Reign v. Gidley, 071019 FED6, 18-1086

• Opinion Judge: ROGERS, CIRCUIT JUDGE.
• Party Name: Marcus Magnum Reign, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Lori Gidley, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Attorney: Michael H. McGinley, DECHERT LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Appellant. Linus Richard Banghart-Linn, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee. Michael H. McGinley, DECHERT LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Appellant. Linus Richard Banghart-Linn, OFFICE OF THE ATTORN...
• Judge Panel: Before: ROGERS, DONALD, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.
• Case Date: July 10, 2019
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals, U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Marcus Magnum Reign, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

Lori Gidley, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 18-1086

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit

July 10, 2019

Argued: May 9, 2019

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit. No. 2:17-cv-11692-Gershwin A. Drain, District Judge.

ARGUED:

Michael H. McGinley, DECHERT LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Appellant.

Linus Richard Banghart-Linn, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF:

Michael H. McGinley, DECHERT LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Appellant.

Linus Richard Banghart-Linn, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: ROGERS, DONALD, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

ROGERS, CIRCUIT JUDGE.

Marcus Magnum Reign was convicted of armed robbery in Michigan state court. He was originally sentenced under a mandatory guidelines scheme that determined his minimum sentence and incorporated judge-found facts. As became clear before the judgment was final, such a sentence would violate his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. See Robinson v. Woods, 901 F.3d 710, 714 (6th Cir. 2018); People v. Lockridge, 870 N.W.2d 502, 513-14 (Mich. 2015) (applying Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013), and United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005)). In the end the sentencing court recognized the Sixth-Amendment-driven change in the law from a mandatory to an advisory guideline scheme. The sentencing court nonetheless imposed a minimum sentence within the relevant guidelines, taking into account such judge-found facts, reasoning that the advisory nature of the guidelines did not affect the court's previous application of the guidelines. Magnum Reign¹ now appeals the denial of habeas relief by the federal district court below, arguing that he is entitled to a resentencing hearing, essentially because the guidelines were considered mandatory at the time of his hearing, even though not at the time that his sentence became final. Declining to conduct such a new hearing in this case was not contrary to, nor did it involve an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, and habeas relief was therefore properly denied. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

In August 2014, Magnum Reign pled guilty to one count of armed robbery in Michigan state court. At the time, minimum sentences in Michigan were chosen by the sentencing court from a range computed under nearly mandatory guidelines. The state sentencing court calculated Magnum Reign's minimum-sentence guidelines range at 108-180 months. This calculation was built in part upon judge-found facts, neither admitted by Magnum Reign nor found by a jury. The sentencing court chose a minimum sentence of 144 months, at the middle of the range.

After Magnum Reign moved to correct his sentence in January 2015, the sentencing court recalculated the guidelines range for his minimum sentence at 81-135 months, or roughly 6 ¾ to 11 ¼ years. At the second sentencing hearing, however, Magnum Reign's counsel incorrectly stated that the range was "around 7 years to about 13 years." Even though the sentencing court again stated its intention to sentence in the middle of his guidelines range, the court gave Magnum Reign a minimum sentence of ten years, halfway between seven and thirteen, instead of nine years, the actual middle of his range.

Five days after this first resentencing, the Michigan Supreme Court handed down its decision in People v. Lockridge, 870 N.W.2d 502 (Mich. 2015). In Lockridge, the Michigan Supreme Court held that the Michigan guidelines scheme violated defendants' Sixth Amendment rights under Alleyne, because it was all but mandatory and incorporated judge-found facts to increase minimum sentences. See 870 N.W.2d at 513-14. The Michigan Supreme Court's remedy was to "Booker-ize the Michigan sentencing guidelines, i.e., render them advisory only." Id. at 520; see Booker, 543 U.S. at 245. Lockridge accordingly made the Michigan guidelines for minimum sentences akin to the federal guidelines-advisory, but "a highly relevant consideration in a trial court's exercise of sentencing discretion." 870 N.W.2d at 520. Thus, Lockridge did not change how the guidelines ranges for minimum sentences were computed; the only change was that they were no longer binding on the sentencing judge. To provide guidance to Michigan appellate courts, the Michigan Supreme Court instructed that "in cases in which a defendant's minimum sentence was established by application of the sentencing guidelines in a manner that violated the Sixth Amendment, the case should be remanded to the trial court to determine whether that court would have imposed a materially different sentence but for the constitutional error." Id. at 523.

After his first resentencing, and after Lockridge came down, Magnum Reign again moved for a correction of his sentence. Magnum Reign argued that his previous sentencing counsel had been ineffective by stating that the guidelines range for a minimum sentence was 7 to 13 years, when in fact it was 6 ¾ to 11 ¼ years. Magnum Reign also argued that the sentencing court had relied on judicial factfinding in violation of Alleyne. Using the language of Lockridge, he wrote that "the Court should reconsider the sentence and whether it would have imposed a 'materially different' sentence using advisory sentencing guidelines."

In a written order on March 2, 2016, the sentencing court did just that. After granting Magnum Reign's motion in part, based on the earlier misstatement by his counsel, and lowering his sentence to nine years, the sentencing court declined to resentence under Lockridge. The court wrote that it "did not feel constrained by the then-mandatory nature of the guidelines. That is, the Court would have applied its same reasoning regardless of whether sentencing occurred before or after Lockridge. Accordingly, Lockridge does not require resentencing in this case." Put differently, the sentencing court again decided on a middle-of-the-guidelines sentence even though the guidelines were by then advisory, but did so without holding another hearing.

Magnum Reign appealed his sentence to the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court. In both appeals, he argued that the sentencing court had failed to follow Lockridge properly, because, in his view, if the sentencing court had followed Lockridge it would not have considered judge-found facts and would have lowered his guidelines range. Both courts denied his appeal in summary orders.

Magnum Reign then filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court below, asserting among other things that the sentencing court had based his sentence on "unconstitutional judicial fact finding" in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. The district court denied his petition. See Magnum Reign v. Gidley, Case No. 2:17-cv-11692, 2017 WL 4918533 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 31, 2017).

We granted Magnum Reign a certificate of appealability with respect to his Sixth Amendment claim. In reviewing Magnum Reign's habeas...