Lead Opinion
Special Concurrence by Judge O’Scannlain; Dissent by Judge Ráwlinson
OPINION
We must decide whether a conviction for .possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute under Washington state law is an aggravated felony for purposes of federal immigration law.-
I
Jose Valdivia-Flores is a Mexican • citizen who entered the United States without inspection in 1995. In 1997, he was charged with and ultimately pled guilty to a violation of Washington’s drug trafficking statute, Wash. Rev., Code § 69.50.401. In his Statement of Defendant on Plea of Guilty, Valdivia-Flores described the crime he was being charged with as: “possession with intent to. deliver—Heroin.” He also wrote out the elements of the crime: “Possess a controlled substance (heroin) with intent to distribute it in King County and know it was a narcotic drug.” Finally, stating what made him guilty of Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50.401 in his own words, Valdi-via-Flores wrote: “On June 20, 1997 in King County WA I did unlawfully possess with intent to deliver Heroin a controlled substance and did know it Was a controlled substance.*’ Valdivia-Flores was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment, which ’ he served at an accelerated pace over seven months at a work ethic camp.
While he was in the camp, immigration officers prepared a Notice to Appear which charged Valdivia-Flores with being removable. In an order dated January 28, 1998, an immigration judge suspended the immigration proceedings because Valdivia-Flores was still serving his sentence at the camp and therefore could not be produced for a hearing. Nonetheless, at the conclusion of his sentence in April 1998, immigration officers physically removed Valdi-via-Flores to Mexico without an order. Valdivia-Flores returned to the State of Washington that same year, again without inspection at the border.
In 2009, Valdivia-Flores was convicted of malicious mischief in the third degree in violation of Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.48.090 for smashing the windshield of his wife’s vehicle after an argument. He pled guilty, and his sentence was suspended. At the time of that prosecution, the Department of Homeland Security initiated administrative removal proceedings pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1228(b). In March 2009, he received two copies of a form, one in English and one in Spanish, titled Notice of Rights and Request for Disposition. This notice informed Valdivia-Flores that he had “the right to a hearing before the Immigration Court to determine whether [he] may remain in the United States.” Valdivia-Flores filled out and signed the Spanish version of the form, electing to request a hearing before the Immigration Court.
Also in March 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued Valdivia-Flores a Notice of Intent to Issue a Final Administrative Removal Order (“Notice of Intent”). It stated that Valdivia-Flores’s 1997 conviction under Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50.401(a) was for an aggravated felony so that he was removable without a hearing before an immigration judge. The Notice of Intent informed Valdivia-Flores of his right to petition for review of his removal in the appropriate U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It also provided three check-boxes of options by which Valdivia-Flores could “contest [his] deportability”: (1) he could assert that he was “a citizen or national of the United States”; (2) he could assert that he was “a lawful permanent resident”; and (3) he could claim that he was “not convicted of the criminal offense described” in the Notice of Intent. Valdivia-Flores did not contest his removal or request withholding of removal and instead checked a box acknowledging that he had “the right to remain in the United States for 14 calendar days in order to apply for judicial review” and that he “waive[d] this right.” He did not petition for review of the removal decision and was removed on April 4, 2009. He remained in Mexico for a few days and then unlawfully reentered the United States for a third time.
On August 13, 2013, Valdivia-Flores was arrested in Washington for being an illegal alien found in the United States, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. He pled guilty and was convicted in the Western District of Washington in September 2013. Immigration authorities once again initiated removal proceedings. Valdivia-Flores requested asylum and sought a stay of removal “for humanitarian reasons,” but those requests were denied, and Valdivia-Flores was removed in September 2014.
On November 13, 2014, Valdivia-Flores attempted to return (for a fourth time) to the United States, applying for entry through the pedestrian lanes at the San Ysidiro, California port of entry. Valdivia-Flores falsely identified himself as another person and presented a false and fraudulent United States Certification of Naturalization. He was charged with one count of attempted reentry of a removed alien in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 and one count of fraudulent use of an immigration document in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1546.
Prior to trial, Valdivia-Flores brought a collateral attack against the validity of his 2009 order of removal and moved to dismiss the attempted reentry count of the indictment. The district court denied the motion to dismiss because Valdivia-Flores “did in fact admit in his plea agreement to committing a drug trafficking offense, which is an aggravated felony.”
The parties then entered into a stipulation in which Valdivia-Flores agreed to facts satisfying all the elements of both counts in the indictment. Based on those stipulated facts, following a bench trial the district court found Valdivia-Flores guilty of both charges and sentenced him to 21 months’ imprisonment on both counts, running concurrently.
Valdivia-Flores filed this timely appeal and seeks to challenge collaterally the classification of his underlying Washington state conviction as an aggravated felony.
II
Valdivia-Flores contends that because his 1997 conviction was incorrectly determined to be an aggravated felony, his 2009 removal was invalid. If the 2009 removal was invalid, that “precludes reliance on th[at] deportation” in the subsequent illegal reentry prosecution. United States v. Ramos,
Valdivia-Flores contends that his due process rights were indeed violated because “immigration officials failed to obtain a knowing waiver of’ his right to appeal the removal order. Gomez,
Because Valdivia-Flores asserts that his waiver was not considered and intelligent, the government must show, by clear and convincing evidence that the waiver was valid, Ramos,
Here, although the Notice of Intent described the window in which Valdivia-Flores could respond to the charges against him or file a petition for judicial review, it did not explicitly inform him that he could refute, through either an administrative or judicial procedure, the legal conclusion underlying his removability. In fact, the Notice of Intent’s three check boxes suggested just the opposite—that removability could only be contested on factual grounds. The list of options available to “check off’ did ■ not include an option to contest the classification of the conviction as an aggravated felony, and the only check box relevant to the conviction itself only allowed Valdivia-Flores to contest that- he “was not convicted of the criminal offense described.”
The form’s deficiencies are magnified because Valdivia-Flores “was not represented and never had the benefit of appearing before an [immigration judge], who, we presume, would have adequately conveyed both [his] appeal options and the finality associated with waiving appeal.” Ramos,
Under these circumstances, we conclude that Valdivia-Flores’s waiver of the right to seek judicial review was not considered and intelligent. Accord Gomez,
Ill
A
With a due process violation established,, the next step in Valdivia-Flores’s argument is that the 2009 removal order “was fundamentally unfair,” so he satisfies the final prong of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d) to succeed in his collateral attack. He must “show that it was ‘plausible’ that he would have received some form of relief from removal had his rights not been violated in the removal proceedings.” Gomez,
To determine whether an offense qualifies as an “aggravated felony,” we apply the categorical approach articulated in Taylor v. United States,
To make his argument that the Washington drug-trafficking law is broader than its federal analogue, .Valdivia-Flores observes that, under both the federal and state criminal laws, a person charged with a drug trafficking offense may be convicted either as a principal or for aiding and abetting. Critically, he says, Washington defines aiding and abetting more broadly than does federal law so that Washington forbids more conduct.
The implicit nature of aiding and abetting liability in every criminal charge is sufficiently well-settled that the government in this case does not contest it. See Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez,
At the time of Valdivia-Flores’s conviction, Washington’s aiding and abetting statute stated: “A person is an accomplice ... in the commission of a crime if ... [w]ith knowledge that it will promote or facilitate the commission of the crime, he ... solicits, commands, encourages, or requests such other person to commit it; or aids or agrees to aid such other person in planning or committing it.” Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.08.020(3)(a)(i)-(ii) (1997) (emphasis added). In contrast, under federal law, “to prove liability as an aider and abettor the government must establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused had the specific intent to facilitate the commission of a crime by someone else.” United States v. Garcia,
Consistent with the Model Penal Code on which it is based, Washington’s criminal law expressly codifies the distinction between intent and knowledge and makes plain that knowledge is a less 'demanding mens rea requirement. “A person acts with intent or intentionally when he acts with the objective or purpose to accomplish a result which constitutes a crime.” Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.08.010(l)(a) (1997)' (emphasis added). In contrast, “[a] person knows or acts knowingly or with knowledge when ... (i) he is aware of a1 fact, facts, or circumstances or result described by a statute defining an offense; or (ii) he has information which would lead a reasonable man in the same situation to believe that facts exist-which facts are described by a statute defining an offense.” Id. § 9A.08.010(l)(b) (emphasis added).
The same distinction exists in federal law, There, “a person who causes a particular result is said to act purposefully”—or with specific intent—“if he consciously desires that result ... while he is said to act knowingly if he is aware that that result is practically certain to follow from his conduct, whatever his desire may be as to that result.” United States v. Bailey,
Therefore, the Washington drug trafficking law* on its face appears to have a more inclusive mens rea requirement for accomplice liability than-its federal analogue. The Washington Supreme Court’s case law indicates that the distinction between intent and knowledge is meaningful.
B
The government’s principal response to this statutory language and case law is to cite contrary Washington case law that suggests accomplice liability turns on a mens rea standard closer to intent than knowledge. E.g., In re Welfare of Wilson,
In the face of the clear statutory language and the most authoritative state case law, the government argues as a fallback that—even if there is a formal distinction between the state and federal mens rea requirements—in practice, Washington’s law does not “extend significantly beyond” its federal analogue for purposes of categorical comparison. Duenas-Alvarez,
Finally, the government makes a pragmatic argument that, under Valdivia-Flores’s proposed application of the categorical approach, “no Washington state conviction can serve as an aggravated’felony at all because of [the] accomplice liability statute” and that such a result “cannot have been Congress’s intent.” The government here merely joins a chorus of those who “have raised concerns about [the] line of decisions” applying the categorical approach, “[b]ut whether for good or for ill, the elements-based approach remains the law.” Mathis v. United States, — U.S. -,
Under a straightforward application of the categorical approach, Washington’s drug trafficking statute is overbroad compared to its federal analogue, and Valdi-via-Flores’s conviction cannot support an aggravated felony determination.
C
The district court’s ruling, however, was based on a somewhat alternative analysis: applying the modified categorical approach, which permits a court to look at the documents of conviction. Using those, the district court determined that Valdi-via-Flores was, in fact, convicted as a principal rather than an accomplice and so fell within the federal generic drug trafficking prohibition.
It is only “[i]n a narrow range of cases”’ however, “when the statute at issue is divisible,” that a court “may employ” the modified categorical approach to look at the underlying documents of conviction.
Washington law.is clear'that jurors need not agree. on whether a defendant is a principal or accomplice. See State v. Hoffman,
IV
Because Valdiviar-Flores’s drug trafficking conviction does not qualify as an aggravated felony under the categorical approach, it cannot support the asserted basis for Valdivia-Flores’s 2009 removal. Valdiviar-Flores was therefore prejudiced from his inability to seek judicial review for that removal. He thus satisfies all three elements of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d), and his collateral attack on the underlying deportation order should have been successful.
The judgment of the' district court is therefore REVERSED and the case. REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Notes
. "We review the district court’s denial of a motion to dismiss an indictment brought pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d) de novo.” United States v. Cisneros-Rodriguez,
. State statutes and the state court decisions interpreting them are both "authoritative sources of state law.” Mathis v. United States, — U.S. —,
. Our dissenting colleague rejects potential differences between Washington and federal aiding and abetting liability on the ground that we should look no further than the state statute defining the principal offense of drug trafficking, which does match its federal analogue. But as the dissent points out, “conviction of aiding and abetting is tantamount to conviction of the underlying offense.” It is for just that reason that, under the categorical approach, "the criminal activities of ... aiders and abettors of a generic” offense “must themselves fall within the scope of the [analogue] federal statute.” Duenas-Alvarez,
. The dissent argues "that documents in the record relevant to ValdiviarFlores’ conviction leave little doubt that he was convicted as a . .principal, and not as an accomplice.” We may not consider such documents, of course, if the statute is not divisible.
. That conclusion comports with our prior holding regarding federal aiding and abetting liability outside of the immigration context, where we have held that "[a]iding and abetting ... is simply one means of committing a ... crime.” Garcia,
Concurrence Opinion
specially concurring.
Although the result in this case is dictated by the case law of the Supreme Court and our Circuit, I write separately to highlight how it illustrates the bizarre and arbitrary effects of the ever-spreading categorical approach for comparing state law offenses to federal criminal definitions. I am hardly the first federal circuit judge, to express puzzlement at how the categorical approach has come to be applied. See, e.g., United States v. Doctor,
Almost three decades ago, in Taylor v. United States,
As Judge Wilkinson observed in his criticism of the present state of the categorical approach, when it comes to ACCA and sentencing, a district court “has various tools to impose a stricter sentence if it believes that the categorical approach is ignoring a violent criminal history or dis-serving the general aims of sentencing.” Doctor,
In the context of the case before us, however, there is no way to remedy an especially absurd result of applying the categorical approach. When a removal premised on a prior state conviction for an aggravated felony is collaterally attacked years later, a court’s only role once reaching the merits is to apply the categorical approach and to determine if. the state statute of conviction was a categorical match with its federal analogue. As today’s decision makes clear, if the challenger is clever enough to find some space in the state statutory scheme that lies outside the federal analogue, he can effectively void that prior removal for purposes of his present illegal reentry prosecution-even though the challenger admits that the actual conduct underlying his state conviction falls at the heart of the federal analogue. There is no discretion to be exercised.
Congress made clear its desire to remove aliens who have committed “aggravated felonies,” which it expressly defined to include any “drug trafficking crime,” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(B), meaning “any felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act,” 18, U.S.C. § 924. Nobody contests .that ,Valdivia-Flores possessed heroin with intent to deliver it, nor that such conduct is indeed a felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act. There is no reason to doubt, then, that Valdivia-Flores actually did commit an aggravated felony. Because of the judicially-created categorical approach and a quirk in the drafting of Washington’s statutory scheme, however, he escapes the consequences that Congress intended for such conduct.
Whatever the merits of' the Supreme Court’s rationale for imposing the categorical approach on sentencing under ACCA, where judges have discretion to correct for particularly arbitrary and unjust results, the effect is far more pernicious in cases such as this one where there is no chance for correction. Shouldn’t it be possible to have a more “practical reading” of the Immigration and Nationality Act so that, “[w]hen it is clear that a. defendant necessarily admitted or the jury necessarily found that the .defendant committed the elements of [the generic federal crime], the conviction should qualify” for purposes of classifying it as an aggravated felony? Descamps v. United States,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting:
Jose Valdivia-Flores was convicted of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance in violation of Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50.401. The majority describes our task as “determin[ing] whether Valdi-via-Flores’ conviction under Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50.401 was for an aggravated felony.” Majority Opinion, p. 1206. Yet, inexplicably, the majority completely fails to address that statute.
In determining whether Valdivia-Flores was convicted of an aggraved felony, we compare the state statute of conviction to the generic federal definition of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. See Roman-Suaste v. Holder,
The pertinent CSA provision in this case, provides: “Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally ... to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent tó manufacture, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance.” 21 U.S.C. §■ 841(a)(1). The Washington statute underlying Valdivia-Flores’ 1997 conviction, stated in pertinent part: “Except as authorized by this chapter, it is unlawful for any person to manufacture, deliver, or possess with intent to manufacture or deliver, a controlled substance.” Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50.401(a) (1997).
Washington’s aiding and abetting statute stated at the time of Valdivia-Flores’ conviction: “A person is an accomplice of another person in the commission of a crime if ... [wjith knowledge that it will promote or facilitate the commission of the crime, he ... [sjolicits, commands, encourages, or requests such other person to commit it; or [ajids or agrees to aid such other person in planning or committing it.” Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.08.020(3)(a)(i)-(ii) (1997).
Valdivia-Flores does not vigorously challenge the notion that a drug trafficking offense constitutes an aggravated felony. Rather, he contends that'our categorical analysis should focus on Washington’s aiding and abetting statute, which he argues is implicit in Washington’s drug trafficking statute. Valdivia-Flores relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez,
The majority goes astray by accepting Valdivia-Flores’ argument. Reliance on Duenas-Alvarez as authority to support focusing our categorical analysis on Washington’s aiding and abetting statute is misplaced. In Duenas-Alvarez, the Supreme Court held that a “theft offense” includes the crime of aiding and abetting a theft offense.
Any person who drives or takes a vehicle not his or her own, without the consent of the owner thereof, and with intent either to permanently or temporarily deprive the owner thereof of his or her title to or possession of the vehicle, whether with or without intent to steal the vehicle, or any person who is a party or an accessory to or an accomplice in the driving or unauthorized taking or stealing, is guilty of a public offense.
Id. at 187,
The majority compares Washington’s aiding and abetting statute—a statute that Valdivia admitted is a separate statute from the statute of conviction—to the generic definition of aiding and abetting. See Majority Opinion, pp. 1206-09. As the district court observed in United States v. Gonzalez-Altamirano, No. 14CR 750-BEN,
Defendant ... asks the Court to go beyond the Washington statute of conviction, look at a different statute, find that it impliedly applies to every offense, and find the application of the implication carries the conviction beyond the federal generic drug trafficking offense. To borrow a phrase, this argument requires the sort of theoretical possibility that was cautioned against in Gonzalez v. Duenas-Alvarez....
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Tellingly, as in Gonzalez-Altami-rano, the majority cites no precedent skipping over the actual statute of conviction to plug a completely different statute into the Taylor analysis. See
It is also worth mentioning that documents in the record relevant to Valdivia-Flores’ conviction leave little doubt that he' was convicted as a principal and not as an accomplice. The information charged Val-divia-Flores with unlawfully and felo-niously possessing with the intent to manufacture or deliver heroin in violation of Wash. Rev.- Code § 69.50.401(a)(1). The Plea Statement signed by Valdivia-Flores contains a handwritten acknowledgment that he was charged with possession of heroin with intent to deliver, stating the elements of-the crime, and describing in his own words that he did “unlawfully possess with intent to deliver Heroin” knowing that it was a controlled substance. In a stipulation of facts provided to the district court, Valdivia-Flores agreed that on August 8, 1997, he suffered a felony conviction for Possession with Intent to Deliver Heroin, in violation of Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50.401(a). Finally, the state court’s judgment and sentence documented that Valdivia-Flores was convicted of Possession with Intent to Deliver Heroin in violation of Wash. Rev. Code' § 69.50.401(a)(1). Noticeably, no evidence in the record refers to Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.08.020 or suggests that Valdivia-Flores was convicted as an accomplice.
In my view, the majority has impermis-sibly veered away from the statute of conviction to find overbreadth based on its analysis of a statute that was not part of the prosecution or conviction in this case. Our analysis should have been on the actual statute of conviction, Wash. Rev. Code § 69.50,401, which meets the; definition of an aggravated felony.
■ Indeed, our precedent makes it crystal clear that conviction of aiding and abetting is tantamount to conviction of the underlying offense. See Salazar-Luviano v. Mukasey,
In Sales v. Sessions,
In Salazar-Lmiano and in Ortiz-Maga-na, we discerned no reason to delve into the intricacies of the aiding and abetting statutes. Quite the opposite. "As we explained in Salazar-Luviano in. rejecting the government’s attempt to address the elements of the aiding and abetting statute, “[t]he government’s observation that aiding and abetting is a specific intent crime, is beside the point. Aiding and abetting is not a stand-alone offense-one convicted of aiding and abetting is guilty of the underlying substantive offense as if he committed it directly.”