United States v. Mitchell

• Decision Date: 29 June 2022
• Docket Number: 20-2493
• Citation: 38 F.4th 382
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Tyrone MITCHELL, a/k/a Fox, Appellant
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

38 F.4th 382

UNITED STATES of America

v.Tyrone MITCHELL, a/k/a Fox, Appellant

No. 20-2493

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued on January 11, 2022

Opinion filed: June 29, 2022

Peter Goldberger [ARGUED], Pamela A. Wilk, 50 Rittenhouse Place, Ardmore, PA 19003, Counsel for Appellant

Emily McKillip, Robert A. Zauzmer [ARGUED], Office of United States Attorney, 615 Chestnut Street, Suite 1250, Philadelphia, PA 19106, Counsel for Appellee

Before: AMBRO, BIBAS, and ROTH, Circuit Judges

OPINION OF THE COURT

ROTH, Circuit Judge.

In 2018, the President signed the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation implementing long-sought-after criminal-justice reform. In this appeal, we must decide how the First Step Act affects Tyrone Mitchell's sentence for various drug and gun-related offenses in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). The complication in determining Mitchell's sentence arises from the fact that, after the Act's passage, we vacated Mitchell's sentence and remanded his case for resentencing because we concluded that, when the District Court sentenced Mitchell, it violated his procedural-due-process rights.¹

Generally, when Congress passes a statute that imposes a more lenient penalty, the retroactivity of that statute will be explicitly set forth in the statute's text.² In this regard, Congress chose to limit the benefits of the First Step Act. The Act applies, prospectively, to all offenses committed after the Act's enactment but, retroactively, "to any offense that was committed before the date of enactment of this Act, if a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of [that] date."³ We have interpreted this provision twice.⁴ Both times, however, we declined to decide the full reach of the statute's retroactivity. Rather, we expressly left open the question: "Whether § 403 applies to a defendant whose sentence on § 924(c) counts is vacated and remanded for resentencing after the Act's enactment."⁵

This appeal requires that we answer that question.

A jury convicted Tyrone Mitchell of various drug-and-gun-related offenses, including two counts of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime, and aiding and abetting such possession, in violation of § 924(c)(1). Later, we vacated Mitchell's sentence and remanded his case for resentencing because we concluded that, when the District Court sentenced Mitchell, it violated his procedural-due-process rights.

Mitchell now asks us to decide whether the Act's provisions may apply to a criminal defendant when a district court has imposed an unconstitutional sentence before the Act's enactment that we then vacated after its enactment. For the reasons set out below, we hold that in these circumstances, the provisions of the First Step Act do apply to the resentencing.⁶

I.

In October 2015, a jury convicted Mitchell of seventeen drug-and-gun related offenses.⁷ The District Court sentenced Mitchell to 1,020 months' imprisonment.⁸

Mitchell appealed his conviction and sentencing; in his appeal, he raised eight issues.⁹ We rejected seven.¹⁰ However, we held that one of Mitchell's arguments had merit: The District Court had violated Mitchell's procedural-due-process rights when it sentenced him.¹¹ In coming to this conclusion, we determined that a criminal "defendant cannot be deprived of liberty based upon mere speculation."¹² Here, the District Court plainly erred by imposing a sentence on Mitchell based on his arrest record: "a bare arrest record—without more—does not justify an assumption that a defendant has committed other crimes."¹³ Because the District Court "explicitly referred to Mitchell's arrest[ record] when describing his long and serious criminal record and identified Mitchell's extensive criminal history as the sole justification for his sentence[,]"¹⁴ the District Court's sentence violated Mitchell's constitutional right to due process of the law.¹⁵ Accordingly, since the District Court had imposed an unconstitutional sentence, we vacated the judgment of sentence in 2019 and remanded the case to the District Court for resentencing.¹⁶

The District Court resentenced Mitchell in July 2020, after the passage of the Act. Due to the fact that the resentencing was post-enactment, the District Court held that Mitchell could not benefit from the Act's benefits. Thus, Mitchell received a mandatory-minimum sentence of fifty-five years' imprisonment for his three § 924(c) offenses rather than a sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment for these offenses pursuant to the provisions of the Act.¹⁷ In total, the District Court resentenced Mitchell to 895 months' imprisonment. Mitchell appealed.

II.¹⁸

A.

Our first issue is whether § 403 of the Act should apply retroactively to Mitchell.¹⁹ We begin with the text.²⁰ Section 403(b) states that the Act "shall apply to any offense that was committed before the date of enactment of th[e] Act, if a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of such date of enactment."²¹ What does "impose a sentence" mean? Interpreting that language has vexed, and split, our sister circuits.²² Courts have interpreted these words in at least two ways. One interpretation is that "impose a sentence" means any sentence, regardless of whether the sentence is vacated for violating the defendant's constitutional rights. Another interpretation is that "impose a sentence" means a valid sentence that survives constitutional challenge on direct appellate review and is therefore not subject to a vacatur and full remand for resentencing.

We see how the statute plausibly could be read either way.²³ For that reason, the statute is genuinely ambiguous.^{24 ,25}

Because the statute is ambiguous, we must decide how best to interpret it. As we explain below, we interpret "impose a sentence" to mean a valid sentence, one that survives a constitutional challenge on direct appellate review and is therefore not subject to a vacatur and full remand for resentencing. We do so for several compelling reasons.

First, our reading of the statute is more natural.^{26 ,27} Reading § 403(b) to apply to defendants whose sentences are vacated due to the sentence suffering from a constitutional defect is the best reading because "[t]here is no reason to think that Congress excluded from its remedy pre-Act offenders facing plenary resentencing."²⁸ Indeed, § 403(b) makes "no distinction between defendants who had never been sentenced and those whose sentence had been vacated fully and who were awaiting the imposition of a new sentence."²⁹ "In this way, Congress stanched, to the degree it could without overturning valid and settled sentences , the mortmain effect of sentencing policies that it considered no longer in the Nation's best interest."³⁰ For these reasons, we agree with the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals and join them in construing § 403(b) broadly.³¹

Second, we look to the legislative purpose of the Act.³² The Act's purpose is obvious: to reduce the harsh length of sentences for certain crimes—in the case of § 403(b), the Act reduced the mandatory minimum sentence for certain firearms offenses.³³ As the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals observed, reading the statute any other way would be "fundamentally at odds with the ... Act's ameliorative nature."³⁴ When "construing a statute, courts ought not deprive it of the obvious meaning intended by Congress, nor abandon common sense."³⁵ Thus, when examined through the prism of Congress's purpose for passing the Act, our interpretation of the statute, which applies its provisions to defendants whose sentences are vacated due to constitutional defects and fully remanded for resentencing, would be correct.

Finally, our vacatur of Mitchell's sentence shows that Mitchell himself had no sentence at the time of his post-Act sentencing; thus, he should have received the Act's benefits. As we explained earlier, we vacated Mitchell's sentence because, when the District Court sentenced him the first time, it violated his procedural-due-process rights.³⁶ Understanding the meaning of a vacatur is imperative to interpreting § 403(b) because our "elected representatives, like other citizens, know the law"³⁷ and thus, "[w]hen Congress crafted this statutory language, it well understood" what a vacatur meant.³⁸

What is a vacatur? To vacate is "to cancel or rescind" and to "render an act void."³⁹ Thus, a vacatur "cancels" the previous sentence. A vacatur of a criminal sentence serves two functions. First, it recognizes that a district court violated the law by imposing the sentence. Second, it remedies the district court's ultra vires act by canceling the unlawful sentence and rendering the defendant unsentenced.

Supreme Court precedent supports this conclusion. As the Court said in Pepper , the act of vacating a sentence washes away the original sentence.⁴⁰ There, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit "set aside [the defendant's] entire sentence and remanded for a de novo resentencing."⁴¹ The Supreme Court held that the full remand "effectively wiped the slate clean."⁴² That makes sense, the Court explained, because "a district court's original sentencing intent may be undermined by altering one portion of the calculus," and "an appellate court when reversing one part of a defendant's sentence may vacate the entire sentence ... so that, on remand, the trial court can reconfigure the sentencing plan."⁴³

What's more, our own precedent distinguishes between limited remands for resentencing and a vacatur that involves a full remand. We explained that "to the extent that a court remands for a limited resentencing proceeding, and not a de novo proceeding, limitations on the consideration of post-sentencing rehabilitation may continue to be appropriate."⁴⁴ The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has explained that point very aptly: "When we vacate a sentence and order a full remand, the defendant has a ‘clean’ slate—that is, there is no sentence until the district court imposes a new one. "⁴...