UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus CHRISTOPHER JASON HENRY, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 18-15251
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
August 7, 2020
D.C. Docket No. 2:17-cr-00508-WKW-GMB-1
[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
(August 7, 2020)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, GRANT, Circuit Judge, and ANTOON,* District Judge.
This appeal requires us to decide whether the district court erred by refusing to adjust Christopher Henry‘s federal sentence for time served on a related state sentence. See
I. BACKGROUND
In November 2016, Christopher Henry broke into a business in Covington County, Alabama, and stole eight firearms. Police arrested Henry a few days later. At the time of his burglary, Henry had a prior conviction for assault and 10 prior convictions for burglary. He pleaded guilty to burglary in the Covington County Circuit Court for his latest crime. In February 2017, that court sentenced Henry to 20 years of imprisonment.
In November 2017, a federal grand jury indicted Henry on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm,
A probation officer prepared a presentence investigation report using the 2016 edition of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. The report assigned Henry a total offense level of 27 and a criminal history category of VI. Based on those calculations, Henry‘s guideline range of imprisonment was 130 to 162 months. But because the statutory maximum sentence for his crime was 10 years of imprisonment, see
At his sentencing hearing in November 2018, Henry relied on
months from his guideline sentence of 120 months of imprisonment would yield a sentence of 96 months of imprisonment. And Henry urged the district court to vary downward and sentence him to 60 months of imprisonment based on the statutory factors. See
The government “conceptually agree[d]” with Henry that his sentence should be adjusted for the 24 months he had already served on his state burglary sentence. But because Henry‘s original guideline range of imprisonment was 130 to 162 months, the government proposed that the district court subtract the 24 months from that range to yield a new guideline range of 106 to 138 months. The government asked the district court to impose the statutory maximum sentence of 120 months of imprisonment, near the middle of the new range it had calculated. The government also agreed with Henry that his federal and state sentences should run concurrently.
The district court sentenced Henry to 108 months of imprisonment. Because of Henry‘s many prior convictions for burglary, the court refused to impose a lower sentence. But it explained that Henry‘s federal and state sentences would run concurrently because his state burglary conviction was relevant conduct to the federal offense. See
Henry asked the district court to clarify whether it had adjusted his sentence by 24 months under
Henry objected to the sentence. He explained that
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review an interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo. United States v. Whyte, 928 F.3d 1317, 1327 (11th Cir. 2019).
III. DISCUSSION
(b) If . . . a term of imprisonment resulted from another offense that is relevant conduct to the instant offense of conviction . . ., the sentence for the instant offense shall be imposed as follows:
(1) the court shall adjust the sentence for any period of imprisonment already served on the undischarged term of imprisonment if the court determines that such period of imprisonment will not be credited to the federal sentence by the Bureau of Prisons[.]
This guideline uses mandatory language: it says that “the sentence . . . shall be imposed as follows” and that “the court shall adjust the sentence” if the relevant requirements are satisfied.
To trigger a mandatory adjustment under this guideline, four requirements must be satisfied. First, the defendant must have served a period of imprisonment for another offense. Second, that term of imprisonment must remain undischarged. Third, the other offense must be relevant conduct to the instant offense of conviction. And fourth, the Bureau of Prisons must not credit that period of
imprisonment to the defendant‘s new sentence.
The parties have never disputed that the requirements were satisfied in Henry‘s case. Henry had served 24 months in custody for his state burglary offense at the time of his federal sentencing—from November 2016 to November 2018. Although he entered federal custody in January 2018 through a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, he continued to serve his state sentence as his federal proceedings progressed. See Vignera v. Att‘y Gen., 455 F.2d 637, 637-38 (5th Cir. 1972). The 20-year state sentence remains undischarged, and his theft of the eight firearms was relevant conduct to his federal felon-in-possession offense. See
A straightforward application of the guideline required the district court to adjust Henry‘s sentence. But the district court refused to do so on the ground that “[t]he Sentencing Commission doesn‘t get to say ‘shall.‘” The government echoes
this proposition on appeal. It argues that because the Guidelines are advisory under Booker, the district court was free to vary from
The government resists the straightforward application of the mandatory language in
To be sure, post-Booker references to the “advisory” Guidelines are ubiquitous in judicial opinions. See, e.g., Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85, 91 (2007) (“[U]nder Booker, the cocaine Guidelines, like all other Guidelines, are advisory only.“). Indeed, “[v]irtually all of us are in the habit of distinguishing, in one way or another, between the ‘mandatory Guidelines’ that operated before Booker and the ‘advisory Guidelines’ that have operated since.” Lester v. United States, 921 F.3d 1306, 1312 (11th Cir. 2019) (W. Pryor, J., respecting the denial of
rehearing en banc). But sometimes idioms that are accurate in one respect “may be erroneous or inadequate in other respects.” Id. The maxim “advisory Guidelines” is no exception.
Mandatory application of
According to the government, this result would contravene the advisory Guidelines regime of Booker. Cf. United States v. Bangsengthong, 550 F.3d 681, 682 (7th Cir. 2008) (”Booker made all Guidelines advisory . . .” (emphasis added)); United States v. De La Cruz, 897 F.3d 841, 846 (7th Cir. 2018) (“[T]he notion of a mandatory term in the advisory Guidelines requires . . . intellectual flexibility.“). We disagree. This argument misunderstands which aspects of the Guidelines Booker held advisory.
Booker involved a Sixth Amendment challenge to the practice of judges finding facts at sentencing that increased a defendant‘s mandatory sentencing range under the Guidelines. 543 U.S. at 226-27. The Court held that this practice violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Id. at 227-29 & n.1. To remedy the constitutional violation, a separate majority of the Court held invalid the provision of federal law,
Although Booker held the guideline range advisory, it did not make every provision of the Guidelines optional. Both before and after Booker, sentencing requirements in the Guidelines that neither enhance a defendant‘s sentence based on judicial factfinding nor mandate the imposition of a sentence within the guideline range are binding on sentencing courts, so long as they do not conflict
with a federal statute or the Constitution. As explained below, a mandatory adjustment under
To understand why some aspects of the Guidelines remain binding after Booker, it helps to review why all the Guidelines were ever considered binding in the first place. The Sentencing Guidelines “are the equivalent of legislative rules adopted by federal agencies.” Stinson v. United States, 508 U.S. 36, 45 (1993). The United States Sentencing Commission promulgates the Guidelines using the rulemaking procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act, see
The nature of the Guidelines as law is reflected in several provisions of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-473, 98 Stat. 1987, which created the Sentencing Commission and empowered it to promulgate the Guidelines. As we all know, the Act purported to make the sentencing range produced by the Guidelines binding on the sentencing court, although Booker later held that it could
not do so.
Because the Guidelines have the force and effect of law, sentencing courts may refuse to apply them only if they conflict with a higher source of law. Cf. Stinson, 508 U.S. at 38 (holding that even the commentary to a guideline is binding unless it conflicts with the Constitution, a federal statute, or the guideline itself). Booker makes clear that, in the light of its constitutional holding, mandatory application of the guideline range would be inconsistent with the otherwise enforceable provisions of the Sentencing Reform Act. See Lester, 921 F.3d at 1314-15 (W. Pryor, J., respecting the denial of rehearing en banc). For that reason, sentencing courts need not—indeed, they must not—treat the guideline range as mandatory. See United States v. Sarras, 575 F.3d 1191, 1219 (11th Cir. 2009).
Mandatory language in the Guidelines also must yield to any contrary instructions in other federal statutes. Compare
To determine whether
The text of
mandates a sentence adjustment for a certain class of defendants; it has nothing to do with calculating a defendant‘s guideline range.
The structure of the Guidelines confirms that
The commentary to
Because
sentence after considering the guideline range and the statutory factors and then adjust the selected sentence to account for time served on the undischarged sentence for relevant conduct.
We acknowledge that our decision in Gonzalez-Murillo, 852 F.3d at 1336-37, requires district courts to treat
“guideline range” in one narrow circumstance: sentence-modification proceedings based on an amendment to the Guidelines,
The amended guideline range in a sentence-modification proceeding carries a significance that does not attach to the original guideline range. Unlike at sentencing, where the guideline range is advisory, a district court in a sentence-modification proceeding is forbidden to reduce the defendant‘s sentence beneath “the minimum of the amended guideline range” except in one limited circumstance not relevant here.
Although we may have doubts about whether Gonzalez-Murillo was correct on this point, see Helm, 891 F.3d at 743-44, the decision binds district courts to
treat
In sum, sentence adjustments under
must adjust that sentence for time served on an undischarged term of imprisonment if the requirements of
The district court erred by failing to adjust Henry‘s sentence as
IV. CONCLUSION
We VACATE Henry‘s sentence and REMAND for resentencing.
