United States v. Barnes
| Decision Date | 01 March 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 17-2574,17-2574 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. David N. BARNES, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
George A. Norwood, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Benton, IL, Nathan D. Stump, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Fairview Heights, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
David Brengle, Thomas C. Gabel, Attorney, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, East St. Louis, IL, for Defendant-Appellant.
Before Flaum, Easterbrook, and Barrett, Circuit Judges.
David Barnes appeals his sentence. He argues that the district court incorrectly calculated his Guidelines range by counting a local ordinance violation for "Smoking Marihuana at a Public Park" in his criminal history score. Because Barnes has waived this argument, we affirm the district court.
In 2010, Barnes pleaded guilty to several offenses related to the distribution of crack cocaine. The district court sentenced him to 300 months of imprisonment, five years of supervised release, a fine of $600, and a special assessment of $300. Barnes did not appeal.1 In 2012, Barnes moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence on the ground that two Illinois convictions used to classify Barnes as a career offender—one for robbery and the other for aggravated discharge of a firearm—were no longer valid predicates. After he received his federal sentence, Barnes persuaded an Illinois state court to convert these convictions from adult felony convictions to adjudications of delinquency. (Barnes was fifteen when he committed these crimes but was tried as an adult.) Now that they were juvenile offenses, Barnes claimed, they no longer justified the enhancement he had received under the Sentencing Guidelines for being a career offender.
The district court granted his § 2255 motion and ordered that a revised presentence investigation report (PSR) be prepared for resentencing. The revised PSR did not use the adjudications of delinquency to classify Barnes as a career offender. It did, however, count them in his criminal history score. The PSR assigned Barnes ten criminal history points: two for the adjudication of delinquency for robbery, two for the adjudication of delinquency for aggravated discharge of a firearm, one point apiece for three convictions of marijuana possession, one point for smoking marijuana at a public park, and two points for committing the instant offense while on the parole imposed as part of his sentence for the convictions now classified as adjudications of delinquency.
Defense counsel and the government went back and forth about Barnes's criminal history score. Barnes's counsel maintained that the PSR should give no weight to either the juvenile adjudications or the parole violation based upon them. Instead, he insisted, the court should assign him only four points in determining his criminal history category, one for each of the marijuana-related offenses. The government initially opposed any modification to the PSR on the ground that the Guidelines expressly count juvenile offenses as relevant criminal history. But after Barnes's counsel shifted his argument to highlight a procedural irregularity in the state-court judgment, the government agreed that the district court should not assess any criminal history points for the juvenile offenses or the associated parole violation.2 The PSR was revised, and the district court sentenced Barnes to 189 months of imprisonment, five years of supervised release, a $600 fine, and a $300 special assessment.
Barnes appeals this sentence. He claims that the district court incorrectly counted a local ordinance violation—one for "Smoking Marihuana at a Public Park"—as part of his criminal history. Local ordinance violations do not count to-ward criminal history unless the underlying conduct would also violate state law. See U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(c)(2). Barnes says that there is no Illinois crime of "Smoking Marihuana at a Public Park" and that assigning him a criminal history point for that offense was therefore error.
The parties agree that Barnes failed to raise this objection below. But they disagree about whether Barnes has waived or forfeited the argument. "Waiver occurs when a defendant intentionally relinquishes a known right." United States v. Haddad , 462 F.3d 783, 793 (7th Cir. 2006). Forfeiture, by contrast, "occurs when a defendant accidentally or negligently fails to assert his or her rights in a timely fashion." Id. The difference between the two is significant, because "[w]aiver of a right extinguishes any error and precludes appellate review, whereas forfeiture of a right is reviewed for plain error." United States v. Brodie , 507 F.3d 527, 530 (7th Cir. 2007). Barnes claims that his failure to object to the inclusion of the "Smoking Marihuana at a Public Park" offense in his criminal history score was an oversight that we can remedy if the district court clearly erred. The government asserts that Barnes knowingly conceded this point below and is now barred from pressing it on appeal.
Because the waiver principle is construed liberally in favor of the defendant, we are cautious about interpreting a defendant's behavior as intentional relinquishment. Thus we have held that a defendant does not necessarily waive a sentencing argument by accepting the PSR without objection, see United States v. Jaimes-Jaimes , 406 F.3d 845, 848 (7th Cir. 2005), or even by contesting some aspects of the PSR and not others, see United States v. Jenkins , 772 F.3d 1092, 1095–96 (7th Cir. 2014). At the same time, a more targeted strategy raises a different inference. In United States v. Walton , 255 F.3d 437, 442 (7th Cir. 2001), we concluded that the defendant waived any objection to a particular sentencing enhancement when his counsel "affirmatively indicated" that the argument he made "was the sole objection that he was raising regarding the application of the enhancement." We said that by making that representation, he "affirmatively abandoned all other arguments against the application of the enhancement in his case." Id. at 443.
Barnes had a targeted strategy. He focused exclusively on his criminal history category and raised a single objection to it: he argued that...
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...his illegal drug dealing. A defendant waives an argument when he "intentionally relinquishes a known right." United States v. Barnes , 883 F.3d 955, 957 (7th Cir. 2018), quoting United States v. Haddad , 462 F.3d 783, 793 (7th Cir. 2006). Evidence that the decision not to raise an argument ......
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...defendant" and this court is "cautious about interpreting a defendant's behavior as intentional relinquishment." United States v. Barnes , 883 F.3d 955, 957 (7th Cir. 2018). Accordingly, we have required something more than just a defendant's failure to object to some part of the PSR to fin......
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...occurs when a defendant intends, as a strategic matter, to relinquish a known right. See United States v. Barnes , No. 17-2574, 883 F.3d 955, 957–58, 2018 WL 1095950, at *2 (7th Cir. Mar. 1, 2018); United States v. Waldrip , 859 F.3d 446, 449 (7th Cir. 2017). By contrast, a defendant forfei......
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