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"stt_transcript": "25-3263 from the Northern District of Iowa United States v. Darion Halliburton All right, Ms. Jansen, we'll hear from you first. Thank you, and may it please the Court. Your Honors, Mr. Halliburton raises two independently sufficient grounds for vacating the 60-month revocation sentence imposed in this case. First, he submits that the lawful statutory maximum was 36 months rather than the 60 months used by the District Court, and that's because of the interplay between three different statutes and operative court orders. Second, Mr. Halliburton submits that even if five years was the legally permissible revocation sentence, the District Court's decision to impose that sentence rested on an incomplete procedural history, the details of which were highly relevant to the Court's decision and included an Amendment 782 sentence reduction and a prior District Court order specifically finding Mr. Halliburton eligible for Amendment 404 relief and making a finding and adopting findings that his statutory penalties would be changed with benefit of Section 404. Turning to our first argument, Section 3583E3 allows the Court to revoke supervised release and have a defendant serve all or part of that term of original term of supervised release in prison. The statute itself first tells us which offense to examine. It says examine the offense that resulted in the term of supervised release, but it then asks in the present tense what class of felony that offense is in order to determine the penalties. Now, we don't rely on the word is standing alone. However, when we review the plain language of the statute in context with the three relevant statutes at play here and with Judge Reed's earlier Section 404 order, applying the 404 framework to the case, I think it all results in a conclusion that the plain language of the statute combined with the plain language of these other statutes and the revocation considerations require the use of a three-year revocation term here. This begins really the important piece here that is missing in other cases that the government cites is First Step Act Section 404. Congress, of course, back in 2010 changed the crack cocaine penalties but did not make those retroactively applicable to people like Mr. Halliburton who were both prosecuted and sentenced prior to the Fair Sentencing Act's revisions in 2010. The Supreme Court in Darcy upheld that in 2012, but then we flash forward to 2018 and Congress specifically passed a remedial statute making the Fair Sentencing Act's penalties retroactively applicable as if they had been in effect when the covered offense was committed. What's important here is that Judge Reed originally sentenced Mr. Halliburton to 210 months. Pursuant to Amendment 782, she later reduced that sentence to 168 months. Then in 2020, she ruled on Mr. Halliburton's motion for First Step Act Section 404 relief. That required two pieces of analysis. The first piece of analysis, as this court has instructed, is that she had to decide if he was eligible for relief. If so, what are the revised statutory penalties? In fact, Judge Reed found Mr. Halliburton eligible for relief. She found he had in fact committed a covered offense under the Fair Sentencing Act. She found that he was eligible for Section 404 sentence reduction in her discretion. She calculated his advisory guideline range and specifically said at page 3 of Document 52, the statutory range would now be zero to 30 years. In a footnote, she also noted that the Probation Office prepared an amended statutory and guideline calculation. She specifically adopted that guideline calculation. In exercising her discretion whether to reduce Mr. Halliburton's sentence, she opted not to. Part of the reason for that is clearly tied to her prior grant of Amendment 782 relief. Mr. Halliburton's sentence with benefit of Amendment 782 was at the bottom of that new guideline range. He had already received some favor of a reduction. More importantly, the court denied relief because of a plea agreement provision. In her discretion, she specifically noted that the 168-month sentence was within the newly amended statutory penalties of zero to 30 years. It's that congressional piece of the puzzle combined with Judge Reed's order that then decides what the statutory penalties are. Section 3559 says that anything punishable by 25 years or more, in this case zero to 30, is a Class B felony. Under Section 3583E3, we ask what is Mr. Halliburton's offense? It is, in fact, a Class B felony subject to only three years in prison. Even if we do acknowledge that this first issue is raised on a plain error standard of review, there are some other circuit cases, in particular Cotton out of the Seventh Circuit, that have reached a different conclusion. I would like to point out that Cotton was a divided decision. It's our position that the dissent actually is the only analysis that engages with all of the pieces that we've talked about here. All three statutes, Section 404, Section 3559, and Section 3583E3. We, of course, then have a district court order specifically adopting and implementing Congress's direction to apply Section 404 in the Fair Sentencing Act as if it applies today. I do want to point out another thing about Cotton is that it is in tension with an earlier Seventh Circuit decision in the United States Court. What is there for us to look at to show that this was a plain error? Your Honor, I think of the statutory language themselves. Even with disagreement from other circuits, if this Court finds that the statutory language of these statutes plainly leads to the conclusion, which is my position, then you should reverse and send it back with direction that the Court must apply a three-year statutory maximum. However, even if you don't think that the error is plain, this case needs to go back to the district court. That's because even if this was a five-year permissibly legal available sentence, the district court did not rely on a complete procedural history. Judge Williams recounted the original 210 month sentence imposed in 2009. He acknowledged he was not the sentencing judge. He specifically identified what materials he reviewed. He said, I reviewed the revocation petition, the attachments, the violation worksheet, and the recommendation, and the pre-sentence report. He didn't mention the reduction under Amendment 782 to 168 months. He didn't mention document number 52, where Judge Reed specifically found that Mr. Halliburton was eligible for 404 relief with revised penalties of zero to 30. None of the parties mentioned any of those documents, and none of the documents provided by probation in the petition, the amended petition, or even the worksheet mentioned these things. I think that when the judge Why didn't the defense bring it up if it was so important? Well, Your Honor, I think that this is specifically what would make that either a plain error or an abuse of discretion. I don't think the defense needed to raise the sentencing history under an abuse of discretion standard, because clearly the Court must rely on an accurate sentencing history in making any decision from the bench. I think that falls under abuse of discretion standard of review and Feimster. Even if a plain error standard applies here, which I think it would, I don't think this is any sort of invited error or any sort of a waiver, because it seems clear that nobody realized these. We don't expect the district court to go back through the docket and look at everything, but these are very fundamental aspects of Mr. Halliburton's history characteristics. They were fundamental to consideration of the need to avoid unwarranted sentencing disparities. Counsel, what else would the district court be referring to when there was a discussion about the sentencing at that time to the bottom of the advisory guidelines? Why else use words at that time? I apologize for interrupting, Your Honor. I think that to say at that time is perfectly accurate. At that time in 2009, the sentence was in fact 210 months, but nothing about the further commentary as the district court is reconstructing what it looked at indicates that it had any awareness of a 168-month reduction or of Judge Reed's section 404 order, not withstanding the fact that she didn't ultimately reduce the sentence further. She did make rulings that are in the case, that are part of the law in this case, and that should at least be considered by any court making a revocation decision. I would like to save the small bit of time I have for rebuttal unless Your Honors have further questions. Very well. Ms. Williams, we'll hear from you. Good morning, Your Honors. Lisa Williams, representing the United States of America. I do want to pick up where counsel left off on what Judge Williams would have considered. I don't have the petition or the first supplemental petition with me today, but it is the practice of the Northern District of Iowa's Probation Office to include all sentencing modifications on the first page of the petition and supplemental petition. Assuming that this is how the dozens of revocation hearings that I've personally handled was handled, you would have the 210 month sentence listed and then you would have the all drugs minus two revised sentence listed immediately under that. I do think that there is support in the record that the district court did consider and was aware of the 168 month subsequently imposed sentence. You're saying you didn't look at the documents for this case? I did look at the documents for this case, Your Honor. What I said is I didn't bring them with me at counsel table to verify that before I stood up in an argument today. So you looked at them, you don't know whether they showed the reduction? As I stand before the court today, Your Honor, but I do believe that they would reflect that reduction and Judge Williams specifically indicated that he did consider the petition and first supplemental petition, which was at docket 65, when before the hearing. Regardless. Where would it normally be in the? The cover page, Your Honor. The very first page of either the petition or the sentencing worksheet lays out the full procedural history, including the date the sentence is imposed, what the sentence was, the term of supervised release, any prior revocations that the defendant had, any terms of imprisonment. There's a whole kind of procedural history outlaid in those documents. Regardless of that, this case does not turn on whether or not that sentence was included in the record. The district court indicated that it had considered all of the 3583E factors before imposing the sentence that it imposed. What counsel is seeking and asking this court to find was an abuse of discretion, is that the district court didn't clearly articulate enough of the factors to their satisfaction, which this court has not required a district court judge to do in the past. The court clearly based its decision on the heinous conduct underlying the state court conviction in deciding to impose the statutory maximum sentence. And in fact, went as far as saying that it would impose more time if it was able to under the law. And so the failure to specifically articulate the prior sentence reduction that Mr. Halliburton received was not an abuse of discretion in looking at the overall sentencing picture here. The more complex argument, of course, is the first argument raised, the statutory interpretation argument. And the government takes issue with defense suggesting that this court should look at Judge Reed's order or the procedural history in interpreting the, in answering the statutory interpretation question. Because, and this is from the Lester case cited in the government's brief, if the intent of Congress can be clearly discerned from the statute's language, the judicial inquiry must end. The court's first role is to look at the statutory language. And if intent is clear, then the inquiry is over. And the court doesn't need to look at Judge Reed's order. It doesn't need to look at the procedural history. And in this case, the intent of the statute is clear. The government believes that this court should adopt the reasoning of the Seventh Circuit in the Cotton case. That is, cannot be divorced from the context of the sentence, or from the context of the words around it. And that the statute refers to the offense of conviction, the offense that resulted in such term of supervised release. It is a backwards-looking inquiry that looks at what a defendant was convicted of at the time that conviction was entered. Not what he may be convicted of if he was convicted today. Again, the Cotton court noted that what really the First Step Act allowed the district court to do is exercise a favorable exercise of discretion to reduce the term of imprisonment that a defendant may serve. But nothing about a favorable exercise of discretion alters an original judgment of conviction. And the government believes that that was correctly decided, especially when you then layer on the Supreme Court precedent before that of Johnson and McNeil, which both come in. And of course, Johnson notes that post-revocation to the conviction. So Johnson takes a backwards-looking look. And then McNeil is even more applicable. That is the Armed Career Criminal Act case, looking at whether or not convictions which were proper predicates at the time that they were convicted of, but then subsequent changes to state law meant that they were no longer proper predicates. And it had that is language that the Supreme Court confronted. The Supreme Court still found that despite the presence of the is language, the proper inquiry was whether it qualified as a predicate at the time of the offense and at the time of the original conviction. As such, the government does not believe that the district court erred. But even if this court finds error, because we're on plain error review, defendant must establish that any such error was plain. And that is where the government submits that this case really becomes an insurmountable hurdle for the defense, because there is no plain error. There is the error is plain if it's clear or obvious. And what we have is a Seventh Circuit case that falls the way of the government. We heard in the argument today and in the brief that was a divided panel, cert was denied by the Supreme Court for whatever that's worth. But if you look at what divided the cotton panel, the dissent in cotton relies on the fact that that defendant received relief under the First Step Act, that he had his sentence adjusted downward. This defendant, Mr. Halliburton, received no such relief. So even if somehow a dissenting, out-of-circuit opinion could be read to create a plain error, to find plainness in this context requires pulling the cotton dissent even further, because this is a defendant who did not receive relief. And I would note, too, the reason that Judge Reed denied him relief, the primary reason, was because of the appellate waiver contained in his plea agreement. That was her first and primary reason. She then said, in any event, I find that the 3553A factors wouldn't support relief. But that was not what drove her decision. And to the extent that defendant argues otherwise, that's a misstatement of the record. The appeal waiver is what drew that. But coming back to the plainness of this error, so the cotton dissent would have to be pulled even further. Defendant relies on a Fifth Circuit case, and the government cited to the opinion that came out shortly after that, the Black case, which kind of reversed and tempered the expectations of Jones. And the Fifth Circuit said, listen, in Jones, what we were concerned about is that the district court thought it had no discretion to consider the First Step Act. And that's what was wrong. But we're not saying that the First Step Act serves as a vehicle to retroactively apply or change the class of conviction that someone was convicted of. So there simply is no error in this case. But if the court were to find that error did exist, it cannot be said to be plain error. And because of that, the government believes that this court should affirm the lower court. And if there are no other questions, the government would rest on its briefing. Very well. Thank you for your argument. Thank you. Your Honors, if revocation is related to the original offense, as the Johnson decision holds, and Congress changes the penalties, both retroactively and prospectively, as it has with respect to crack cocaine penalties, and the district court then adopts those penalties, then the revocation framework is necessarily affected. Here, Judge Williams did not say anything of, I could sentence you to a three years cap, but I choose not to. It's vital to send this case back so that we can determine whether he was the extent to which the 404 decision could affect the outcome and result in a reasonable probability of a lower sentence. I see my time has expired, unless you have further questions. Thank you for your argument. Thank you to both counsel. The case is submitted, and the court will file a decision in due course."
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