United States v. Verduzco-Rangel, No. 15-50559 (9th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for attempting to reenter the United States after a prior removal. Defendant was previously removed for committing an aggravated felony under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(B) because he was convicted of felony possession of methamphetamine in violation of California Health & Safety Code section 11378. The panel held that because section 11378 had a trafficking element and required a sufficiently culpable state of mind, section 11378 was a drug trafficking aggravated felony under section 1101(a)(43)(B) where the record of conviction established that the substance involved was federally controlled. Therefore, removal under 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) based on such a conviction under section 11378 was not fundamentally unfair.
Court Description: Criminal Law The panel affirmed a conviction under 8 U.S.C. § 1326 for attempting to reenter the United States after a prior removal, in a case in which the defendant was removed in 2004 under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorized removal if an alien had committed an “aggravated felony,” as defined by 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(B). The aggravated felony on which the Government relied was the defendant’s prior conviction of felony possession of methamphetamine in violation of California Health & Safety Code section 11378. Recognizing that section 11378 is divisible as to which substance the defendant was convicted of actually trafficking, and that courts can therefore look to underlying records to determine whether a conviction was for a federally banned substance, the panel noted that the defendant’s 2004 indictment and plea agreement establish that he was convicted of trafficking methamphetamine, which is a controlled substance under both California and federal law. The panel rejected as irrelevant the defendant’s argument that his California conviction is not categorically an aggravated felony because section 11378 is broader than federal law as to defendants’ beliefs about the kind of substance in which they were trafficking. The panel explained that a section 11378 conviction is an aggravated
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