’s 11 points, 3 were attributable to his

        2 No party contests the commentary’s validity here, or the propriety of its
        interpretation of § 2K2.1’s text. Compare United States v. Dupree, 57 F.4th 1269,
        1275–78 (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc).
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        22-10502               Opinion of the Court                        4

        Alabama YO adjudication. According to the Guidelines, those
        points were appropriate if, but only if, the YO adjudication was one
        in which Jews “was convicted as an adult and received a sentence
        of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month.” U.S.S.G.
        4A1.2(d)(1).
              When combined, Jews’s adjusted offense level of 21 and his
        Category V criminal history yielded a Guidelines range of 70–87
        months’ imprisonment. The district court imposed a below-
        Guidelines sentence of 60 months.
                Jews appealed. Before us, he contends that at both stages—
        setting his offense level and tallying his criminal-history score—the
        district court erroneously treated his YO adjudication as an “adult”
        conviction. Because it wasn’t, he says, his base offense level should
        have been 20, rather than 24, and his criminal-history score should
        have been 8, rather than 11. Correcting for those errors, Jews
        continues, his applicable Guidelines range should have been 37–46
        months. He thus asks us to vacate his sentence and remand for
        resentencing.
                                         II
               Jews is correct: His YO adjudication wasn’t “adult” for
        purposes of either the base-level designation or the criminal-history
        calculation. To explain why, we’ll begin with the text of the
        applicable Guidelines and their explanatory commentary. As our
        precedent requires, we’ll then apply a multifactor test to determine
        the “adultness” (our word, if it’s a word) of Jews’s YO adjudication
        under both Guidelines.
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        22-10502                Opinion of the Court                          5

                                           A
                 First, the base-level Guideline, U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1. All here
        agree that Jews’s base level is either 20, if he had only one “felony
        conviction,” or 24, if he had at least two. Compare U.S.S.G.
        § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A) (one), with id. § 2K2.1(a)(2) (at least two). The
        dispute hinges on whether Jews’s Alabama YO adjudication was a
        “felony conviction[].” Id. § 2K2.1(a)(2). If it was, then his base level
        is 24; if it wasn’t, then it’s 20.
               As already explained, the commentary explains that to
        qualify as a “felony conviction” under § 2K2.1, an adjudication
        must be an “adult federal or state conviction” punishable by at least
        a year in prison. Id. cmt. 1 (emphasis added). So, indulging the
        parties’ shared assumption that the commentary informs § 2K2.1’s
        proper application here, the question is whether Jews’s YO
        adjudication was an “adult . . . conviction.” If Jews had been at least
        18 when he committed the YO offense, the answer would be easy:
        As § 2K2.1’s commentary explains, any “conviction for an offense
        committed at age eighteen years or older is an adult conviction,”
        id., and we’ve already held that an Alabama YO adjudication
        involving an individual north of 18 is a “conviction” under that
        provision, see United States v. Elliot, 732 F.3d 1307, 1313 (11th Cir.
        2013). But Jews was only 16 when he committed the offense
        underlying his YO adjudication. And the commentary’s very next
        sentence clarifies that the rules applicable to under-18 offenses are
        different, in that their adultness depends on state law: “A
        conviction for an offense committed prior to age eighteen years is
        an adult conviction if it is classified as an adult conviction under the
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        22-10502                   Opinion of the Court                                6

        laws of the jurisdiction in which the defendant was convicted.”
        U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 cmt. 1.
               Next, the criminal-history guideline, U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(d)(1).
        Like § 2K2.1, it forgives past convictions that aren’t “adult.” 3 But
        its wording is (just) slightly different: It asks not whether an
        underlying conviction was an “adult conviction,” but whether the
        defendant was “convicted as an adult.” Id. And its commentary
        focuses less on how state law “classifie[s]” the conviction than on
        what kind of sentence the defendant received: “[F]or offenses
        committed prior to age eighteen, only those that resulted in adult
        sentences of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month . . .
        are counted.” Id. cmt. 7.
                                               B
              Despite their slight textual differences, our precedent directs
        us to apply the same test to determine adultness under both
        §§ 2K2.1 and 4A1.2. See United States v. Wilks, 464 F.3d 1240, 1242
        (11th Cir. 2006) (interpreting Guideline materially identical to
        § 2K2.1 4); United States v. Pinion, 4 F.3d 941, 944 (11th Cir. 1993)

        3 Under § 4A1.2(d)(2), a federal court may add criminal-history points (2 and
        1, respectively) for certain underlying non-adult sentences—namely, (a) for
        any sentence of at least 60 days, if the defendant was released within five years
        of the commission of the federal offense at issue, and (b) for any other sentence
        imposed within five years of the commission of the federal offense. No one
        contends that either condition applies to Jews.
        4Wilks involved U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, which is materially identical to § 2K2.1.
        Both assign sentences to defendants with “prior felony convictions,” and both
        define that phrase the same way. Compare U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 cmt. 1 (noting that
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        22-10502                    Opinion of the Court                                   7

        (deciding whether an offense “resulted in [an] adult sentence[]”
        under § 4A1.2(d)(1)). 5 That test comprises a handful of factors that
        bear on “whether a defendant was convicted as an adult.” Wilks,
        464 F.3d at 1242. They are (1) how state law “technically
        classif[ies]” the defendant’s conviction, Pinion, 4 F.3d at 944 n.6, (2)
        “the nature of the proceedings,” Wilks, 464 F.3d at 1242, (3) “the
        sentence[] received,” id., and (4) “the actual time served,” id. 6

        the phrase “‘two prior felony convictions’ [is] defined in [U.S.S.G. §] 4B1.2”),
        and U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2 cmt. 1 (“‘Prior felony conviction’ means a prior adult
        federal or state conviction . . . . A conviction for an offense committed prior to
        age eighteen is an adult conviction if it is classified as an adult conviction under
        the laws of the jurisdiction in which the defendant was convicted.”), with
        U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 cmt. 1 (“A conviction for an offense committed prior to age
        eighteen years is an adult conviction if it is classified as an adult conviction
        under the laws of the jurisdiction in which the defendant was convicted.”).
        5 See also U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 cmt. 10     (“For purposes of applying subsection (a)(1),
        (2), (3), or (4)(A), use only those felony convictions that receive criminal
        history points under § 4A1.1(a), (b), or (c). In addition, for purposes of
        applying subsection (a)(1) and (a)(2), use only those felony convictions that are
        counted separately under §4A1.1(a), (b), or (c). See § 4A1.2(a)(2). Prior felony
        conviction(s) resulting in an increased base offense level under subsection
        (a)(1), (a)(2), (a)(3), (a)(4)(A), (a)(4)(B), or (a)(6) are also counted for purposes
        of determining criminal history points pursuant to Chapter Four, Part A
        (Criminal History).”); cf. also id. § 4B1.2 cmt. 3 (“The provisions of § 4A1.2
        (Definitions and Instructions for Computing Criminal History) are applicable
        to the counting of convictions under § 4B1.1.”).
        6The first factor appeared in Pinion but not in Wilks. We include it here for
        two reasons. One, § 2K2.1’s commentary keys on state law’s “classifi[cation]”
        of a conviction as the touchstone of the adultness inquiry. Two, the factor
        played a role in Pinion. The likely reason it didn’t show up in Wilks is that
        Pinion had demoted it to a footnote—presumably because the state law at issue
        there (South Carolina’s) didn’t classify the defendant’s conviction one way or
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        22-10502                   Opinion of the Court                                8

                So let’s walk through them.
                Classification. Foremost among the Pinion factors is how
        state law classifies the defendant’s conviction. 7 Here, that’s easy:
        Under Alabama law, “[a]n adjudication of youthful offender
        status . . . is not deemed a conviction of crime at all,” let alone an
        adult conviction. Gordon v. Nagle, 647 So. 2d 91, 95 (Ala. 1994);
        accord, e.g., Ala. Code § 15-19-7 (providing that a YO adjudication
        “shall not be deemed a conviction of crime”); Elliot, 732 F.3d at
        1312–13 (dicta) (“Alabama law does not consider a youthful
        offender adjudication to be a conviction.”). Nor does Alabama law
        treat YO adjudications as “prior felony conviction[s]” under the
        state’s Habitual Felony Offender Act. Gordon, 647 So. 2d at 95. So
        a YO adjudication isn’t classified as an adult conviction in
        Alabama—either in general or for career-offender purposes.

        the other. See Pinion, 4 F.3d at 944 n.6 (observing that state law “did not
        technically classify the defendant’s convictions as those of an adult or of a
        juvenile”). Because state law’s classification was a nonfactor, it didn’t appear
        above the line. Here, things are different. For reasons we explain in text,
        Alabama law has, we think, “classified” Jews’s YO adjudication. And as both
        the Guidelines and common sense suggest, that adjudication’s classification
        should inform whether it is “adult” under Alabama law.
        7 You might think that state law’s classification would resolve the § 2K2.1
        inquiry given the commentary’s focus on whether the YO adjudication “is
        classified as an adult conviction under the laws of the jurisdiction in which the
        defendant was convicted.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 cmt. 1. But alas, this Court hasn’t
        seen it that way; classification is a relevant consideration, but not a decisive
        one.
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        22-10502                   Opinion of the Court                                9

                The government resists this reasoning. It insists that it’s
        irrelevant whether Alabama classifies YO adjudications as
        “convictions.” 8 All that matters, the government says, is whether
        Alabama classifies YO adjudications as “adult.” Br. of Appellee at
        9. Respectfully, the government is ignoring the overlap between
        those two things. Of course, as a matter of logic—in the Venn-
        diagram sense—it would seem to follow that if, as Alabama law
        clearly states, a YO adjudication isn’t a conviction “at all,” Gordon,
        647 So. 2d at 95, then it certainly can’t be an adult conviction, the
        latter being a mere subset of the former. But we needn’t even go
        that far because, in any event, by refusing to classify YO
        adjudications as convictions, Alabama law confirms, at the very
        least, that a defendant’s youthful status renders the proceeding
        against him something less—and less serious—than a full-blown
        adult proceeding. That difference confirms what Jews’s YO status
        itself suggests: Alabama law treats YO adjudications as “youthful,”
        not adult. 9

        8 The government’s principal in-circuit authority, Elliot, is off-point. There,
        it’s true, we affirmed a decision to increase a defendant’s Guidelines range
        because of a previous Alabama YO adjudication, ruling that it was an adult
        conviction. See 732 F.3d at 1312–13. But the defendant there “was 20 years
        old when he committed the Alabama state offense,” meaning—as we’ve
        already explained, see supra at 5–6, that we had to apply federal law, not state
        law, “to determine whether that adjudication qualified as an adult conviction.”
        Id. at 1311. So Elliot didn’t present the question we face here, which is whether
        an Alabama YO adjudication is an “adult conviction” under state law. Id. at
        1310–11.
        9The First Circuit’s decision in United States v. Curet, 670 F.3d 296 (1st Cir.
        2012), on which the government heavily relies, isn’t to the contrary. As an
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        22-10502                  Opinion of the Court                               10

                Nature of the proceedings. As Alabama’s non-conviction
        classification suggests, YO adjudications are “very different from
        conviction as an adult.” Id. That is true both substantively and
        procedurally.
               As a substantive matter, Alabama YO adjudications don’t
        entail the “practical consequences of a[n adult] conviction for a
        crime.” Raines v. State, 317 So. 2d 559, 564 (Ala. 1975). For instance,
        an Alabama YO adjudication can’t “disqualify any youth for public
        office or public employment, operate as a forfeiture of any right or
        privilege or make him ineligible to receive any license granted by
        public authority.” Ala. Code § 15-19-7(a). Nor can it be used to
        impeach a witness, as an adult conviction can. See Ala. R. Evid.
        609(d). These cushioned consequences, we think, plainly indicate
        the non-adult nature of Alabama’s YO system.
               As a procedural matter, an Alabama YO adjudication lacks
        the usual hallmarks of a criminal trial. A YO proceeding, for
        instance, begins with a non-adversarial hearing in which the
        defendant is “investigated and examined by the court to determine

        initial matter, the state there treated the disposition at issue—“guilty-filed”—
        as unique for reasons wholly unrelated to the defendant’s age. See id. at 303–
        04. Moreover, and in any event, the First Circuit rejected only the absolutist,
        Venn-diagram position that if a state adjudication isn’t classified as a
        “conviction” under state law, then by definition it can never be an “adult
        conviction” under that law. Id. at 304. Candidly, we think that logic checks
        out—the greater, it seems, includes the lesser—but as noted in text, we can
        safely rest our decision on the more modest proposition that a state’s refusal
        to classify a YO adjudication as a conviction indicates its determination that a
        YO adjudication lacks the traditional hallmarks of adultness.
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        22-10502                   Opinion of the Court                                 11

        whether he or she should be tried as a youthful offender.” Ala.
        Code § 15-19-1(a). The court then exercises its “discretion” to
        determine whether YO treatment is appropriate. Gordon, 647 So.
        2d at 95. Those designated for YO status thereafter proceed to a
        bench trial—rather than the traditional criminal jury trial. See Ala.
        Code § 15-19-4; cf. U.S. Const. amend. VI (“In all criminal
        prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and
        public trial, by an impartial jury . . . .”). And that trial is “conducted
        at court sessions separate from those for adults charged with
        crime.” Ala. Code § 15-19-3. 10
               The government’s lone response on the “nature” factor
        hinges on an Alabama law that strips juvenile courts of jurisdiction
        over defendants like Jews. That statute provides that any
        individual who is (1) at least 16 years old and (2) has been charged
        with a crime that would be a Class A felony if committed by an
        adult—conditions that indisputably applied to Jews—“shall not be
        subject to the jurisdiction of juvenile court but shall be charged,
        arrested, and tried as an adult.” Ala. Code § 12-15-204. Two
        problems. First, § 12-15-204 merely strips juvenile courts of
        jurisdiction and vests it in adult courts; it doesn’t deprive juveniles
        of the right, once in adult court, to apply for youthful-offender

        10 These features of Alabama’s YO process distinguish it from other states’ YO
        processes that do produce adult convictions. See Wilks, 464 F.3d at 1243
        (stressing that the Florida juvenile defendant was “treated as an adult criminal”
        in all respects save for caps on his sentence length and limits on facilities where
        he could serve his sentence).
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        22-10502               Opinion of the Court                         12

        status. J.C. v. State, 941 So. 2d 1011, 1013 (Ala. Crim. App. 2005);
        accord Gordon, 647 So. 2d at 95 (“The determination whether a
        defendant is to be granted youthful offender status is left to the
        discretion of the trial judge.”). And notably, that’s exactly the route
        that Jews took here. Second, even if the government thinks that
        Jews should have been tried as an adult under Alabama law, the
        fact is that he wasn’t. And his YO status made a difference—it
        ameliorated the substantive consequences of his adjudication and
        triggered more flexible and informal procedures. And as we have
        explained, those features distinguish Alabama YO adjudications, in
        their very “nature,” from adult convictions.
               Sentence received. We readily concede that Jews’s three-year
        sentence is not insubstantial and, indeed, that we’ve conferred
        “adult” status on less. See Wilks, 464 F.3d at 1243 (16 months). Still,
        the length of Jews’s sentence isn’t decisive. In Wilks, for instance,
        we emphasized the proceeding’s nature, stressing that the
        defendant there had been “treated as an adult criminal” during the
        YO proceeding in all respects other than his term and place of
        imprisonment. Id. So while on balance this factor favors the
        government, it isn’t conclusive.
               Time served. It’s unclear how much time Jews served for his
        Alabama YO adjudication. All the record reveals is that, at a
        hearing in the district court, Jews whispered to his lawyer that he
        didn’t serve the full 3 years. But he got no further; he was shushed
        by the lawyer and the judge, who told him that how long he served
        didn’t matter. So we just don’t know. Still, the government says
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        22-10502                Opinion of the Court                         13

        that “there can be no dispute that [Jews] served a substantial
        portion of the sentence, at least.” Br. of Appellee at 18 n.7. If that’s
        true—we’ve seen no evidence of it, though it’s plausible—then
        Jews’s actual sentence was on par with the 27-month, adult-leaning
        sentence in Pinion, so we’re willing to count this factor in the
        government’s favor, as well.
                                        * * *
                On balance, the Pinion factors favor Jews, indicating that his
        YO adjudication wasn’t “adult.” The sentence-length and time-
        served factors, we hold, yield to the stronger indications of the
        classification and nature factors: Because of the defendant’s age,
        Alabama law doesn’t even treat YO adjudications as convictions,
        let alone adult convictions. And the law further shields YOs “from
        the stigma and practical consequences of a conviction for a crime.”
        Raines, 317 So. 2d at 366. Alabama’s YO system differs from the
        adult system from stem to stern, in both substance and procedure.
        To call it “adult,” we think, would strain credulity.
                                          III
              We hold that Jews’s Alabama YO adjudication wasn’t
        “adult” under either U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 or § 4A1.2. His Guidelines
        range of 70–87 months was thus wrong in two respects. Jews’s
        sentence is vacated, and the case is remanded for resentencing.
               VACATED and REMANDED.