Court Opinion

ID: 9439059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:20:10.081445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:07.941441
License: Public Domain

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I agree that the sentencing judge must look beyond the indictment to decide whether Hill’s prior conviction was for a crime of violence. But I wonder whether there is any longer a good purpose for treating this factual inquiry differently than the other factual inquiries routinely required by the Sentencing Guidelines.
The Supreme Court adopted a categorical approach to deciding whether a prior conviction was a “violent felony” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), permitting the sentencing court to look at the “charging paper and jury instructions” only in a “narrow range of eases.” Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602, 110 S.Ct. at 2160. After Taylor, we held in Mathis that “when deciding whether a prior conviction qualifies as a predicate offense, the sentencing court must look only to the statutory definition, not to the underlying facts or evidence presented.” 963 F.2d at 408. This approach breaks down when the defendant’s earlier conviction resulted from a plea agreement. And so we now join other circuits in concluding that an examination may be made of certain readily available court documents, including presentencing reports and plea transcripts. My question is why the sentencing court ought to be under any restrictions. Why, in other words, should the inquiry for the purposes of U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2) be any more restricted than for other instances of sentencing enhancement?
The Guidelines have pretty much rendered obsolete the concern, relied upon in Taylor, 495 U.S. at 601, 110 S.Ct. at 2159-60, that sentencing hearings should not become mini-trials. Under the bifurcated fact-finding scheme of the Guidelines, certain factual issues allocated to the sentencing phase can play a dispositive role in determining a defendant’s sentence. A court must, for instance, consider all related acts proved by a preponderance of the evidence at sentencing, even if the defendant was not convicted of them. See U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8. A defendant’s base offense level is increased according to “specific offense characteristics” — such as discharge of a firearm, more than minimal planning, or quantity of drugs involved. See, e.g., U.S.S.G. § 2A2.2(b)(2)(A). Further adjustments in sentencing depend on the status of the victim, the defendant’s role in the offense, and whether the defendant willfully obstructed justice. See U.S.S.G. §§ 3A1.1-3C1.2. Evidence about such matters may be presented to the court through statements of counsel, affidavits of witnesses, or evidentia-ry hearings. See § 6A1.3, comment. Furthermore, sentencing judges are not restrict*1066ed to information that would be admissible at trial. See § 6A1.3(a). They may consider any information, provided it has “sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy.” Id.
The time has come to rethink the subject and to consider whether the same sort of evidentiary presentation permitted for other sentencing issues ought to be allowed to prove or disprove the violent nature of a defendant’s previous offense. Having said this, I recognize that the rethinking might have to be done by the Sentencing Commission or by Congress. See maj. op. at 1062 & n.6.