Court Opinion

ID: 9491416
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:13:28.566423+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:43.579111
License: Public Domain

LEAVY, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Congress has provided a mandatory life sentence for a person who commits a serious violent felony if that person has been convicted on separate prior occasions of two or more serious violent felonies. 18 U.S.C. § 3559(e)®. It has defined serious violent felony without qualification in § 3559(c)(2)(F)® and (ii). “[Rjobbery as described in section 2111, 2113, or 2118” is a serious violent felony. § 3559(c)(2)(F)®. The United States Attorney is required to file a timely information charging the prior offenses. § 3559(c)(4) & 21 U.S.C. § 851(a). The burden is on the government to prove the prior serious violent felonies at sentencing.
Congress has, in addition, provided that a serious violent felony committed by the defendant “shall not serve as a basis for sentencing” under the mandatory life provision if the serious violent felony is a robbery and the defendant proves by clear and convincing evidence that no firearm or other dangerous weapon was used and no threat of use of a weapon was involved. § 3559(c)(3)(A). Although the prior robbery is still a “serious violent felony” if the defendant shows that no firearm or other dangerous weapon was used or its use threatened, it does not count as one of the three strikes.
*1088Judge Reinhardt reads the three strikes statutory scheme as requiring the defendant to prove that his prior robbery offenses are not serious violent felonies, and thus, not only does he conclude that § 3559(c)(3)(A) is unconstitutional but goes on to declare all of § (c)(2)(F)(ii) and parts of § (c)(2)(F)(i) unconstitutional as well, thereby removing armed robbery as well as any other robbery from the scope of the threé strikes law. For example, if a person is before a United States court on a conviction of armed robbery and has a number of separate prior serious violent felony convictions for kidnapping and assault with intent to commit rape he would not qualify for the three strikes rule because he is. not within the scope of § 3559(c) as “a person who is convicted in a court of the United States of a serious violent felony.” Once the inclusion of robbery within the definition of serious violent felony is deemed unconstitutional, it does not matter what Kaluna has done in the past — he cannot be sentenced under § 3559(c).
If Congress had enacted none of subsection (c)(3), the statute would be free from the infirmities found by the majority, and Kaluna would face a mandatory life sentence even if the demonstrated and acknowledged truth is that he never used or threatened to use a firearm or other dangerous weapon in any of his prior serious violent felonies. Contrary to Judge Reinhardt’s view, Congress intended to classify all robberies as serious violent felonies. It is not unconstitutional for Congress to also provide some leniency for a defendant who, in spite of being convicted of a serious violent felony, proves that he or she didn’t use or threaten to use a firearm.
Judge Thomas would hold that 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(3)(A) as applied violates due process because it. places on Kaluna the burden of proving by “clear and convincing” evidence that he did not use a firearm during his robbery of Bill’s Bakery. Kaluna never tried to prove nor does he even suggest that he did not use a firearm or other weapon in his robbery of Bill’s Bakery. Moreover, Kaluna, as the person who committed the robbery, appropriately has the burden of proof because he has unique knowledge of the circumstances of its commission.
I would join the Seventh Circuit and hold that the three strikes law, in its entirety, is constitutional. United States v. Wicks, 132 F.3d 383 (7th Cir.1997), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 118 S.Ct. 1546, 140 L.Ed.2d 694 (1998).