United States v. Walker, No. 18-10211 (9th Cir. 2020)
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The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's application of a fifteen-year-minimum sentencing enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) to defendant's sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The panel held that defendant's predicate domestic violence convictions under California Penal Code 273.5 qualified as categorical violent felonies, and that defendant's arguments to the contrary were foreclosed by United States v. Laurico-Yeno, 590 F.3d 818 (9th Cir. 2010), and its progeny. The panel rejected defendant's claim that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a sentencing judge, to find that a defendant's prior convictions were for crimes on different occasions. Rather, the panel held that defendant's argument was foreclosed by United States v. Grisel, 488 F.3d 844 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc), which held that a sentencing judge may find the dates of prior offenses in deciding if a defendant has committed three or more violent felonies. Therefore, the district court did not err in finding that defendant committed three separate offenses.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed a criminal judgment in a case in which the defendant, who pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, challenged the application of a fifteen-year-minimum sentencing enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) based on his 1998, 1999, and 2014 domestic-violence convictions under California Penal Code § 273.5. The defendant argued that his § 273.5 convictions do not qualify as categorical violent felonies under the ACCA. The panel held that this contention is foreclosed by United States v. Laurico-Yeno, 590 F.3d 818 (9th Cir. 2010); Banuelos- Ayon v. Holder, 611 F.3d 1080 (9th Cir. 2010); and United States v. Ayala-Nicanor, 659 F.3d 744 (9th Cir. 2011). Because no Supreme Court or en-banc opinion from this court has obviously limited or otherwise abrogated those decisions, and because the defendant did not show that California law regarding § 273.5 has changed, the panel reaffirmed Laurico-Yeno and its progeny. The defendant also argued that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a sentencing judge, to find that a defendant’s prior convictions were for crimes on different occasions, and that the district court therefore transgressed the Sixth Amendment by deciding that the defendant had committed three separate felonies. The panel held that this UNITED STATES V. WALKER 3 argument is foreclosed by United States v. Grisel, 488 F.3d 844 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc), which held that a sentencing judge may find the dates of prior offenses in deciding if a defendant has committed three or more violent felonies. The panel explained that because Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), only proscribed judges from determining whether a given factual scenario substantively qualifies as a predicate offense, Grisel is not clearly irreconcilable with Mathis’s reasoning or theory.
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