U.S. v. Juvenile PWM, s. 96-3564

• Decision Date: 01 August 1997
• Docket Number: 96-3903,Nos. 96-3564,s. 96-3564
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. JUVENILE PWM, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 382

121 F.3d 382

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. JUVENILE PWM, Appellant.

Nos. 96-3564, 96-3903.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted May 23, 1997.

Decided Aug. 1, 1997.

Randall B. Turner, Joseph P. Barnett, Aberdeen, SD, argued, for Appellant.

Mikal G. Hanson, Asst. U.S. Atty., Pierre, SD, argued, for Appellee.

Before RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Chief Judge, and BOWMAN and MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

PWM, a juvenile, appeals two sentences imposed on him. We reverse and remand for resentencing.

In a proceeding pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 5032, PWM, a sixteen-year-old, admitted to being a juvenile delinquent because he had stolen firearms from a firearms dealer, an act made criminal by 18 U.S.C. § 922(u), and had possessed and sold stolen firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(j). After being released on bond, he failed to appear at his sentencing hearing, an act for which he was charged with being a juvenile delinquent for violating 18 U.S.C. § 3146(a)(1). He later admitted to this charge as well. The district court sentenced him to custody until he reached the age of twenty-one in both cases, the maximum sentence that can be imposed on a juvenile who is less than eighteen years old. See 18 U.S.C. § 5037(c)(1)(A).

In sentencing PWM, the district court recognized that in the firearms case the guideline range for an adult defendant would have been four to ten months imprisonment, and that in the failure-to-appear case it would have been six to twelve months. But because the district court believed that these ranges were arrived at on the basis of a criminal history category that did not adequately reflect the seriousness of PWM's past criminal conduct, it felt it appropriate to depart upward. In the sentencing hearing in the firearms case, the district judge remarked that PWM "is basically a career criminal at a very young age," and adverted to his "most extensive criminal history," but did not specifically state to what criminal conduct of PWM's it was referring, except to say that "of course he continued [it] while out on bond." To justify the sentence in the failure-to-appear case, the district court specifically relied on paragraphs 17 through 29 of the relevant presentence report, which briefly described nine tribal-court charges of which PWM had been convicted and three criminal cases that were pending against him in tribal court (two of these last being for conduct that he had allegedly engaged in while on bond).

In United States v. R.L.C., 503 U.S. 291, 112 S.Ct. 1329, 117 L.Ed.2d 559 (1992), the Supreme Court considered the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 5037(c)(1)(B), which fixes the maximum term of someone adjudicated a juvenile delinquent at "the maximum term that would be authorized if the juvenile had been tried and convicted as an adult," unless that term would carry the juvenile past his twenty-first birthday. The Court held that this statute required a sentencing court in a juvenile case to employ the sentencing guidelines to determine the range of the sentence to which an adult would be exposed if he or she had committed the adult counterpart of the relevant offense, and that the upper limit of that range marked the maximum sentence to which a juvenile could be subjected. Id. at 306, 112 S.Ct. at 1338-39. The Court also observed, however, that "the upper limit of the proper Guideline range [sets] the maximum term for which a juvenile may be committed to official detention, absent circumstances that would warrant departure under [ 18 U.S.C.] § 3553(b) " (emphasis supplied). Id. at 307, 112 S.Ct. at 1339.

The government argues that R.L.C. allows a district court unfettered discretion in a juvenile case to exceed the top of the guideline range to which an...