Court Opinion

ID: 9497668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:56:59.85901+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:20.500194
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I am compelled by Gonzalez-Tamariz to join in Judge Thompson’s opinion for the court. If “aggravated felony” includes misdemeanors for the purposes of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(G) as it does under the law of our circuit and others, it certainly includes misdemeanors for the purposes of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A). Indeed it necessarily includes misdemeanors for the purposes of all the sub-sections of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43).
Judge Berzon’s dissent in Gonzalez-Tamariz makes sense to me: A felony is a felony, and a misdemeanor is not. That is elementary. We are now, however, as Judge Berzon acknowledges, past that point. For purposes of our often incoherent and senseless federal sentencing policies, a “felony” can include a “misdemean- or.” Worse, an egregious felony, i.e. ari “aggravated felony,” can include a misdemeanor. One would think that there would be some limit to the abuse of the English language by lawmakers.' Apparently not. Still, we must follow the law, and our circuit is in line with all the others when we hold that a misdemeanor can constitute an aggravated felony for the purposes of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43).
To hold, as Judge Berzon would, that because, under the statute, a misdemeanor theft offense must result in an actual sentence of one year in order to constitute an aggravated felony, a more serious type of offense, such as “murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor” must also .result in a sentence of that length in , order to be so classified seems to me unsupportable,' given that the statute contains a one-year-minimum actual sentence provision for the lesser offense but imposes no such requirement in the case of the greater crime. We simply cannot ignore the fact that under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43) the requirement that the actual sentence imposed be at least one year is generally contained in the subsections applicable to the less serious types of offenses and that no such additional condition is ordinarily contained in the sub-sections applicable to the more serious offenses. While we may not agree that all the sub-sections without the additional requirement are indeed more serious than all those that contain it, it is *1246evident that most are, and that as to those on which we might disagree, our lawmakers have made a judgment as to seriousness that is within the area of their legislative authority.
In short, if we accept Gonzalez-Tamariz, as we must, the result here is inevitable. There is simply no way to say, as Judge Berzon would have us do, that a person convicted of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A) must receive a sentence of more than a year before his offense will be classified as an aggravated felony while a person who commits the less serious type of offense covered by 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(G) will be deemed to have committed such a felony even though his sentence is for a lesser period. Such a construction would compound the violence we have already done to the English language in this statute by taking a limitation designed to exclude from the aggravated felony classification certain less serious misdemeanor offenses when a lesser punishment is imposed, and to treat that limiting language as having precisely the opposite effect: requiring minor theft offenses to be classified as aggravated felonies when sentences are imposed that are shorter than the minimum sentences that would warrant felony classification in the case of far more serious types of offenses. If, as Judge Berzon concludes, Leocal does not permit us to overrule Gonzalez-Ta-mariz, it does not permit us to treat other sub-sections of the statute in a manner that would be wholly inconsistent with that which we held in that case.
Although I find Judge Berzon’s historical analysis interesting, the fact remains that Congress deemed certain offenses to be sufficiently serious that they are classified as “aggravated felonies” regardless of the sentences imposed in particular cases. Other lesser offenses, Congress provided, would be so classified only in cases in which the defendant received a sentence of at least a year. Congress, wisely or not, placed sexual abuse of a minor in the same category as murder and rape, a category of offenses which ipso facto constitute aggravated felonies. It is true that persons who commit such offenses will generally not be sentenced to a term of confinement of a year or less. When they are, however, the nature of the crime requires, in Congress’s view, that the offense remain an aggravated felony regardless.
I simply cannot accept the alternative Judge Berzon constructs: that in the case of the more serious crimes Congress intended that offenses would count only if the sentence imposed were for a year and a day, but with respect to the lesser crimes the offense would count if the sentence were for one day less, but not two. I cannot imagine why Congress would have wanted to treat as aggravated felonies lesser offenses that result in sentences of less than a year and a day but to exclude from that category more serious crimes for which the offender receives that identical sentence. Nor can I imagine why Congress would have prescribed only a one day difference in the length of sentence necessary for the inclusion of less serious crimes, even if for some odd reason it wished to include such offenses when they result in lesser punishment than is required for the inclusion of more serious offenses.
Judge Thompson’s opinion for the court dutifully applies the law as it has been construed in this and other circuits. I am required to join him in doing so.