Court Opinion

ID: 9486581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:53:23.469117+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:48.700404
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD,
Circuit Judge, dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the judgment of the court.
The government’s sole argument in this appeal was that this court did not have jurisdiction to consider it. I disagree. The statute provides an appeal for a sentence imposed “in violation of law,” 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a)(1), 'and the defendant’s argument here is that the district court relied on facts in sentencing him that were barred from consideration by the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution. It has to be plain that if the defendant is correct about his Sixth Amendment claim, and if the district judge would have imposed a different sentence absent the unconstitutional matter, then his sentence was imposed “in violation of law.”
In my opinion, defendant’s Sixth Amendment argument does indeed have merit. Baldasar v. Illinois, 446 U.S. 222, 100 S.Ct. 1586, 64 L.Ed.2d 169 (1980), held that an uncounseled misdemeanor conviction cannot be used as a basis for a conviction of a felony that carries a prison term. Because the case did not produce an opinion in which a majority of the Court joined, considerable ingenuity has been employed in avoiding what seems to me its manifest purport, namely, that no incremental deprivation of liberty-.can be predicated on the fact of an uncounseled misdemeanor conviction. See, e.g., United States v. Nichols, 979 F.2d 402 (6th Cir.1992), and United States v. Castro-Vega, 945 F.2d 496 (2d Cir.1991), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1250, 122 L.Ed.2d 649 (1993). I agree with Judge Jones, dissenting in Nichols, 979 F.2d at 408, that it is impossible to discern any “logical or principled basis upon which to distinguish Baldasar” frpm the present case. It is “a distinction without a constitutional difference” that the increased sentence in Baldasar resulted from “an enhanced penalty statute that converted defendant’s misdemeanor into a felony, while the instant case arises under the criminal-history provision of the sentencing guidelines.” Id. In United States v. Brady, 928 F.2d 844, 854 (9th Cir.1991), the court agreed, as I do, with Justice Marshall’s concurring opinion in Baldasar “that an ‘uncounseled misdemeanor conviction [may] not be used collaterally to impose an increased term of imprisonment upon a subsequent conviction,’ ” quoting Baldasar, 446 U.S. at 226, 100 S.Ct. at 1587. To the same effect, see United States v. Williams, 891 F.2d 212, 214 (9th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1037, 110 S.Ct. 1496, 108 L.Ed.2d 631 (1990).
Even if my analysis of the relevant cases is incorrect, the result that the court reaches today is foreclosed by our decision in United States v. Norquay, 987 F.2d 475, 482 (8th Cir.1993), which, relying on Baldosar, held that “misdemeanor convictions obtained in the absence of counsel for the defendant may not be used ... for enhancing a sentence of imprisonment.” The fact that the conviction in issue in Norquay was a tribal one is a difference that involves no legal distinction. The court’s opinion is therefore directly contrary to a panel decision that is not even two months old.
It is true that we have held that .a consideration of an erroneous matter in connection with a sentence is harmless if, as is the ease here, the error does not affect the guideline range employed by the sentencing court. See, e.g., U.S. v. Manuel, 944 F.2d 414, 417 *831(8th Cir.1991). But this line of cases can claim no continued validity in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Williams v. United States, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1112, 117 L.Ed.2d 341 (1992). In that case, the Court ruled that if a district court employed both valid and invalid matter in departing from the guidelines, the court of appeals often must remand the case in order to determine whether the district court would have imposed the same sentence absent the offending facts. The opinion contains instructive language relevant to our case. A remand was necessary, the Court said, “unless the reviewing court concludes, on the record as a whole, that the error was harmless, i.e., that the error did not affect the district court’s selection of the sentence imposed.” Id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 1120-21 (emphasis supplied). In my view, Williams has therefore undermined our previously announced version of harmless error in sentencing matters.
Because we cannot tell if this sentence was in violation of law unless the district court tells us what it would have done if the un-counseled conviction had not been employed in its calculus, a remand is necessary. See 18 U.S.C. § 3742(f)(1).