United States v. Allen BattlesUnited States v. Allen Battles
The majority cites Ruhrgas for thе proposition that there is no mandatory “sequencing of jurisdictional issues.” Id. at 584, 119 S.Ct. 1563. That was true enough in the unusual circumstances presented there, but those circumstances arе very different from the ones here. First, and most important, the Court specifically noted that there was no defect in Article III jurisdiction in Ruhrgas; the question as to subject-matter jurisdiction, the Court was careful to point out, was whether “the complete diversity required by
Second, both of the jurisdictional grounds at issue in Ruhrgas (namely, subject-matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction) depended on federal rather than state law. Moreover, the personal-jurisdiction ground that the Court said could be reached first was, unlike the subject-matter one, constitutional in nature. See 526 U.S. at 584, 119 S.Ct. 1563 (”Ruhrgas relies on the constitutional safeguard of due process to stop the court from proceeding to the merits of the case“); see also id. (“‘The requirement that a court have personal jurisdiction flows ... from the Due Process Clause‘“) (quoting Insurance Corp. оf Ireland v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 702, 102 S.Ct. 2099, 72 L.Ed.2d 492 (1982) (alteration in original)). Ruhrgas, therefore, was a case in which there was no defect in the courts’ Article III power, and in which the Supreme Court held that, аs between two federal jurisdictional issues, the district court did not abuse its discretion in reaching the constitutional one first. That holding does not permit us to decide issues of Ohio law in the absence of judicial power under Article III.
To say that a federal court lacks power under Article III is to say that it lacks any power at all. I believe we lack power under Article III with respect to the Hotels’ state-law claims for declaratory relief, and thus I respectfully concur only in the judgment as to those claims. I fully conсur, however, in the majority‘s analysis of the Hotels’ federal-law claims.
Defendant Allen Eugene Battles appeals the 210-month prison sentence imposed following his guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine. Before this court, he challenges only the appropriateness of the method used by the district judge for sentencing defendants granted downward departures from statutory minimum sentences. Our circuit‘s precedent compеls us to reject that challenge, and we thus affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment against the defendant, charging him not only with conspiring to distribute and to possess with intent to distributе five or more kilograms of cocaine, but also with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Prior to trial, however, Battles entered into a plea agreement with thе government, pursuant to which he agreed to plead guilty to the conspiracy charge and to assist the government in its investigation into other drug crimes in exchange for the gоvernment‘s dismissal of the felon-in-possession charge, a recommendation that the district court grant him a reduction in sentence for acceptance of resрonsibility, and a possible motion for a downward departure from the required sentence for providing substantial assistance.
As agreed, Battles did plead guilty to the conspirаcy count of the indictment. Based upon the quantity of cocaine involved in the conspiracy, the defendant, the prosecution, and the district court all concluded that application of the relevant sentencing guidelines provisions ordinarily would yield a sentencing range of 168-210 months for the offense of conviction, as modified by certain agreed-upon concessions. Even so, however, the statute under which Battles was convicted,
I should add that if in fact I‘m wrong about what the guideline sentence is, if the guideline sentence actually becomes not 240 months, the statutory minimum, but 168 to 210 months, the 210 months would still be within, although at the top edge of that range, and I think that would be appropriate as well.
Battles now argues that the district judge erred in considering the guideline sentеnce to be 240 months and that a grant of a 30-month downward departure for providing substantial assistance to the authorities should have resulted in a final sentence between 138 and 180 months (168-210 months minus 30 months).
DISCUSSION
Unfortunately for the defendant, in reviewing his appeal we do not write upon a clean slate. Indeed, prior decisions in this circuit on the claim raised by this appeal have been uniform and preclude us from ruling contrary to those earlier judicial pronouncements. See, e.g., Salmi v. Sec‘y of Health & Human Servs., 774 F.2d 685, 689 (6th Cir.1985) (panel may not overrule circuit preсedent absent an inconsistent Supreme Court decision or an en banc ruling by this court overruling the prior decision). Those binding prior circuit decisions have consistently made two points. First, the cases emphasize that we may exercise jurisdiction over a claim like Battles‘s because the defendant is not arguing simply for a greater departure from a guideline-range sentence—an argument over which we would have no jurisdiction—but, rather, is offering a legal challenge to “the method used to calculate the downward departure for substantial assistance.” United States v. Stewart, 306 F.3d 295, 331 (6th Cir.2002). Second, prior cases explicitly instruct us that, in a situation in which the statutory minimum sentence is greater than the initial calculatiоn of a guideline sentencing range, “the appropriate starting point for calculating a downward departure under
In this case, the initial computation of the guideline range for the offense to which Battles pleaded guilty was 168 to 210 months. However, because the statute defining the crime and its punishment provided for a statutory mandatory punishment of 240 months, see
When a defendant faces a statutory minimum sentence, the district court‘s ability to depart downward below that minimum is limited to two provisions—
18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) , which allows for departures based upon the government‘s motion indicating that a defendant has provided substantial assistance in the investigation of othеr suspects, and18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) , which is known as the “safety valve” provision. In United States v. Burke, 237 F.3d 741, 743 (6th Cir.2001), we recognized that all of the courts that have addressed the issue have determined that these two provisions represent the exclusive means by which а district court may depart below a statutory minimum.
Stewart, 306 F.3d at 331 n. 21 (citations omitted). If we were to adopt the defendant‘s proposal to apply the downward departure to the initiаl guideline range that falls below the statutory minimum, we would, in effect, be approving a third method of avoiding the reach of the statutory sentencing provision. As we stated in Johnson, acceptance of the defendant‘s argument “would afford him a ‘double benefit by first permitting [him] to avoid a higher mandatory minimum sentence and then granting a departure from an even lоwer sentencing guidelines range.‘” Johnson, 564 F.3d at 423 (quoting Stewart, 306 F.3d at 332). This we cannot do.
CONCLUSION
For the reasons set out above, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.