Court Opinion

ID: 9599305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:17:39.024656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:26.735271
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part.
1. I would affirm the sentence. Unlike the court, I do not conclude “that it would be improper for the district court to rely on the factual recitations in the PSR to determine that Wynn’s § 2907.03 conviction was for a ‘crime of violence’ ” — facts which Wynn did not challenge.
As this court has recognized, under Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 26, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005). “[W]hen the statutory definition [of the prior crime to which the defendant pleaded guilty] is ambiguous ... the court may examine ... ‘the terms- of the charging document, the terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between judge and defendant in which the factual basis for the plea was confirmed by the defendant, or to some comparable judicial record of this information.’ ” United States v. Bartee, 529 F.3d 357, 359 (6th Cir.2008) (quoting Shepard). This court’s other cases similarly have recognized that in addition to the charging document, the plea agreement or a colloquy between judge and defendant, the sentencing judge also may consider a “comparable judicial record.” United States v. Mosley, 575 F.3d 603, 605 (6th Cir.2009).
In criminal cases it is common practice for a defendant who wants to contest or challenge facts set forth in the presentence report to object to them. If a defendant does not do so, it is understood that those facts are admitted and accepted as a basis for determining the sentence. See United States v. Carter, 355 F.3d 920, 925 (6th Cir.2004) (“ ‘The district court is allowed to accept as true all factual allegations in a presentence report to which the defendant does not object.’ ”). Here the facts as set forth in the presentence report (which the court quotes in its opinion) relating to Wynn’s prior state court conviction for a “sexual battery” leave no doubt that the generic state crime to which he pleaded guilty was categorically a crime of violence.
Since Wynn has not challenged or questioned those facts, there is no valid concern here that attempted reliance upon them would produce the kind of collateral litigation that the Supreme Court wished to avoid when it refused to permit the district court to utilize police reports and complaint applications for determining the character of a state conviction. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 21-23, 125 S.Ct. 1254. As this court stated: “One of the policies animating the Court’s adoption of this approach was to avoid ‘the practical difficulties and potential unfairness’ of permitting a sentencing court to relitigate the facts and delve into the details of a prior conviction.” United States v. Armstead, 467 F.3d 943, 947 (6th Cir.2006) (quoting Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 601, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990)).
Indeed, in view of Wynn’s failure to challenge those facts, it would appear that he acknowledges their accuracy as a basis for determining his sentence.
The court states, however, that it is “bound” by our alleged holding in Bartee that “a district court’s use of the factual description of a prior conviction contained in a PSR to determine if the prior conviction is a ‘crime of violence’ does ‘not adhere to the dictates of Taylor and Shepard.’ ” Although there are statements in the Bartee opinion that provide support for that conclusion, I do not read Bartee as so holding or indicating, or as requiring us so to hold.
In Bartee, the sentence-enhancing prior Michigan state conviction was for criminal sexual conduct. That crime included sexual contact “under circumstances involving *579the commission of any other felony.” The state information charged the defendant with sexual contact with “another person to-wit: Angela” while committing the felony of soliciting a minor for immoral purposes. The government conceded that the crime of sexual contact of which the defendant was convicted did not require that the contact be with a minor. It contended, however, that because the indictment charged the defendant with sexual contact during the commission of another felony, namely, soliciting a minor for immoral purposes, the district court properly could infer that he was convicted of a “crime of violence” because the person with whom he had sexual contact was the minor girl whom he was charged with soliciting for immoral purposes.
This court noted that “neither the statutory definition nor the amended information specified that the sexual contact was with a minor.” 529 F.3d at 361. It held that although it appeared “to have been the case factually” “that since the defendant had sexual contact with Angela ‘while’ soliciting a minor, Angela must have been that minor and, therefore, the sexual contact must have been with a minor.” “[CJategorically speaking, the conviction did not necessarily require proof of sexual contact with a minor.” Id. (footnote omitted).
The court then pointed to certain facts “revealed” in the presentence report relating to the sexual relationship between the defendant and Angela. It then stated:
Not only is this the sort of information that one might expect to find in a police report or application for criminal complaint, but the government also makes no attempt to argue that it was based on Shepard-eligible records. While these underlying facts reflect conduct known in common parlance as “statutory rape,” that was not the offense to which defendant pleaded guilty.

Id.

This court concluded that: the district court did not adhere to the dictates of Taylor and Shepard in determining that the prior conviction in this case was an offense involving sexual contact with a minor. As the Court recently explained, the categorical approach requires that “we consider the offense generically, that is to say, we examine it in terms of how the law defines the offense and not in terms of how an individual offender might have committed it on a particular occasion.” Begay v. United States, — U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. 1581, 1584, 170 L.Ed.2d 490 (2008).
A footnote to the last quoted sentence includes the following statement:
Nor can we conclude that the error was harmless simply because the defendant never denied that the prior conviction involved sexual contact with a minor. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 28-29, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (O’Connor, dissenting) (criticizing the majority for rejecting a “common sense” inference that the state burglary convictions involved entry into buildings).
Id. at 361 n. 4.
I do not view the foregoing statements from Bartee or the court’s decision there as a holding that in determining the character of the prior sentence-enhancing conviction facts set forth in the pre-sentence report that the defendant did not challenge cannot be considered. Bartee did not explicitly so state. Nor did the court’s decision necessarily announce such a rule. The court did not refer to the points made in the prior discussion of this partial dissent, which one would think it would have done if it were announcing the broad rule that the court here attributes to it.
*580It could probably be inferred, based on the statements in Bartee, that if the issue of the use of unchallenged statements in a pre-sentence report were presented to the Bartee panel, that panel would come out the same way that this court does in this case. Bartee, however, did not decide that question, either explicitly or implicitly. In my opinion, such conjectural analysis does not, could not and should not convert the Bartee opinion into a binding ruling on that issue.
The Supreme Court’s recent case addressing this general subject, Begay v. United States, — U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. 1581 (2008), sheds no light on this issue. The question there was whether a New Mexico conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol constituted a “violent felony” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), which includes in its definition of “violent felony” a crime that is “burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” The Supreme Court held that the state crime was not a “violent felony” under that definition because ‘that term covers only crimes “similar” to the listed crimes of “burglary, arson, or extortion” “rather than every crime that ‘presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.’ ” — U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. at 1582.
In other words, the only question Begay addressed and decided was the scope of the federal statutory definition of “violent felony.” Apparently there was no question of what evidence could be considered in deciding whether the state crime of conviction came within the definition, and the Supreme Court did not address that question.
In sum, I believe that whether the presentence report could be considered to determine the character of Wynn’s prior conviction is an open question that we may decide either way. For the reasons given, I would hold that consideration of those facts would be permissible.
2. There is another aspect of the court’s opinion that troubles me. The court states that “there is no indication in the record as to the subsection of § 2907.03 to which Wynn pleaded guilty.” That is correct, if only the presentence report is considered. In United States v. Alexander, however, this court dealt with the similar situation in which the question whether a defendant’s prior state conviction constituted a categorical “crime of violence” could not be answered by resort to the presentence report. 543 F.3d 819 (6th Cir.2008). This court upheld an enhanced sentence based on that conviction for a “crime of violence” because the Michigan Department of Correction, and the State Police maintained internet databases that provided “publicly viewable criminal-history records indicating that [the defendant] was in fact convicted of violating a specific statutory provision that was such a crime.” Id. at 824. The court ruled that “even if the record is not entirely clear about the precise statutory offense that served as one of the predicate crimes, any ambiguity is readily resolved by taking judicial notice of [defendant’s] criminal-history records.” Id.
Similarly, it would seem that in the present case we may take judicial notice of publicly available Ohio judicial records that show unequivocally that the state sexual battery offense of which Wynn was convicted was a “crime of violence.” The presentence report in this case shows that that state case was docket CR-01-403077. The Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court records show that in case no. CR-01-403077 on July 31, 2001, the defendant:
ENTERS A PLEA OF GUILTY TO SEXUAL BATTERY, RC 2907.03 A(l) FEL-3 (SB2) AS AMENDED IN *581COUNT 1 OF THE INDICTMENT. COURT FINDS THE DEFENDANT GUILTY.
(State of Ohio v. Antonio Wynn, CR-01-403077, Cuyahoga Court of Common Pleas, Docket Information) (available at http:// cpdocket.cp.cuyahogacounty.us/) (Last checked, August 13, 2008) The state court’s records also show that the defendant was sentenced on September 5, 2001 for the sexual battery conviction under § 2907.03(A)(1).
The Ohio criminal statute to which Wynn thus pleaded guilty states:
(A) No person shall engage in sexual conduct with another, not the spouse of the offender, when ...
(1) The offender knowingly coerces the other person to submit by any means that would prevent resistance by a person of ordinary resolution.
Under the Begay standard discussed above, this sexual conduct was a “crime of violence.” It thus appears that, for this additional reason, the district court here properly enhanced Wynn’s sentence as a career criminal. Alexander indicates that even if resort may not be had to facts about a prior conviction in the presentence report, judicial notice still may be taken of publicly available judicial records. Alexander was decided several months after Begay and referred to it. 543 F.3d at 824.
Alexander possibly could be distinguished on two grounds. There all of Alexander’s “criminal history records” that established the nature of its prior conviction apparently were cited to the court by the government. In the present case, however, it is necessary to rely on the presentence report to ascertain the docket number of Wynn’s state conviction. Even if the presentence report generally cannot be used to determine the facts of the prior state sentence-enhancing conviction, I do not think that principle would preclude resort to the presentence report for the limited purpose of determining the docket number of that conviction. That is a fact that, in the language of Alexander, is “not subject to reasonable debate in this case.” 543 F.3d at 824.
The other possible distinction from Alexander is that there the government apparently submitted the state conviction information to the court, whereas here the court itself obtained the data. That fact, however, appears to make this a stronger rather than a weaker case than Alexander for taking judicial notice of the state information. Here there is no possibility that the government may have given the court incorrect or inaccurate information about a state conviction.