UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Tony Lee THOMPSON, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 04-4678.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued May 27, 2005. Decided Sept. 6, 2005.
421 F.3d 278
Over the past decade, Wagner has filed four motions in the District Court for post-conviction relief. The District Court denied Wagner‘s first two motions on the merits. This Court affirmed. However, under Castro, neither of these documents are properly viewed as motions under
Although we understand the Government‘s frustration with Wagner‘s efforts to further protract these collateral proceedings by capitalizing on this Castro error, we hold that Wagner is entitled to file a motion pursuant to
III.
For the foregoing reasons, Wagner does not require the permission of this Court to file a
ARGUED: Thomas Norman Cochran, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellant. Lawrence Patrick Auld, Office of the United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Anna Mills Wagoner, United States Attorney, Lisa B. Boggs, Assistant United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and WIDENER and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges.
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge.
Tony Lee Thompson was indicted as a felon in possession of firearms under
On appeal, Thompson disputes the applicability of ACCA to his case. He claims that the statutory predicates—that his prior convictions were violent felonies committed on separate occasions—were facts improperly found by the judge in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. Because we conclude that the statutory predicates have been demonstrated as a matter of law, there remain no disputed questions of fact about Thompson‘s prior convictions. We therefore affirm.
I.
Tony Lee Thompson emerged from a residence—not his own—on November 16, 2003, in High Point, North Carolina. He was carrying stolen items. The police department, having been alerted by a call complaining of a suspicious person, dispatched an officer who apprehended Thompson. The officer found him with a Jennings Bryco 9mm pistol and a Colt .38 caliber revolver. Since both firearms had moved in interstate commerce, Thompson was indicted as a felon-in-possession under
Thompson‘s criminal history supplied the predicates for an enhanced sentence under
Particularly relevant among the more than twenty convictions described in the PSR are several for “felony breaking and entering” under North Carolina law. The PSR records that Thompson pled guilty to felony breaking and entering of a residence in Trinity, North Carolina, on July 19, 2001; of another residence in Trinity on July 23, 2001; of a residence in Asheboro, North Carolina, on July 25, 2001; of a residence in Lexington, North Carolina, on October 1, 2001; of another residence in Lexington on June 18, 2002; and of yet two further residences in Lexington on November 7, 2002.
On the basis of these prior convictions and upon accepting the plea agreement Thompson reached with the government, the district court found the enhancement of
Thompson now appeals, arguing that his sentence was unconstitutionally imposed as a matter of law. We review legal determi
II.
Thompson believes that the Supreme Court‘s recent Sixth Amendment rulings prohibit sentencing him under ACCA unless a jury finds (or he admits) the facts required by the statute.2 Two such facts—that three prior convictions were “violent felonies” and that they were “committed on occasions different from one another“—are predicates for ACCA enhancement. Thompson argues that since these facts were neither admitted by him nor found by a jury, they cannot justify the enhanced sentence.
Evaluating Thompson‘s claims requires understanding the limitations the Supreme Court has placed on the use of judicial fact-finding in the sentencing context. In Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004), the Supreme Court held that a sentencing regime violated the Sixth Amendment when judges found “factors” that increased a sentence beyond the maximum allowed by the jury findings alone. But by refusing to overturn its holding in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998), the Court explicitly excluded from this general rule “the fact of a prior conviction.” Blakely, 124 S.Ct. at 2536 (quoting Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000)). In United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005), the Court extended Blakely to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. But the Court repeated that only facts “other than a prior conviction” were subject to the jury requirements of the Sixth Amendment. Id. at 756.
Most recently, in Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005), the Court addressed what was meant by the “fact of a prior conviction.” In Shepard, the Court considered a defendant situated much like Thompson. Shepard pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession under
The Supreme Court refused the offer. It prohibited judges from resolving a “disputed fact ... about a prior conviction,” id. at 1262, if doing so required data—like that found in police reports—that was not inherent in that prior conviction. At the same time, however, Shepard explicitly affirmed that the prior conviction exception remained good law. Id. at 1262. To this end, the Court authorized judges to rely on a variety of conclusive court documents when determining the nature of a prior conviction. Approved sources include, for instance, the prior court‘s jury instructions
The common denominator of the approved sources is their prior validation by process comporting with the Sixth Amendment. Excluded sources, such as transcripts of testimony or police reports, are not necessarily inherent in the conviction. “[S]ubsequent evidentiary enquiries into the factual basis for the earlier conviction” are off-limits, id. at 1259, but “conclusive records” of the earlier conviction, id. at 1260, are not.
In short, the “fact of a prior conviction” remains a valid enhancement even when not found by the jury. Of course, sentencing judges may not smuggle in contraband facts—those that are reserved for juries—under the mantle of the “fact of a prior conviction.” But neither may we sever the prior conviction from its essential components. For instance, an artificially narrow reading of the “fact of a prior conviction” exception might extend to only a grudging acknowledgment that a defendant once had been convicted. Such a reading would answer the question “convicted of what?” by asserting that such a question involved facts “about” the conviction which were reserved to a jury.
Shepard rejected this narrow approach. In describing the materials that could be used by judges to determine the nature of a prior conviction, it reinforced the notion that some facts are so inherent in a conviction that they need not be found by a jury. If the Court had wished to endorse the narrower view—that only the bare existence of a prior conviction was exempt from jury determination—it could have saved itself great trouble by simply stating that such questions about a conviction were reserved for a jury, regardless of whether statutes, charging documents, or prior jury instructions revealed the nature of the conviction.
A conviction cannot, therefore, be reduced to nothing more than that the defendant was at some prior time convicted of some crime. This bare fact is certainly at the nucleus of the conviction. But that nucleus also contains other operative facts, such as the statute which was violated and the date of the conviction. The Supreme Court has declined to attempt extraction of the mere fact of a prior conviction, stripped of all content. We cannot be willfully blind to that content—date, statutory violation, and the like—where it is properly established by one of the sources approved in Shepard. It is as much a part
We have already had an opportunity to respect the line Shepard drew between data inherent in a prior conviction and those facts extraneous to it. In United States v. Washington, 404 F.3d 834 (4th Cir.2005), facts extraneous to the prior convictions had caused a heightened sentence. The district court had to determine whether a prior conviction had been a “crime of violence” under the Sentencing Guidelines, where the relevant test was the fact-intensive inquiry of whether the prior conviction had “involve[d] conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” Id. at 836 (quoting
The present case therefore turns on whether the facts necessary to support the enhancement inhere in the fact of conviction or are extraneous to it. If Thompson can show that his prior convictions were not inherently “violent felonies” or that the convictions themselves were not for offenses committed during separate occasions, his sentence must be vacated. But if these facts are inherent in his prior convictions, then Thompson cannot demand a jury finding because no legitimately disputed fact provides the basis for the ACCA sentence.
III.
A.
Thompson first points to the requirement in
As we have noted above, recent Supreme Court case law emphasizes that prior convictions are facts that need not be submitted to any jury. Shepard affirmed this rule. The only question here is whether Thompson‘s prior convictions do or do not qualify as “violent felonies.” It is often “a question of law whether a felony meets the statutory definition of a ‘violent felony,’ and such a question does not trigger the Sixth Amendment concerns addressed in Booker.” United States v. Moore, 401 F.3d 1220, 1225 (10th Cir.2005); see also United States v. Wilson, 406 F.3d 1074, 1076 (8th Cir.2005) (finding
ACCA defines the term “violent felony” in part as “any crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year ... that ... is burglary ....”
We have already considered the question of whether the North Carolina statute proscribing “breaking or entering buildings,” see
Since Bowden disposes of Thompson‘s challenge to the classification of a North Carolina burglary conviction as a “violent felony” under
B.
The statute also requires, however, that the three convictions count only if the offenses were “committed on occasions different from one another.”
Furthermore, although the indictment here referenced Thompson‘s prior convictions, the result would be the same if it had been less complete. See United States v. Higgs, 353 F.3d 281, 302 (4th Cir.2003) (indictment need not charge a prior conviction to enhance a sentence); see also United States v. Burgin, 388 F.3d 177, 186 (6th Cir.2004) (whether prior convictions were committed on different occasions “need not be pled in an indictment“).
These cases, when applied to the information contained in Thompson‘s PSR, compel the conclusion that Thompson committed acts of burglary on at least three separate occasions. The trial judge was entitled to rely upon the PSR because it bears the earmarks of derivation from Shepard-approved sources such as the indictments and state-court judgments from his prior convictions, and, moreover, Thompson never raised the slightest objection either to the propriety of its source material or to its accuracy. The PSR details three separate state court judgments, entered on different dates, in which Thompson was sentenced for burglarizing a residence. These three judgments encompass seven different counts of felony breaking and entering, taking place on six different days. And even if they had all occurred on the same day, the PSR further reveals that Thompson‘s court proceedings occurred in two separate jurisdictions (Davidson County and Randolph County) and that the residences he burglarized were owned by seven different people living in three different towns. Under these circumstances, our caselaw precludes any argument that the convictions represent fewer than three occasions of burglary—this is, in fact, a vastly easier case than Letterlough, James, or Hobbs. The line between facts that are inherent in a conviction and facts that are about a conviction is a common-sensical one, and there is no way that our conclusion as to the separateness of the occasions here can be seen to represent impermissible judicial factfinding.
The Sixth Amendment requires that facts necessary for a given sentence (other than a prior conviction) be found by a jury. But Blakely, Booker, and Shepard do not, of course, transmogrify what have always been questions of law into questions of fact. We therefore hold that the term “occasion” under ACCA necessarily includes burglaries like Thompson‘s, which were committed on distinct days in separate towns in different homes. The data necessary to determine the “separateness” of the occasions is inherent in the fact of the prior convictions. Finding distinct occasions does not require courts to stray beyond such data in the way that the
We find instructive the distinction between the findings required in determining an “occasion” here and the kind of wide-ranging, fact-intensive findings made in Washington. The district judge in Washington labored under the constraints of
No finding of fact by a jury is necessary here, therefore. Whether the burglaries occurred on different occasions does require applying the fact that they were separate episodes. But this fact is inherent in the convictions themselves, and thus is not among the kind of facts extraneous to a conviction that Blakely or Shepard requires a jury to find. To take notice of the different dates or locations of burglaries—something inherent in the conviction—is to take notice of different occasions of burglary as a matter of law. Thompson has not offered either at sentencing or on appeal any way that his lengthy string of breakings and enterings on different days, in different towns, and in different jurisdictions can be seen by any factfinder—judge or jury—to represent fewer than three occasions. Indeed, his situation is precisely that for which ACCA was enacted.
We are hardly alone in concluding that sentences such as Thompson‘s are constitutional. Besides the Second Circuit in Santiago, many courts—both before and after Blakely, Booker, and Shepard—have shared our view. In Wilson, 406 F.3d at 1075, the Eighth Circuit rejected a claim under those three cases that “whether [a defendant‘s] prior felonies were violent offenses and whether they occurred on separate occasions should have been made by a jury....” Similarly, in Moore, 401 F.3d at 1224, the Tenth Circuit recognized that the Blakely line of cases did not require “the government [to] charge the ‘fact’ of a prior conviction in an indictment and submit it to a jury.” In United States v. Barnett, 398 F.3d 516, 524-25 (6th Cir.2005), the Sixth Circuit found that Booker posed no obstacle to a “district court‘s authority to determine the existence of prior convictions,” and that this authority “was broad enough to include determinations regarding the nature of those prior convictions.”
Precisely because Blakely, Booker, and Shepard do not affect the “fact of conviction” exception (so long as legitimately disputed questions are resolved only with the sources approved in Shepard), earlier cases which construe terms like “occasion” or “violent felony” remain authoritative. Our sister circuits have provided ample
IV.
Thompson‘s remaining arguments are entirely disposed of by our resolution of his
AFFIRMED.
WILKINS, Chief Judge, dissenting:
The majority holds that the district court did not violate Thompson‘s constitutional rights by sentencing him under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), see
I.
Thompson pleaded guilty to an indictment alleging that he violated
II.
Thompson argues that sentencing him under the ACCA based on the judge-found facts underlying his prior convictions, e.g., the dates on which the crimes were committed, violated his constitutional rights under Apprendi because it increased his sentence beyond the maximum to which he would have been subject had he been sentenced based only on the facts he admitted.3 Thompson notes that the underlying facts were necessary to establish that at least three of his qualifying prior convictions were committed on occasions different from one another (the “different occasions” determination). I agree.4
The Sixth Amendment requires that, “[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. The Fifth Amendment Indictment Clause further requires that, in federal prosecutions, facts that have such an effect on the “statutory maximum” must also be included in the indictment. See United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 627, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002); United States v. Higgs, 353 F.3d 281, 296 (4th Cir.2003). In these contexts, “statutory maximum” means “the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.” Blakely, 124 S.Ct. at 2537 (internal quotation marks & emphasis omitted).
Here, the facts admitted by Thompson did not, by themselves, justify a conclusion that Thompson had three prior qualifying convictions for crimes committed on different occasions. And, as the Government concedes, the 15-year sentence imposed under the ACCA exceeds the maximum that could have otherwise been imposed. Thus, because Thompson‘s federal indictment did not allege facts establishing that he had three predicate convictions for crimes committed on different occasions, the ACCA sentence violated Thompson‘s
A.
First, assuming that Thompson admitted to having three prior breaking and entering convictions, that admission alone was not sufficient to justify a legal conclusion that the crimes occurred on different occasions. “Convictions will be considered as having occurred on occasions different from one another under the ACCA if each arose out of a separate and distinct criminal episode.” United States v. Hobbs, 136 F.3d 384, 388 (4th Cir.1998) (internal quotation marks omitted). The question of whether particular burglaries5 were committed on different occasions depends on the facts underlying the offenses. See United States v. James, 337 F.3d 387, 391 (4th Cir.2003) (“The first burglary was completed before the second started, each burglary occurred at a different location, and each involved a different victim.“); Hobbs, 136 F.3d at 389 (“It is undisputed that the three burglaries all occurred at least a mile apart from each other, and in two different towns.“).
Thompson‘s admission to having three prior burglary convictions did not warrant a legal conclusion that the burglaries were committed on different occasions because separate burglaries are not necessarily committed on different occasions as a matter of law. Although it may be rare that a defendant is convicted of two burglaries that were committed on a single occasion, it certainly could happen. For example, a defendant could be convicted of two burglaries for having kept lookout while his coconspirators simultaneously broke into two neighboring buildings that were owned by the same victim. Cf. Hobbs, 136 F.3d at 388 (considering, in determining whether offenses were committed on different occasions, (1) the geographic location of the offenses, (2) the nature of the offenses, and (3) the victim of the offenses); United States v. Letterlough, 63 F.3d 332, 337 (4th Cir.1995) (holding that two drug sales were on different occasions because “[t]he time separating the offenses was ample to give [the defendant] the opportunity to make a conscious and knowing decision to engage in another drug sale“). Thus, the mere fact that Thompson had been convicted of three separate burglaries is not sufficient as a matter of law to establish that the three burglaries were committed on three different occasions; further facts were needed to reach that conclusion and thereby authorize the 15-year sentence imposed. Of course, such facts were contained in the PSR, and Thompson did not object on the basis that they were false. He maintained, however, as he continues to maintain now, that they could not be used to increase his maximum sentence because they were not alleged in his indictment or otherwise admitted by him.
The Government maintains that in addition to admitting the three convictions, Thompson also admitted the facts underlying the crimes that produced the convictions because he was notified before his plea that he could be sentenced under the ACCA and because he failed to object to the inclusion of these underlying facts in the PSR. The Government construes “admitted” too broadly.
There are at least four possible interpretations of the language “facts ... admitted by the defendant.” First, that language could refer to facts set forth in the indictment to which the defendant pled guilty. Second, it could refer to facts set forth in the written plea agreement entered into by the defendant. Third, it could be limited to the facts necessary to prove a violation of the offense charged in the indictment. Fourth, it could refer to facts admitted in the colloquy with the District Court.
Thomas, 389 F.3d at 426 (alteration in original). It is not necessary for me to determine today the exact contours of the term “admitted” in this context because nothing that Thompson did in this case approached an admission of the underlying facts. The Government claims that Thompson “admitted” the necessary facts by entering into a plea agreement that stated that the mandatory minimum sentence would be 15 years. (The Government adds that the district court informed Thompson—and the PSR stated—that 15 years would be the mandatory minimum sentence if he had the necessary qualifying offenses.) In fact, the plea agreement stated that the “maximum” term faced by Thompson would be 15 years to life but that this range would not apply if “the Court determines ... that ... Section 924(e)(1) is not applicable.” J.A. 23-24. Thompson‘s acceptance of this agreement was not the equivalent of an admission to the facts necessary to justify application of the ACCA. Cf. United States v. Estrada, 42 F.3d 228, 231-32 (4th Cir.1994) (holding that defendant‘s acknowledgment that he was subject to a five-year mandatory minimum did not constitute admission of the facts necessary to trigger the mandatory minimum when defense counsel mistakenly believed that the five-year mandatory minimum would be triggered even without the facts at issue).
The Government also maintains that Thompson admitted the underlying facts because the facts were contained in Thompson‘s PSR and Thompson did not object to the relevant portion of the PSR. It is true that in the specific context of sufficiency of the evidence to support a judicial finding of fact by a preponderance of the evidence, a failure to object to a fact included in the PSR has the same legal effect as an admission to that fact. See
Because the facts admitted by Thompson were not sufficient to warrant an ACCA sentence, the district court increased Thompson‘s sentence beyond the “statutory maximum” when it relied on the underlying facts. And, as explained below, since none of these facts were subsumed by the “fact of a prior conviction,” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348, the ACCA sentence violated Thompson‘s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.
To understand why none of the underlying facts were subsumed by the “fact of a prior conviction,” an examination of Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998), and Apprendi is in order. The statute at issue in Almendarez-Torres,
The Supreme Court held that a sentence imposed under subsection (b)(2) was not unconstitutional even though the facts supporting application of that subsection had not been alleged in the indictment. See id. at 247, 118 S.Ct. 1219. In reaching this conclusion, the Court relied primarily on the distinct nature of prior convictions, which traditionally had not been required to be charged in indictments. See id. at 243-44, 118 S.Ct. 1219. The Court also noted that it had previously held that facts triggering mandatory minimums need not be treated as offense elements, see McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 2411, 91 L.Ed.2d 67 (1986), and the Court reasoned that prior convictions triggering increases in the maximum sentence should not be treated differently. See Almendarez-Torres, 523 U.S. at 244-45, 118 S.Ct. 1219.
Here, the majority holds that the date on which a prior crime was committed is a “fact of a prior conviction,” see ante, at 282, but in my view it is a fact “about a prior conviction,” Shepard, 125 S.Ct. at 1262 (plurality opinion) (emphasis added); cf. United States v. Washington, 404 F.3d 834, 841-42 (4th Cir.2005) (drawing this distinction and holding that facts about an offense underlying a prior conviction fell outside the “fact of a prior conviction” exception when they were not alleged in the indictment that produced the prior conviction), or, more precisely, a fact about an offense underlying a prior conviction. This distinction is not merely a matter of semantics. Although a defendant is entitled to a
I recognize that some courts have rejected this reason for concluding that the different-occasions fact falls outside the Almendarez-Torres exception. See United States v. Burgin, 388 F.3d 177, 184-86 (6th Cir.2004), cert. denied, 544 U.S. 936, 125 S.Ct. 1692, 161 L.Ed.2d 506 (2005); United States v. Morris, 293 F.3d 1010, 1012-13 (7th Cir.2002); United States v. Santiago, 268 F.3d 151, 155-57 (2d Cir.2001). I am not persuaded by these decisions, however.
Burgin holds that the fact that past crimes were committed on different occasions is “intimately related” with the fact of the prior convictions because “[i]n the usual case, ... a district court‘s determination that a defendant has a record of prior convictions will be accompanied by the judge‘s determination of when those convictions were entered.” Burgin, 388 F.3d at 186. But this analysis fails to appreciate that it is not the prior convictions that must be on occasions separate from one another, but rather the crimes underlying the prior convictions. This difference is significant because while the date of conviction is a matter likely to be conclusively resolved by court record, the same is not necessarily true of whether underlying crimes were committed on different occasions, for the reasons I have already discussed.
Santiago and Morris are similarly unpersuasive. Those decisions are based in large part on the observation that even determining the fact of prior convictions entails making findings beyond those to which the defendant had a right to fair notice, proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and a jury trial, such as the determination “that the defendant being sentenced is the same defendant who previously was convicted of those prior offenses.” Santiago, 268 F.3d at 156; accord Morris, 293 F.3d at 1013.
Such analysis notwithstanding, the Supreme Court in both Jones and Apprendi made clear that “the certainty that procedural safeguards attached to any ‘fact’ of prior conviction” was critical to the outcome in Almendarez-Torres. Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 488, 120 S.Ct. 2348; accord
C.
One final point merits attention. In determining that the district court acted constitutionally in imposing an ACCA sentence based on the facts underlying Thompson‘s prior convictions, the majority draws support from the fact that the judicial factfinding here did not run afoul of Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990). In so doing, the majority fails, in my view, to appreciate the difference between running afoul of Taylor, which concerns statutory restrictions on judicial factfinding relating to whether prior convictions satisfy the ACCA, and violating Apprendi and its progeny, which concern constitutional restrictions regarding which facts must be charged in the indictment and found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Taylor instructs that under some circumstances
Additionally, I note that my conclusion is not foreclosed by United States v. Sterling, 283 F.3d 216 (4th Cir.2002). There, the defendant argued that his sentence under the ACCA violated the Apprendi rule “because the government did not prove his three prior qualifying felony convictions beyond a reasonable doubt.” Sterling, 283 F.3d at 219. We affirmed the sentence, holding that the existence of the prior convictions fell within the Almendarez-Torres exception to the Apprendi rule. See id. at 220. In so doing, we rejected the notion that Apprendi had overruled Almendarez-Torres and held that “the district court appropriately used Sterling‘s prior convictions to enhance his sentence under the [ACCA].” Id. There is no indication in the opinion, however, that Sterling, in addition to arguing that the prior conviction exception had been overruled, also maintained that the exception did not apply to the “different occasions” determination. For that reason, Sterling does not control the outcome of this issue.
For the same reason that Taylor is not controlling, neither is Shepard. In Shepard, the Court addressed whether Taylor should be extended to allow district courts to consider documents beyond those that Taylor had specifically sanctioned. Although four justices opined that extending the statutory rule would present serious constitutional questions, not even these four justices reached the issue of whether sentences based on Taylor factfinding could violate the constitutional rule announced in Apprendi. See Shepard, 125 S.Ct. at 1262-63 (plurality opinion). It is noteworthy, however, that Justice Thomas, who did address that question, concluded that Taylor factfinding violates Apprendi. See id. at 1263-64 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).12
III.
In sum, because I would vacate Thompson‘s sentence as violative of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and remand for resentencing, I respectfully dissent.