United States v. Rangel–Castaneda

• Decision Date: 07 March 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–4408.,12–4408.
• Citation: 709 F.3d 373
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Eduardo RANGEL–CASTANEDA, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

709 F.3d 373

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Eduardo RANGEL–CASTANEDA, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 12–4408.

United States Court of Appeals,Fourth Circuit.

Argued: Feb. 1, 2013.

Decided: March 7, 2013.

ARGUED:Joshua B. Carpenter, Federal Defenders of Western North Carolina, Inc., Asheville, North Carolina, for Appellant. William Michael Miller, Office of the United States Attorney, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Henderson Hill, Executive Director, Federal Defenders of Western North Carolina, Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. Anne M. Tompkins, United States Attorney, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before WILKINSON and FLOYD, Circuit Judges, and JOSEPH R. GOODWIN, United States District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge FLOYD and Judge GOODWIN joined.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

The district court held in this case that defendant Eduardo Rangel–Castaneda's Tennessee statutory rape conviction qualified as a generic “statutory rape” offense and thus constituted a “crime of violence” under the sentencing enhancement established at U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). This was incorrect.

Employing the “categorical approach” for assessing the applicability of enhancements, as articulated in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990), we find that the “generic, contemporary meaning” of statutory rape sets the general age of consent at sixteen years old. In so holding, we note the importance of achieving some degree of uniformity in applying the United States Sentencing Guidelines across the nation, particularly with respect to an element as crucial as the age of consent is for the crime of statutory rape. Because Tennessee's statutory rape provision sets the age of consent at eighteen and is therefore significantly broader than the generic offense, we hold that a conviction thereunder does not categorically qualify for the crime-of-violence enhancement.

I.

The defendant was born in Mexico in 1979. At the age of fifteen, Rangel illegally entered the United States, settling in Tennessee. In 2007, he was deported to Mexico but returned to the United States shortly thereafter. In April 2009, Rangel was convicted in Tennessee state court of “aggravated statutory rape,” in violation of Tenn.Code Ann. § 39–13–506(c), for having sexual intercourse with his then-girlfriend, who was sixteen years old and twelve years his junior at the time of the offense. The victim acknowledged that she willingly participated in the sexual relationship and stated that Rangel had believed that she was eighteen. Rangel received a suspended two-year prison sentence. He was subsequently convicted of illegal reentry in federal district court, and he was again deported to Mexico in September 2009.

Once more, Rangel returned to the United States unlawfully, this time settling in North Carolina. In 2010, he was convicted in state court of driving while impaired and failing to register as a sex offender. In July 2010, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Western District of North Carolina on one count of illegal reentry by an alien who was removed after an aggravated felony conviction, under 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b)(2). He pleaded guilty without a plea agreement in June 2011.

At a sentencing hearing in February 2012, the district court held that Rangel's Tennessee statutory rape conviction constituted a “crime of violence” pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). Based on Rangel's criminal history, the district court therefore applied a sixteen-level sentencing enhancement and found the Guidelines range to be fifty-seven to seventy-one months' imprisonment. The court continued the proceeding for additional argument in light of this enhancement. At the second sentencing hearing, which took place that May, the court granted Rangel a four-level downward departure on the ground that the statutory rape conviction was not as serious as the enhancement would imply, thus yielding a final Guidelines range of thirty-seven to forty-six months' imprisonment. The court sentenced Rangel to forty-two months.

II.

A.

The primary issue in this appeal involves the applicability of a sentencing enhancement for a defendant convicted of illegally entering or staying in the country “[i]f the defendant previously was deported, or unlawfully remained in the United States, after ... a conviction for a felony that is ... a crime of violence.” U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2(b)(1)(A)(ii). This “crime-of-violence” enhancement can be either twelve or sixteen levels depending on the defendant's criminal history. Id. The commentary provides that “crime of violence” means

any of the following offenses under federal, state, or local law: Murder, manslaughter,kidnapping, aggravated assault, forcible sex offenses (including where consent to the conduct is not given or is not legally valid, such as where consent to the conduct is involuntary, incompetent, or coerced), statutory rape, sexual abuse of a minor, robbery, arson, extortion, extortionate extension of credit, burglary of a dwelling, or any other offense under federal, state, or local law that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.

Id.§ 2L1.2 cmt. n. 1(B)(iii). As noted, the main question here is whether Rangel's Tennessee conviction qualifies as “statutory rape,” and hence a “crime of violence,” pursuant to this provision.

In Taylor v. United States, the Supreme Court held that where Congress has not indicated how a prior offense enumerated in a sentencing enhancement statute is to be interpreted, it should be understood to refer to “the generic, contemporary meaning” of the crime. 495 U.S. 575, 598, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990) (interpreting “burglary” as used in the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)). This meaning, the Court made clear, will generally correspond to the “sense in which the term is now used in the criminal codes of most States.” Id. In construing how an enhancement applies, a sentencing court must compare the elements of the generic offense to “the statutory definition[ ] of the prior offense [ ].” Id. at 599–600, 110 S.Ct. 2143. If “the defendant was convicted of [the prior offense] in a State where the generic definition has been adopted, with minor variations in terminology, then the [sentencing] court need find only that the state statute corresponds in substance to the generic meaning” of the crime, rendering the enhancement applicable. Id. at 599, 110 S.Ct. 2143. By contrast, if a defendant “has been convicted under a nongeneric [ ] statute,” the conviction does not qualify for the enhancement. Id. at 599–600, 110 S.Ct. 2143. Specifically, an offense is “categorically overbroad” if “it is evident from the statutory definition of the state crime that some violations of the statute are ‘crimes of violence’ and others are not.” United States v. Diaz–Ibarra, 522 F.3d 343, 348 (4th Cir.2008).

This approach, Taylor explained, is “formal” and “categorical” because it allows courts to “look[ ] only to the statutory definitions of the prior offenses, and not to the particular facts underlying those convictions.” 495 U.S. at 600, 110 S.Ct. 2143. Resort to such facts is appropriate, however, in “a narrow range of cases” where “all the elements” of the generic offense were required to be found, id. at 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143—that is, where “the statute is divisible, with some categories constituting a crime of violence and some not constituting a crime of violence,” United States v. Gomez, 690 F.3d 194, 200 (4th Cir.2012). This latter mode of analysis, of course, has become known as the “modified categorical approach.”

B.

Rangel was convicted of “aggravated statutory rape” pursuant to Tenn.Code Ann. § 39–13–506(c), which provides that

[a]ggravated statutory rape is the unlawful sexual penetration of a victim by the defendant, or of the defendant by the victim when the victim is at least thirteen (13) but less than eighteen (18) years of age and the defendant is at least ten (10) years older than the victim.

The parties agree that the categorical approach controls this case. They disagree quite strenuously, however, about whether Rangel's conviction comports with the generic definition of “statutory rape” as that term is used in the crime-of-violence enhancement. On this question, the district court held that

under 2L1.2, it specifically enumerates statutory rape as a crime that constitutes a crime of violence, and, therefore, applying the ordinary, contemporary, common meaning of that term, the conviction of the defendant falls within that term. Even though there may be differences from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to the particular age of consent, the crime that is committed by committing statutory rape is one that can be discerned using the ordinary, contemporary, and common meaning of that term, and therefore, the Application Note 1(B)(iii) of 2L1.2 can be applied.

The government argues, first, that the generic definition of statutory rape requires sexual intercourse with a person younger than eighteen. Because the Tennessee statute sets the age of consent at eighteen, the government contends that the state offense meets the generic definition and is consequently not overbroad under Taylor. In the alternative, the government argues that even if the default age of consent is sixteen (as the defendant contends), the generic offense also encompasses statutes that increase the age of consent in conjunction with an element that the perpetrator be some minimum age or a certain number of years older than the victim. The government asserts that because the Tennessee statute includes such an age-difference element, it easily satisfies this formulation—particularly the aggravated statutory rape...