Jordan v. United States

• Decision Date: 27 August 2020
• Docket Number: No. 16-CO-827,16-CO-827
• Parties: Eiley S. JORDAN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

235 A.3d 808

Eiley S. JORDAN, Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 16-CO-827

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued February 28, 2019

Decided August 27, 2020

Fleming Terrell, Public Defender Service, with whom Samia Fam and Mikel-Meredith Weidman, Public Defender Service, were on the brief, for appellant.

James A. Ewing, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Jessie K. Liu, United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth Trosman, Vivian E. Kim, and Candice C. Wong, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before Blackburne-Rigsby, Chief Judge, Easterly, Associate Judge, and Washington, Senior Judge.

Opinion by Associate Judge Easterly, concurring in the judgment, at page 827-28.

Blackburne-Rigsby, Chief Judge:

On June 25, 1999, the trial court sentenced appellant Eiley S. Jordan to twenty years’ to life imprisonment for first-degree felony murder related to a June 10, 1992, shooting death. Sixteen years later, the government moved to increase appellant's sentence to thirty years’ to life imprisonment, arguing that the trial court's 1999 sentencing was in error because the effective law at the time of the charged offense had raised the statutory minimum penalty for first-degree murder from twenty to thirty years. The trial court granted the government's motion in April 2016, rejecting appellant's challenges to the sentence increase under the Double Jeopardy Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. On March 23, 2020, we issued an order vacating the trial court's order and remanding for it to reinstate the June 25, 1999, sentencing order. This opinion explains why.

We now hold, for the first time, that a belated correction of a defendant's sentence, even an illegal one, may violate the Due Process Clause. Such a violation, however, only occurs in extreme circumstances, such as those present here, and we use this opportunity to clarify those circumstances. Therefore, we conclude that the trial court's decision to increase appellant's sentence – seventeen years after his sentence had been finalized – violated his rights under the Due Process Clause and must be reversed.

I. Factual Background

In July 1995, a jury convicted appellant of two counts of first-degree felony murder while armed, along with other related crimes, arising from the June 10, 1992, shooting death of Araminta Coates.¹ For the two counts of first-degree felony murder while armed, the trial court initially sentenced appellant to thirty years’ to life imprisonment, each with a mandatory-minimum sentence of thirty years, to run concurrently.² On appeal, this court affirmed appellant's convictions, along with those of his co-defendants Tyrone Walker and Donnell Reed, and remanded for the merger of several convictions. See Jordan v. United States, 722 A.2d 1257, 1262 (D.C. 1998). On remand, we instructed:

In the process [of merging the convictions], the judge should consider, perhaps on separate motion filed under Super. Ct. Crim. R. 35(a), the claim adverted to by [co-appellant] Walker in his pro se motion alleging ineffective assistance of counsel ... that his mandatory 30-year minimum prison sentence for first-degree murder ran afoul of the prohibition against ex post facto punishment (a claim, we note, that is also available to appellant Jordan).

Id .

On June 24, 1999, appellant filed a motion under Super. Ct. Crim. R. 35(a) to correct his sentence, advancing the ex post facto claim. Appellant argued that the First Degree Murder Amendment Act of 1992, D.C. Law 9-153, 39 D.C. Reg. 3868 (Sept. 26, 1992), which increased the mandatory minimum for first-degree murder from twenty to thirty years, did not take effect until September 26, 1992, fourteen weeks after the charged offense. At a hearing on June 25, 1999, the trial court granted appellant's motion and resentenced him to twenty years’ to life on the first-degree felony murder charges, nunc pro tunc to his original 1995 sentencing date, and merged several other convictions.³ The government did not file a written opposition to appellant's motion, seek reconsideration of the revised sentence, or appeal.⁴ As a result, the trial court imposed an aggregate amended sentence of twenty-six years and eight months’ to life imprisonment, meaning appellant would become eligible for parole on February 11, 2020.

Sixteen years later, on July 14, 2015, the government filed a Rule 35(a) motion to correct appellant's sentence, arguing that the originally imposed thirty-year mandatory-minimum sentence was correct and that the trial court's 1999 resentencing was in error. The government argued that the First Degree Murder Emergency Act of 1992 – which became effective for ninety days on April 24, 1992, and raised the statutory minimum penalty for first-degree murder from twenty to thirty years – was applicable at the time of the June 10 charged offense. See First Degree Murder Emergency Act of 1992, D.C. Council, Act 9-200 (April 24, 1992) (the "Emergency Act") (temporarily raising the statutory minimum penalty until the permanent act took effect). Apparently, the government had been unaware of the Emergency Act until it had been raised in the unrelated case of Mackall v. United States , No. 14-CO-1121, Order & J. (D.C. Oct. 30, 2015).

In Mackall , defendant Gilbert Mackall claimed a violation of the Equal Protection Clause because the trial court sentenced him to thirty years’ to life imprisonment for a murder committed on May 21, 1992, also within the effective period of the Emergency Act, while appellant and co-defendant Walker only received a sentence of twenty years’ to life.⁵ Id . In its motion for summary affirmance before this court in Mackall , the government recognized this discrepancy in sentencing, acknowledged the Emergency Act's April 24, 1992, effective date, and noted error in appellant's 1999 resentencing. See Gov't’s Mot. Summ. Affirmance, Mackall v. United States , No. 14-CO-1121 (filed May 20, 2015) ("Mackall Gov't Brief"). It was only after the government moved for summary affirmance in Mackall in this court that the government also moved to have the trial court increase appellant's sentence pursuant to the Emergency Act. Appellant opposed the government's motion in the trial court, claiming that an increase in his sentence would violate both the Double Jeopardy Clause and the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution.⁶

The trial court held a hearing and granted the government's Rule 35(a) motion by written order on April 15, 2016 – then almost seventeen years after appellant's 1999 resentencing.⁷ The trial court concluded that appellant's downward resentencing in 1999 was illegal because the Emergency Act, which raised the mandatory-minimum sentence for first-degree murder to thirty years’ to life imprisonment, became effective on April 24, 1992, and therefore was in effect at the time of the charged offense on June 10, 1992. The trial court was unpersuaded by appellant's arguments that increasing his sentence would violate his rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause and the Due Process Clause. Although it considered the "much more persuasive legal argument under the Due Process Clause," the trial court was unconvinced that the "extremely long" seventeen-year delay in resentencing violated the Constitution because appellant's circumstances did not present the most "egregious type[ ] of case[ ]" that would amount to a due process violation. However, because it found that granting the government's motion would "substantially increase[ ]" appellant's sentence, the trial court ran his sentences concurrently in order to "mitigate[ ]" prejudice, resulting in what it calculated as an overall increase of three years and four months before appellant would be eligible for parole consideration. Ultimately, appellant would become eligible for parole on December 31, 2023 (compared to his prior parole eligibility date of February 11, 2020).⁸

On August 2, 2016, the trial court issued a second amended Judgment and Commitment Order, effectuating its April 15 order. This appeal followed.

II. Legal Framework

We conclude that, in certain circumstances, a defendant's expectation of finality in a sentence has crystalized such that a later, upward revision to that sentence violates the fundamental right of fairness embodied in the Due Process Clause. Our analysis of substantive due process reveals that this right is deeply rooted in our history and tradition, such that courts have amply identified this fundamental right and provided guideposts that enable us to carefully describe it.

A. The General Rule: No Expectation of Finality in Illegal Sentences

We acknowledge that the Constitution contains no general prohibition against increasing a sentence when a court finds that it is illegal and that a higher sentence is required by law. We have upheld such sentence increases in the face of constitutional and other challenges. See, e.g. , Davis v. Moore , 772 A.2d 204, 219-21 (D.C. 2001) (en banc) (affirming loss of good time credit, and therefore increase in sentence, in face of ex post facto and due process challenges); Gray v. United States , 585 A.2d 164, 166 (D.C. 1991) (affirming trial court's increase to sentence because originally-imposed sentence "was obviously illegal"); Lindsay v. United States , 520 A.2d 1059, 1063 (D.C. 1987) (affirming increase in sentence, concluding that an illegal sentence "created no vested rights protected by the double jeopardy clause"); Christopher v. United States , 415 A.2d 803, 804-05 (D.C. 1980) (per curiam) (concluding that resentencing did not violate double jeopardy because original sentence was illegal). Moreover, Rule 35(a) permits the trial court to "correct an illegal sentence at any time," and we have long held that the trial court is authorized to bring an illegal sentence into conformity with the law. See (Derron) Smith v. United States , 984 A.2d 196, 199 (D.C. 2...