United States v. Gumercindo Salazar-GonzalezUnited States v. Gumercindo Salazar-Gonzalez
Lead Opinion
ORDER AND AMENDED OPINION
ORDER
DefendanU-Appellant’s petition for panel rehearing, filed June 5, 2006, is GRANTED. The disposition filed on April 21, 2006 is amended and replaced by the disposition filed concurrently with this order. No further petitions for rehearing will be entertained by this court.
OPINION
Defendant-appellant Gumercindo Salazar-Gonzalez (“Salazar-Gonzalez”) appeals his conviction for being found in the United States without the consent of the Attorney General in violation of
I.
On October 23, 2003, Border Patrol Agent Raul Castoreña noticed footprints crossing the unmarked United States-Mexico border fence near Jacumbá, California. After following these footprints for approximately 100 yards, Castoreña found Salazar-Gonzalez, sitting with 10 other people, partially obscured in moderately dense brush. He ordered them not to move and then asked their citizenship and if they “had proper documents to be legally present in the United States.” All of the individuals, including Salazar-Gonzalez, responded that they were citizens of Mexico and did not have documents authorizing them to be in the United States.
Salazar-Gonzalez, who had been convicted of crimes in the United States and deported on three previous occasions, most recently on October 20, 2003, was charged and convicted with being found in the United States after deportation in violation of
II.
Preliminarily, we address the district court’s denial of Salazar-Gonzalez’s motion to exclude a “Certificate of Nonexistence of Record” (“CNR”) submitted by the government to prove that Salazar-
III.
Salazar-Gonzalez principally challenges the district court’s refusal to give a jury instruction on the general intent element of being a deported alien “found in” the United States under
Although the district court agreed that a “voluntariness” instruction “could be applicable” and “certainly not frivolous” in some cases, the court rejected Salazar-Gonzalez’ proposed instruction, concluding that “in this case the evidence does not warrant it.” The court instead instructed the jury as follows:
In order for the defendant to be found guilty of [being a deported alien found in the United States], the government must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt: First, the defendant is an alien; second, the defendant was deported or removed from the United States; ... third, the defendant was subsequently found in the United States; and fourth, at the time the defendant was found in the United States he did not have the consent of the United States Attorney General or his designated successor, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, (emphasis added).
“We review de novo the district court’s interpretation of the requisite elements of a federal offense.” United States v. Jime
A.
This case highlights an area of confusion in our
However, a general intent mens rea also requires that a “defendant possessed knowledge with respect to the actus reus of the crime.” Carter v. United States,
For example, in Riverctr-Sillas, the defendant challenged an indictment charging him with being found in the United States in violation of
Supreme Court law and our decisions make clear, however, that Rivera-Sillas correctly concluded that a defendant must enter or remain in the United States knowingly as well as voluntarily to be convicted under the general intent crime of being “found in” the United States under
We therefore hold that for a defendant to be convicted of a
B.
The Supreme Court has long held that the Due Process Clause requires the government to prove each element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In re Winship,
We recognize that some of our cases interpreting
To the contrary, our case law is consistent with the proposition that the government must prove that the alien’s presence in the country is both knowing and voluntary. See, e.g., Quintana-Torres,
However, we have never strayed from requiring proof of “general intent” as an essential ingredient of a conviction under
Despite this error, we nonetheless affirm the conviction because it is “clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found the defendant guilty absent the error.” Neder, 527 U.S. at 18,
It is unreasonable to believe that 11 Mexican nationals could cross such a barrier from a far northern point in the Mexican countryside involuntarily or without knowing that they were entering the United States. Moreover, Salazar-Gonzales presented no evidence of involuntary or unknowing entry other than the description of this fence and the isolated surrounding area. Cf. Jimenez-Borja,
C.
Salazar-Gonzalez also argues that the district court unconstitutionally enhanced his sentence under the then-mandatory Sentencing Guidelines based on facts not alleged in the indictment or proven to a jury, in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights and Apprendi v. New Jersey,
We need not reach the merits of Salazar-Gonzalez’s Sixth Amendment argument, because Salazar-Gonzalez is entitled to full vacatur of his sentence and a remand for resentencing under United States v. Beng-Salazar,
In Beng-Salazar, we held that “a defendant who raised an objection in district court based on the Sixth Amendment holdings of the Apprendi line of cases preserved his [nonconstitutional Booker ] claim that he is entitled to resentencing under the advisory Guidelines regime .... unless the Government can show that the error was harmless.” Id. at 1097. Here, as in Beng-Salazar, Salazar-Gonzalez objected to the enhancement of his sentence based on facts that had not been found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, namely that his two prior convictions were “unrelated.” In support of his argument, he relied on Blakely v. Washington,
We further hold that the government has not satisfied its burden of demonstrating that the district court’s error was harmless. Indeed, reversal is required even if “we find ourselves ‘in equipoise as to the harmlessness of the error ....’” Beng-Salazar,
Conviction AFFIRMED, sentence VACATED and REMANDED.
Notes
. Salazar-Gonzalez argues that the district court erred by failing to instruct on voluntariness, and that this failure precluded him from presenting the defense that he "inadvertently” or "unknowingly” wandered into the United States. Although Salazar-Gonzalez argues that he was entitled to a jury instruction embodying his defense theory, his objection to the jury instructions is more appropriately viewed as a request that the jury receive an instruction on each element of the crime. Indeed, in his opening brief, Salazar-Gonzalez begins by claiming that "[t]he district court failed, over objection, to instruct on the elements of general criminal intent.” Similarly, before the district court, defense counsel argued that "voluntariness of return is an element which must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” The district court’s ruling, "denlying] the defense motion that a voluntariness issue or element be added," further supports this view of Salazar-Gonzalez' request. (Emphasis added.)
. We recently confirmed in an en banc decision that a panel creates circuit law when it "addresse[s][an] issue and decide[s] it in an opinion joined in relevant part by the majority of the panel.” Barapind v. Enomoto,
. In United States v. Pina-Jaime, we suggested that knowledge was an element of the "found in” offense but did not address the issue directly.
.To the extent the district court conflated knowledge and voluntariness, we are not surprised given the parties' arguments during the jury instruction colloquy. For example, in arguing against a voluntariness instruction, the government suggested that the issue of voluntariness in Salazar-Gonzalez's case was “bleeding into his knowledge about entering the United States.” The government then stated, incorrectly, that such knowledge "is definitely not an element” of the offense. In response, defense counsel first stated that she was "not arguing ... that [Salazar-Gonzalez] has to know he is in the United States,” though later in the proceeding, defense counsel reintroduced the knowledge concept (albeit in support of a voluntariness instruction) that “the jury could have reasonably concluded that Mr. Salazar did not necessarily know he had entered the United States.”
. Agent Castoreña, testifying before the jury, described the fence and surrounding terrain as follows:
Castoreña: [There is a] [dirt] border road ... running parallel, right next to the international border fence.... In that area there is a fence that is approximately ten, eleven feet high. And it actually ends. And then it continues to a shorter fence that is only three and a half to four feet high. And that is were I saw the foot sign coming across the lower portion of the fence.
[Defense Counsel]: And there is nothing in that area to — there is not, like, a sign, like a traffic sign that indicates that is the United States, right?
Castoreña: In that immediate area there is not a sign.
. If the government on remand continues to assert that the police reports and other documents, such as the notice to appear, minutes of the clerk's record and any incident reports, support application of the enhancement under § 4A1.1, the district court will need to determine whether Shepard forecloses the enhancement. See also United States v. Alma
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and in the judgment:
I concur in Parts I, II, and III.C, and in the judgment on Parts III.A and B. I part company with respect to the need to “clarify” what instructions should be given in “found in” cases for, as the district court correctly held, there was no evidence to support an instruction that Salazar-Gonzalez was not knowingly and voluntarily found in the United States. He was found with eleven others, who also had no permission to be here, hiding in a bush 100 yards away from the border having climbed a fence that ranged from four to eleven feet at its lowest point, and offered no evidence that he didn’t know he was in this country.
. In these circumstances, there was no basis upon which a reasonable jury could find that Salazar-Gonzalez did not enter the United States knowingly and voluntarily. See United States v. Rivera-Sillas,