U.S.A v. Laferriere
| Decision Date | 19 October 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 09-1369,09-1369 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TROY LEON LAFERRIERE, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
BEFORE: KENNEDY, ROGERS, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.
1 Troy Leon Laferriere pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court determined that Laferriere was an armed career criminal and, consistent with a binding plea agreement, sentenced Laferriere to the mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment. Laferriere now appeals, arguing that the district court should not have concluded that a juvenile conviction for armed assault with intent to rob was a predicate offense under the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA") because insufficient evidence supported the finding that Laferriere was convicted of that offense. The record supports the district court's conclusion that Laferriere was convicted of armed assault with intent to rob. However, because the evidence fails to establish that this conviction was for a crime that involved an actual firearm—a particular requirement for juveniledelinquency predicate offenses under the ACCA—the prior conclusion cannot be used to enhance Laferriere's sentence.
On August 1, 2007, a witness called the Lansing, Michigan, Police Department to report an intoxicated man with a gun. The witness identified the man as the defendant, Troy Leon Laferriere. When police officers located Laferriere, he was near the front of his residence; Laferriere fled the officers, and they apprehended him in his backyard. When he was captured, Laferriere was standing near a table where there were two bags of marijuana in plain view, sitting adjacent to Laferriere's keys. Police officers obtained a search warrant for the house where Laferriere was staying, and they discovered a shotgun in the area of the house that Laferriere inhabited. Because Laferriere had previously been convicted of a felony, a federal grand jury indicted him for being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Laferriere initially agreed to plead guilty to the offense. After the Presentence Investigation Report (PSR) recommended that Laferriere be designated an armed career criminal, however, he moved to withdraw his plea. The district court granted the motion, noting that as an armed career criminal, Laferriere was facing a minimum sentence (fifteen years), which was greater than the maximum sentence (ten years) provided for by the plea agreement. After further negotiations—and on the eve of trial—the parties submitted a binding plea agreement to the court pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C). The agreement called for a sentence of 180 months, the mandatory minimum sentence for an armed career criminal. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). After a hearing, the district court accepted the proposed plea agreement, agreeing that if the court determinedthat Laferriere was an armed career criminal, the court would sentence him to 180 months' imprisonment.
Before the district court, Laferriere argued that there was insufficient evidence to establish that he had three previous convictions for violent felonies, and thus he argued that he was not an armed career criminal. In particular, Laferriere challenged his alleged juvenile conviction for "Assault with Intent to Rob-Armed" in violation of Michigan Compiled Laws § 750.89. The alleged conviction is evidenced by an "Order of Disposition" issued by the Juvenile Division of the Ingham County Probate Court in April, 1991. Because the document is difficult to describe and interpretation of this document is central to this case, a copy of the order is attached to this opinion as an appendix. At Laferriere's sentencing hearing, the district court rejected Laferriere's argument that the order of disposition is ambiguous:
I disagree with counsel's reading of the Government's Exhibit No. 1. I don't think it's ambiguous at all. I think it's clear that on the date designated that the defendant pled guilty to assault with intent to rob while armed, contrary MCL 750.89, and was remanded to the custody of the Ingham County Youth Center in Lansing pursuant to that plea. It's clear also that the charge of possession of firearm in commission of a felony was not sustained, while it's not crystal clear from the record, an understanding of how the state courts work would indicate that that count was probably dismissed pursuant to a plea agreement with the defendant. Likewise, apparently there was another petition pending, which is designated as Number 4, which is noted in Paragraph 10, and which a separate charge of breaking and entering an occupied dwelling contrary MCL 750.110 was also dismissed. So the Court finds no ambiguity in Exhibit 1, assault with intent to rob while armed is the offense to which the defendant offered a plea. And the Court finds that that is a predicate felony for purposes of armed career criminal.
The court then imposed a 180-month sentence in accordance with the plea agreement.
Laferriere now appeals, arguing (1) that the order of disposition is ambiguous and (2) that a judicial determination that Laferriere had been convicted of armed assault with intent to rob violates the rule set out by Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000).
While Laferriere's case must be remanded for reasons explained below, neither of the two main arguments presented on appeal has merit. First, the district court's determination that the order of disposition indicates that Laferriere was convicted of armed assault with intent to rob is not clearly erroneous. See United States v. Crowell, 493 F.3d 744, 748 (6th Cir. 2007) (standard of review). The order of disposition states, in the chart in paragraph five, that Laferriere admitted that he was guilty of count I of the petition dated January 4, 1991: armed assault with intent to rob, in violation of Michigan Compiled Laws § 750.89. Because Laferriere cannot point to any aspect of the order of disposition that undermines the straightforward conclusion that Laferriere was convicted of armed assault with intent to rob, the district court did not commit clear error on this matter.
Laferriere argues that the district court's conclusion was erroneous based on two purported ambiguities in the document. The first is the fact that in the first line of paragraph five, both the box indicating that the allegations in the petition are sustained and the box indicating that the allegations in the petition are not sustained are filled in. But both boxes were filled in because the juvenile court adjudicated two counts: one count was sustained (armed assault with intent to rob) and the other count was not sustained (possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony). This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the order contains a space for "all allegations which are not sustained," and this space lists only the possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony count.
Laferriere also questions the meaning of some numbers (#4, #5) that appear twice in paragraph five and once just above paragraph ten of the order. The most natural reading of the document as a whole is that there were two petitions: petition four, which charged breaking and entering of an occupied dwelling house; and petition five, count one of which was armed assault with intent to rob, and count two of which was possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.2 This reading explains why one of the not sustained charges was indicated in paragraph ten, which lists petitions that are dismissed; and the other not sustained charge was indicated in the last section of paragraph five, which lists allegations that are not sustained. The order referred to the breaking and entering charge in paragraph ten because the entire petition containing that charge was dismissed. The order referred to the possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony charge in the last section of paragraph five because it was in the same petition as the armed assault with intent to rob count, and that petition was not dismissed in its entirety.
Second, the use of the juvenile conviction as a predicate offense for the finding that Laferriere was an armed career criminal did not violate Apprendi. The Apprendi rule explicitly excepts prior convictions: "Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, andproved beyond a reasonable doubt." 530 U.S. at 490 (emphasis added). In Crowell, this court held that "the use of procedurally sound juvenile adjudications as [ACCA] predicates does not violate due process." 493 F.3d at 750. Laferriere also argues that the Government has the burden of affirmatively showing that the procedural guarantees provided by Michigan law were actually afforded to...
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