UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee,
No. 17-30096
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
February 1, 2019
D.C. No. 2:16-cr-00325-RSL-1
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington Robert S. Lasnik, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted November 6, 2018 Seattle, Washington
Filed February 1, 2019
* The Honorable Fernando J. Gaitan, Jr., United States District Judge for the Western District of Missouri, sitting by designation.
SUMMARY**
Criminal Law
The panel vacated a sentence and remanded for resentencing in a case in which the defendant pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The panel held that second-degree assault under
The panel held that second-degree murder under
The panel held that second-degree murder under
The panel held that the district court‘s sentencing errors were not harmless.
** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
COUNSEL
Alan Zarky (argued), Staff Attorney; Mohammad Ali Hamoudi, Assistant Federal Public Defender; Office of the Federal Public Defender, Seattle, Washington; for Defendant-Appellant.
Helen J. Brunner (argued), Assistant United States Attorney; Annette L. Hayes, United States Attorney; United States Attorney‘s Office, Seattle, Washington; for Plaintiff-Appellee.
OPINION
GAITAN, District Judge:
Robert Vederoff appeals the sentence imposed following his guilty plea to being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of
I. BACKGROUND
Vederoff was charged with and pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of
Before sentencing, the United States Probation Office issued a Presentence Report (“PSR“). The PSR set the base offense level at 24, under
Vederoff objected to either of these convictions counting as “crimes of violence” under
On May 5, 2017, the district court sentenced Vederoff to 60 months in custody after concluding that both convictions were crimes of violence. In explaining its decision, the district court stated:
So on the, you know, the [United States v. Johnson, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015),] issues — and we‘re still in a state of flux on this — it drives me absolutely nuts as a trial judge to think that things like murder and assault with a deadly weapon could be conceived as not being crimes of violence,
but these are highly technical rulings from courts that predominantly don‘t have people who have ever been in a trial court, let alone been a trial-court lawyer or trial-court judge. But my analysis of this is that they are both countable crimes of violence, and it is an offense level 21, Criminal History Category VI, 77 to 96 range. If [defense counsel] is correct, it would be a level 14, Criminal History Category VI, with a 37 to 46 range.
Either way, looking at the factors, I really believe the right sentence is a five-year prison term. So I‘m going to impose a 60-month prison term. It‘s either a departure downward from a range that‘s too high or a departure upward from a range that‘s too low. But the murder and the assault two are, in the Court‘s opinion, countable under the analysis of being a divisible crime in the assault two, and that the ways to commit aiding and abetting felony murder have to comport with the national standard of doing something active to join in a felony that‘s a serious felony, not some sort of hypothetical minor felony. It has to be during the commission of a dangerous felony or through conduct evincing reckless or depraved indifference to the serious dangers. But as I say, the range is not as important to me as what is the right sentence for this individual under these circumstances, and I think for the deterrent effect and the punishment effect, five years is correct for the prison term.[3]
Vederoff timely appealed his sentence.
II. JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW
We have jurisdiction pursuant to
III. DISCUSSION
Under
any offense under federal or state law, punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, that —
(1) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another, or
(2) is murder, voluntary manslaughter, kidnapping, aggravated assault, . . . .
A. The Washington crime of second-degree assault does not qualify as a “crime of violence” under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2 .
Under Washington law,
[a] person is guilty of assault in the second degree if he or she, under circumstances not amounting to assault in the first degree:
(a) Intentionally assaults another and thereby recklessly inflicts substantial bodily harm; or
(b) Intentionally and unlawfully causes substantial bodily harm to an unborn quick child by intentionally and unlawfully inflicting any injury upon the mother of such child; or
(c) Assaults another with a deadly weapon; or
(d) With intent to inflict bodily harm, administers to or causes to be taken by another, poison or any other destructive or noxious substance; or
(e) With intent to commit a felony, assaults another; or
(f) Knowingly inflicts bodily harm which by design causes such pain or agony as to be the equivalent of that produced by torture; or
(g) Assaults another by strangulation or suffocation.
For the purposes of defining federal assault, the government urges us to adopt the following definition of “aggravated
a felonious assault that involved (A) a dangerous weapon with intent to cause bodily injury (i.e., not merely to frighten) with that weapon; (B) serious bodily injury; (C) strangling, suffocating, or attempting to strangle or suffocate; or (D) an intent to commit another felony.
Accordingly, in this case we compare the definition of “aggravated assault” under Washington law to the generic definition of aggravated assault. The least culpable means within the Washington statute is assault with intent to commit a felony,
circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life” or with a deadly weapon. Model Penal Code § 211.1(2). It does not include assault with intent to commit another felony.
With respect to the laws of the states, only six states (including Washington) and the District of Columbia include assault with intent to commit any felony within their assault statutes (whether titled “aggravated” assault or not).6 In 11 states, aggravated assault includes assault with the intent to commit a narrower set of specific felonies7 or assault committed during the commission of a felony.8 In
law clearly covers a broader range of conduct than generic aggravated assault. We have previously concluded that Washington‘s second-degree assault statute is indivisible, Robinson, 869 F.3d at 941, so we cannot apply the modified categorical approach here. Contrary to the conclusion reached by the district court, second-degree assault under Washington law is not a “crime of violence” under
B. The Washington crime of second-degree murder does not qualify as a “crime of violence” under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2 .
At the time of Vederoff‘s offense, Washington law defined second-degree murder as when:
(a) With intent to cause the death of another person but without premeditation, he or she causes the death of such person or of a third person; or
(b) He or she commits or attempts to commit any felony, including assault, other than those enumerated in RCW 9A.32.030(1)(c) [Washington‘s first-degree murder statute], and, in the course of and in furtherance of such crime or in immediate flight therefrom, he or she, or another participant, causes the death of a person other than one of the participants; except that in any prosecution under this subdivision (1)(b) in which the defendant was not the only participant in the underlying crime, if established by the defendant by a preponderance of the evidence, it is a defense that the defendant:
(i) Did not commit the homicidal act or in any way solicit, request, command, importune, cause, or aid the commission thereof; and
(ii) Was not armed with a deadly weapon, or any instrument, article, or substance readily capable of causing death or serious physical injury; and
(iii) Had no reasonable grounds to believe that any other participant was armed with such a weapon, instrument, article, or substance; and
(iv) Had no reasonable grounds to believe that any other participant intended to engage in conduct likely to result in death or serious physical injury.
1. Enumerated clause
We have not adopted a definition for generic murder. After surveying the Model Penal Code, dictionary definitions, and state laws, the Third Circuit defined generic murder as “causing the death of another person either intentionally, during
The least culpable means of committing second-degree murder in Washington is under the felony murder provision, so we must determine whether generic murder also covers such conduct. Under Washington law, the underlying felony can be any felony—unlike felony murder in the Third Circuit‘s definition of generic murder, it is not limited to dangerous felonies. Washington‘s felony murder provision is an outlier among the states: seven do not impose felony murder liability at all. Guyora Binder, Making the Best of Felony Murder, 91 B.U. L. Rev. 403, 440 (2011) (citing to Arkansas, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Vermont). In the jurisdictions that do impose felony murder liability, unlike Washington, a majority enumerate the predicate felonies in their statute. See id. at 450 n.262 (citing to
The government insists that any concerns regarding the breadth of the statute are hypothetical. See Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. 183, 193 (2007) (requiring “a realistic probability, not a theoretical possibility, that the State would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of a crime“). Facial overbreadth like that here, however, is a basis for finding a statute overbroad. See United States v. Grisel, 488 F.3d 844, 850 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc) (holding that where “a state statute explicitly defines a crime more broadly than the generic definition, no ‘legal imagination,’ is required to hold that a realistic probability exists that the state will apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of the crime” (citing Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. at 193)).
Washington‘s second-degree murder statute is therefore overbroad when compared with the definition of generic murder, as well as the Model Penal Code and the laws of other jurisdictions. We next turn to whether this statute is divisible. Because the plain language of the statute does not resolve this question, we look to state decisional law. Robinson, 869 F.3d at 938. Washington courts have concluded that the statute is indivisible, and we adopt their interpretation here. See, e.g., State v. Berlin, 947 P.2d 700, 705-06 (Wash. 1997) (holding that this
2. Force/elements clause
The government argues for the first time on appeal that second-degree murder qualifies as a crime of violence under the force/elements clause. We need not determine whether it has waived or forfeited this claim, because it is apparent that the argument fails on the merits. The generic “crime of violence” includes the following elements: (i) the crime has “as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against [a] person,” (ii) the “physical force” must be “violent” or otherwise “capable of causing physical pain or injury to another person,” and (iii) the “use of force must be intentional, not just reckless or negligent.”
C. The sentencing errors were not harmless.
Even when the district court indicates it would impose the same sentence regardless of the proper Guidelines range, we have held that “[a] mistake in calculating the recommended Guidelines sentencing range is a significant procedural error that requires us to remand for resentencing.” Munoz-Camarena, 631 F.3d at 1030. “[T]he district court must correctly calculate the recommended Guidelines sentence and use that recommendation as the ‘starting point and the initial benchmark.’ . . . [T]he recommended Guidelines range must be kept in mind throughout the process.” Id. (citations omitted). We require that the “district court [ ] start with the recommended Guidelines sentence, adjust upward or downward from that point, and justify the extent of the departure from the Guidelines sentence.” Id. (citation omitted). “A district court‘s mere statement that it would impose the same above-Guidelines
Here, it appears that the district court started with the presumption that a 60-month sentence was the correct one, and it attempted to justify it as either a downward departure from the Guidelines calculation he accepted at sentencing or an upward departure from the Guidelines calculation advocated by defense counsel. Having now determined that the proper Guideline range would be 30 to 37 months, we cannot say that the district court‘s incorrect calculation of the proper Guideline range was harmless. The explanation given by the district court does not explain why the court imposed a sentence nearly double the Guideline range. Nor does it demonstrate that the district court would impose the same sentence if the correct Guidelines range were “kept in mind throughout the process.” Id. at 1030 (citation omitted). Moreover, the explanation provided by the district court does not account for the amount or direction of the departure; the mitigating factors discussed by the district court could also have warranted a downward variance from the proper Guideline range. This case must therefore be remanded for resentencing with the correct Guidelines range in mind. United States v. Brown, 879 F.3d 1043, 1051 (9th Cir. 2018) (“The use of an incorrect starting point and the failure to keep the proper Sentencing Guidelines range in mind as the sentencing decision was made constituted ‘a significant procedural error,’ and the case must be remanded for resentencing.” (quoting Munoz-Camarena, 631 F.3d at 1030)).
SENTENCE VACATED, REMANDED FOR RESENTENCING.
