Richard Crayton v. United States

799 F.3d 623, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 10771, 2015 WL 3895767
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJune 25, 2015
Docket13-3548
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 799 F.3d 623 (Richard Crayton v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Richard Crayton v. United States, 799 F.3d 623, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 10771, 2015 WL 3895767 (7th Cir. 2015).

Opinions

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.

Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), holds that facts increasing a criminal defendant’s maximum permissible sentence must be established, beyond a reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of the trier of fact (a jury unless the defendant agrees to a bench trial or formally admits the facts). Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545, 122 S.Ct. 2406, 153 L.Ed.2d 524 (2002), holds that facts increasing the minimum permissible sentence may be found by a judge on the preponderance of the evidence. But Alleyne v. United States, — U.S. -, 133 S.Ct. 2151, 186 L.Ed.2d 314 (2013),' overrules Harris and holds that facts controlling both minimum and maximum sentences are in the jury’s province and covered by the reasonable-doubt standard. Richard Crayton, whose sentence became final between Harris and Alleyne, contends that. Alleyne’s rule applies retroactively on collateral review.

A jury convicted Crayton of distributing heroin. The indictment alleged that Nicole Hedges died from using Crayton’s product, which if true would increase the minimum sentence (though not constitute a new offense), but the jury could not decide unanimously whether Hedges’s death resulted from Crayton’s heroin. The district judge then found that it did. Under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C) this required the sentence to be at least 20 years’ imprisonment, and that’s what the district judge imposed. In the absence of the finding that Crayton’s heroin killed Hedges, the statutory range would have been 0 to 20 [624]*624years. The judge stated that she thought the statutory floor excessive, but she concluded that the law required her to sentence Crayton to 20 years in prison. This court affirmed. United States v. Crayton, 455 Fed.Appx. 688 (7th Cir.2011) (nonprecedential disposition).

Five months after denying Crayton’s petition for certiorari, — U.S. -, 132 S.Ct. 2379, 182 L.Ed.2d 1026 (2012), the Supreme Court granted Alleyne’s. — U.S. -, 133 S.Ct. 420, 184 L.Ed.2d_252 (2012). While Alleyne’s case was pending, Crayton filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The district court dismissed it without prejudice while waiting for Alleyne — an improper procedure given the time-and-number limits in § 2255, see Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005); Purvis v. United States, 662 F.3d 939 (7th Cir.2011), though neither side protested. When Crayton filed another after the Supreme Court issued its decision, the district court held that Alleyne does not apply retroactively on collateral review. (The parties treat Crayton’s current § 2255 filing as an initial petition, and as timely, despite the district court’s misstep in dismissing Cray-ton’s first petition.)

Every court of appeals that has considered the subject has concluded that Alleyne is not retroactive on collateral review. Butterworth v. United States, 775 F.3d 459 (1st Cir.2015); United States v. Reyes, 755 F.3d 210, 212-13 (3d Cir.2014); United States v. Olvera, 775 F.3d 726 (5th Cir.2015); Jeanty v. Warden, FCI-Miami 757 F.3d 1283, 1285-86 (11th Cir.2014). Two other circuits have said the same thing in nonprecedential opinions. Rogers v. United States, 561 FedAppx. 440, 443-44 (6th Cir.2014); United States v. Richards, 567 Fed.Appx. 591, 593 (10th Cir.2014) (based on In re Payne, 733 F.3d 1027 (10th Cir.2013), which addressed § 2255(h)(2)). Our circuit held in Simpson v. United States, 721 F.3d 875 (7th Cir.2013), that Alleyne does not authorize a second or successive collateral attack under § 2255(h)(2) because only the Supreme Court can declare a decision retroactive for the purpose of that paragraph. Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656, 121 S.Ct. 2478, 150 L.Ed.2d 632 (2001). But for an initial petition, such as Crayton’s, a district judge or court of appeals may make the retroactivity decision, and that’s what Crayton asks us to do. But we conclude that the other circuits are correct. Alleyne does not apply retroactively.

Alleyne extends Apprendi from maximum to minimum sentences. Only once has the Supreme Court considered whether a decision that rests on Apprendi applies retroactively on collateral review. It held in Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 124 S.Ct. 2519, 159 L.Ed.2d 442 (2004), that Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002), is not retroactive. Crayton maintains that Schriro is not dispositive against him, because Ring applied Apprendi to change (from judge to jury) the identity of the decisionmaker under one state’s procedure for capital punishment but did not affect that state’s allocation of the burden of persuasion (the state had used the reasonable-doubt standard all along). Crayton contends that a decision changing the burden of persuasion, as Alleyne did, is entitled to retroactive application under the criteria of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989).

The problem with that argument is that Apprendi itself changed both the identity of the decisionmaker and the burden of persuasion, but the Supreme Court has not declared Apprendi to be retroactive — nor has any court of appeals. We held in Curtis v. United States, 294 F.3d 841 (7th Cir.2002), that Apprendi is not retroactive [625]*625under the Teague standard. We concluded that two sorts of decisions are applied retroactively: those holding that the law does not (or cannot constitutionally) make particular conduct criminal, and those identifying rights “so fundamental that any system of ordered liberty is obliged to include them.” Curtis, 294 F.3d at 843. And we held that the changes made by Apprendi are not in the latter category (no one thinks them to be in the “innocence” category).

Throughout this nation’s history judges have based sentences on findings made by a preponderance of the evidence. Harris held that Apprendi had altered this approach only for maximum sentences; Alleyne disagreed and held that Apprendi logically implies using the jury (and the reasonable-doubt standard) for minimum sentences too. But neither Apprendi nor Alleyne concluded that findings on the preponderance standard are too unreliable in general to be the basis of a valid sentence. Judges routinely make .findings, based on a preponderance of the evidence, that dramatically affect the length of criminal sentences.

Consider: even if Crayton’s trial had occurred after Alleyne, and the jury had found unanimously that Crayton’s heroin did not kill Hedges, the judge still would have been entitled to sentence Crayton to 20 years in prison for distributing heroin after finding by a preponderance of the evidence that his product did kill Hedges. See United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148, 117 S.Ct. 633, 136 L.Ed.2d 554 (1997). Alleyne did not overrule Watts or recognize a fundamental principle that sentences must rest on findings supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead Alleyne

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Bluebook (online)
799 F.3d 623, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 10771, 2015 WL 3895767, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/richard-crayton-v-united-states-ca7-2015.