Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; April 1, 2011; Federal Appellate Court
The court order, issued by Judge Noonan with a dissent from Chief Judge Kozinski, withdraws previous opinions filed on February 8, 2011, and denies both the petition for rehearing and the petition for rehearing en banc. Chief Judge Kozinski dissents, favoring the granting of both petitions. The full court was informed of the en banc petition, but no judge requested a vote on it, in accordance with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35.
In the opinion, Judge Noonan addresses Rick Wilson's appeal regarding the denial of his habeas corpus petition. The court finds that California courts violated Wilson's due process rights as established in Apprendi v. New Jersey. Consequently, the judgment of the district court is reversed, and the case is remanded.
Wilson had pleaded no contest in 1993 to gross vehicular manslaughter and causing bodily injury while driving under the influence. He served one year in an addiction treatment facility following these convictions, which arose from an accident that killed a hitchhiker and injured his girlfriend. In 2000, Wilson was convicted of driving under the influence with a prior felony, which the trial judge classified as his third strike under California's three-strikes law, resulting in a sentence of 25 years to life. The prosecution used evidence from the 1993 case to establish the prior convictions as strikes.
The California Court of Appeal upheld the sentence, with a dissenting opinion arguing that the trial court violated Apprendi. After the state supreme court denied his review, Wilson sought federal habeas relief, which the district court denied, citing a lack of a federal right regarding jury trials for determining the impact of prior convictions. Wilson’s appeal is reviewed de novo, with the court applying the standards of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which limits relief to cases where state court decisions are contrary to or involve unreasonable applications of established Supreme Court law or unreasonable factual determinations.
Apprendi established that, aside from prior convictions, any facts that enhance a defendant's sentence beyond the statutory maximum must be proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, the trial judge in 2000 found three facts regarding a 1993 accident that increased Wilson's sentence to 25 years to life: Wilson personally inflicted bodily injury on the victim, the injury was severe, and the victim was not an accomplice. These facts were not necessary for Wilson's 1993 conviction, and he had no reason to contest them at that time. The critical question is whether the judge’s findings in 2000 fell within the prior conviction exception. Courts may have differing views on the exception's boundaries; however, it is unreasonable to interpret Apprendi as permitting a judge to find disputed facts like the nature of the victim's injuries or the circumstances of the accident. The judge's speculation about how a jury might have assessed evidence in 1993 does not equate to an actual conviction. The government’s fallback argument that the error was harmless relies on hypothetical scenarios about a 1993 trial, which are uncertain. It is impossible to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilson would have been convicted of inflicting great bodily injury based on the disputed facts from seven years prior. Consequently, the court determined that Wilson’s first strike does not exist, as it was based on speculation rather than actual evidence. The state’s petition for rehearing further reinforced the distinction between what charges might have been brought and what convictions were actually obtained, emphasizing that speculation cannot satisfy the Apprendi exception.
The district court's judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings. The government claims Wilson did not exhaust state remedies by failing to raise the Apprendi issue in the state court of appeal. However, the Washington Supreme Court's denial of the claim on its merits allows Wilson to pursue the case, as exhaustion only requires that the highest state court consider a federal claim at least once on its merits. The court noted that since the state supreme court chose not to apply a procedural bar and instead addressed the claim substantively, Wilson's claim may proceed. The government referenced a Second Circuit ruling regarding judges' responsibilities in determining facts for sentencing, specifically relating to prior convictions. However, that ruling only confirmed judges could ascertain dates of prior offenses, not the nature of those offenses or their circumstances. The court explicitly refrained from addressing whether the prior conviction exception applies to all recidivism-related issues.
