Court Opinion

ID: 9404836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-26 15:00:58.63287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:17.649356
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-10454    Document: 39-1     Date Filed: 06/26/2023   Page: 1 of 7

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-10454
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       CORNELIUS MICHAEL TURNER,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Middle District of Florida
                  D.C. Docket No. 3:19-cr-00105-BJD-LLL-1
                          ____________________
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       2                     Opinion of the Court                  22-10454

       Before LAGOA, BRASHER, and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Cornelius Turner appeals his 180-month concurrent sen-
       tences, imposed after he pleaded guilty to possessing with intent to
       distribute fentanyl and to being a felon in possession of a ﬁrearm.
       Turner argues that the district court erred in enhancing his sen-
       tence under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)
       (“ACCA”). No reversible error has been shown; we aﬃrm.
                                           I.
              Before sentencing, the probation oﬃcer prepared a presen-
       tence investigation report (“PSI”). In pertinent part, the probation
       oﬃcer determined that Turner qualiﬁed as an armed career crimi-
       nal based on Turner’s three prior Florida drug convictions: two
       convictions for the sale of cocaine and one conviction for posses-
       sion with intent to sell cocaine. The PSI noted that Turner’s con-
       victions stemmed from conduct committed on 20 October 2011, 9
       November 2011, and 15 November 2011.
              Turner objected to the PSI’s determination that he qualiﬁed
       for an ACCA-enhanced sentence. Turner did not dispute that his
       Florida drug convictions qualiﬁed as “serious drug oﬀenses” under
       the ACCA. Turner argued, instead, that the oﬀense conduct un-
       derlying his convictions was not committed on three separate oc-
       casions.
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       22-10454               Opinion of the Court                         3

              At the sentencing hearing, Turner presented additional ar-
       gument challenging his classiﬁcation as an armed career criminal.
       Turner acknowledged that the Information ﬁled in his Florida drug
       case showed the three drug oﬀenses occurred on diﬀerent dates.
       Nevertheless, Turner argued that the oﬀenses were part of the
       same criminal episode because they involved the same undercover
       oﬃcer and the same drug. Turner also asserted that an ACCA-
       enhanced sentence based upon judge-found facts would violate his
       Sixth Amendment rights.
              The district court overruled Turner’s objections to his
       ACCA classiﬁcation. The district court then sentenced Turner to
       the statutory-mandatory-minimum sentence of 180 months’ im-
       prisonment.
                                           II.
                                           A.
              We ﬁrst address Turner’s contention that the district court
       erred in relying on the state-court Information as evidence that his
       three drug oﬀenses were committed on diﬀerent dates. Because
       Turner raises this argument for the ﬁrst time on appeal, we review
       only for plain error. See United States v. Dudley, 5 F.4th 1249, 1255
       (11th Cir. 2021).
             Turner has shown no error, plain or otherwise. We have
       concluded that a sentencing court may rely on “non-elemental
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       4                          Opinion of the Court                    22-10454

       facts” contained in Shepard-approved 1 documents to determine
       whether a defendant’s prior oﬀenses of conviction were committed
       on diﬀerent days. See id. at 1259-60, 1265; United States v. Longoria,
       874 F.3d 1278, 1283 (11th Cir. 2017). 2 A charging document -- like
       the Information involved in this case -- is an approved document
       under Shepard. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 26 (explaining that, in as-
       sessing the nature of an oﬀense for purposes of the ACCA, the dis-
       trict court is limited to considering “the terms of the charging doc-
       ument, the terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy be-
       tween judge and defendant in which the factual basis for the plea
       was conﬁrmed by the defendant, or [] some comparable judicial
       record of this information”).
              Under our binding precedent, the district court was author-
       ized to rely on the state-court Information in ﬁnding that Turner’s
       drug oﬀenses occurred on three separate and distinct days. Turner
       has demonstrated no plain error.

                                                  B.

       1 Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005).
       2 We reject Turner’s assertion that our precedent -- allowing courts to use
       Shepard-approved documents for purposes of the ACCA’s different-occasions
       inquiry -- has been abrogated by the Supreme Court’s decision in United States
       v. Mathis, 579 U.S. 500 (2016). See Dudley, 5 F.4th at 1265 (explaining that
       Mathis never addressed the ACCA’s different-occasions inquiry and, thus, did
       not abrogate our prior precedent on that issue).
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       22-10454                   Opinion of the Court                                5

             Turner next contends that -- even if his three drug oﬀenses
       were committed on diﬀerent days 3 -- the oﬀenses were part of the
       same criminal episode. We review de novo whether a defendant’s
       “prior oﬀenses meet the ACCA’s diﬀerent-occasions requirement.”
       See Longoria, 874 F.3d at 1281.
              Under the ACCA, a defendant convicted of being a felon in
       possession of a ﬁrearm is subject to a mandatory-minimum sen-
       tence of 15 years’ imprisonment if the defendant has three prior
       convictions “for a violent felony or a serious drug oﬀense, or both,
       committed on occasions diﬀerent from one another.” 18 U.S.C. §
       924(e)(1) (emphasis added). A defendant’s predicate oﬀenses are
       considered to have been committed on diﬀerent occasions under
       the ACCA if the oﬀenses are “‘temporally distinct’ and arise from
       ‘separate and distinct criminal episodes.’” See Dudley, 5 F.4th at
       1259 (brackets omitted); United States v. Sneed, 600 F.3d 1326, 1329-
       30 (11th Cir. 2010) (“Distinctions in time and place are usually suf-
       ﬁcient to separate criminal episodes from one another even when
       the gaps are small.”).
              The record supports the district court’s determination that
       Turner committed his Florida drug oﬀenses on 20 October, 9 No-
       vember, and 15 November 2011. These oﬀenses -- separated by
       twenty and six days -- were suﬃciently temporally distinct to con-
       stitute separate occurrences under the ACCA. See Longoria, 874

       3 We note that Turner has never disputed that his three Florida drug convic-
       tions arose out of conduct that, in fact, occurred on three different days.
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                  22-10454

       F.3d at 1282 (concluding that drug oﬀenses committed nine and
       seven days apart constituted “separate criminal episodes” for pur-
       poses of the ACCA).
              Contrary to Turner’s assertion, our conclusion is consistent
       with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wooden v. United States,
       142 S. Ct. 1063 (2022). In Wooden, the Supreme Court noted that -
       - unlike “oﬀenses separated by substantial gaps in time or signiﬁ-
       cant intervening events” -- “[o]ﬀenses committed close in time, in
       an uninterrupted course of conduct, will often count as part of one
       occasion.” See Wooden, 142 S. Ct. at 1071 (concluding that a series
       of ten burglaries committed on a single night, in an uninterrupted
       course of conduct, and at one location constituted a single criminal
       episode). The Supreme Court also recognized that courts “have
       nearly always treated oﬀenses as occurring on separate occasions if
       a person committed them a day or more apart, or at a ‘signiﬁcant
       distance.’” Id.
              Turner argues chieﬂy that his oﬀenses should be treated as
       part of the same criminal episode because they were part of an on-
       going criminal investigation and involved the same undercover of-
       ﬁcer, the same drugs, and a limited geographical area. We disagree.
       These similarities -- when viewed against the days-long amount of
       time that elapsed between Turner’s drug oﬀenses -- are insuﬃcient
       to establish that the three oﬀenses were part of a single criminal
       episode. See id. (“In many cases, a single factor -- especially of time
       or place -- can decisively diﬀerentiate occasions.”).
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       22-10454              Opinion of the Court                        7

             The district court committed no error in determining that
       the oﬀenses underlying Turner’s three drug convictions occurred
       on diﬀerent occasions within the meaning of the ACCA.
                                          C.
               Turner’s argument challenging his ACCA-enhanced sen-
       tence under the Sixth Amendment is foreclosed by our binding
       precedent. “[W]e have repeatedly rejected the argument that judi-
       cially determining whether prior convictions were committed on
       diﬀerent occasions from one another for purposes of the ACCA
       violates a defendant’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.” See Dud-
       ley, 5 F.4th at 1260, 1260 n.10.
             AFFIRMED.