United States v. Gilmore

Filing

[10421732] Affirmed; Terminated on the merits after oral hearing; Written, signed, published; Judges Holmes, Seymour (authoring) and Phillips. Mandate to issue. [15-3114]

FILED
Appellate Case: 15-3114

Document: 01019721106

United States Court of Appeals
Date Filed: 11/15/2016 Circuit 1
Tenth Page:

November 15, 2016
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court

PUBLISH
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.

No. 15-3114

JEREMY GILMORE,
Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Kansas
(D.C. No. 2:07-CR-20164-JWL-5)

Branden A. Bell, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Melody Brannon, Federal
Public Defender, with him on the briefs), Topeka, Kansas, for DefendantAppellant.
James A. Brown, Assistant United States Attorney (Barry R. Grissom, United
States Attorney, with him on the brief), Topeka, Kansas, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before HOLMES, SEYMOUR, and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges.

SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge.

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The district court denied Jeremy Gilmore’s motion to reduce his sentence in
accordance with a retroactive sentencing amendment because his term of
imprisonment was not “based on” a guidelines sentencing range, as is required by
18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we
affirm.

I
In May 2009, Mr. Gilmore was convicted of conspiracy to distribute and
possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine. Due to his two prior drug
felonies, the district court sentenced him to a mandatory life sentence. After we
affirmed his conviction, Mr. Gilmore filed a motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C.
§2255, claiming his trial counsel was ineffective. The district court granted Mr.
Gilmore’s motion, but instead of setting aside the conviction it ordered the parties
to meet and confer regarding an appropriate remedy. At a status conference, the
two sides informed the court they had agreed that a sentence reduction to 168
months would be fair. Mr. Gilmore’s attorney gave the following explanation for
how the two sides reached this total:
And the way that we got there, at least I got there, was that Mr.
Gilmore’s original base offense level was 34; he was then given a
two-point enhancement for obstruction and another two-point
enhancement for a firearm enhancement. I think if Mr. Gilmore had
had appropriate counsel that those enhancements would not have
stayed on the presentence report, and I think the Court was well

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aware of the type of representation Mr. Gilmore had at his sentencing.
....
. . . Which would have left him at a base level of 34. I think
that had Mr. Gilmore had competent representation that an attorney
would have walked him in to cooperate with the government very
early in the process, so I think that he would have gotten another
two-level reduction for acceptance. . . . [T]he government agrees that
we don’t know that that third point would necessarily have been
available, or it might just be a bridge too far for us. That would
leave us at a Base Offense Level 32 and a Criminal History Category
IV, which puts us at a guideline range of 168 to 210 months, the low
end of that range being 168 months. And that’s where at least I
reached the conclusion that that was an adequate remedy for the lack
of competent counsel that Mr. Gilmore had in this case.
Aplt. App. at 44-45.
The two parties reduced their agreement to writing and submitted it to the
district court for its approval. The agreement was intended “to achieve a result
that may have occurred had the defendant not received ineffective assistance of
counsel.” Id. at 51. The sentencing agreement provided that Mr. Gilmore would
admit to knowingly committing one count of conspiracy—the crime for which he
was initially convicted—in exchange for the government’s agreement, among
other things, not to file any additional charges against Mr. Gilmore and its
proposal of 168 months as the appropriate disposition of the case. While the
sentencing agreement recognized that it “d[id] not offend the now advisory
guidelines,” it did not expressly reference any particular guidelines range. Id. at

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51. The court accepted the parties’ agreement, agreed to be bound by it, and
resentenced Mr. Gilmore to 168 months of imprisonment.
In July 2014, almost two years later, Mr. Gilmore filed a motion, pursuant
to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), to reduce his sentence in accordance with Amendment
782. Amendment 782 was an amendment to the sentencing guidelines that was
made retroactive by the Sentencing Commission in 2014. It reduced by two
levels the offense levels assigned to the quantities that trigger the statutory
mandatory minimum penalties in U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1. Sentencing Guidelines for
the United States Courts, 79 Fed. Reg. 44,973 (Aug. 1, 2014). When the
government and Mr. Gilmore recalculated his sentence, they had used § 2D1.1 to
determine his base offense level to be 32. Mr. Gilmore was therefore seeking a
reduction to a base offense level of 30. The drop in his base offense level would
have reduced his guideline sentencing range from 168-210 months to 135-168
months. Accordingly, Mr. Gilmore sought a reduction in his sentence from 168
months to 135 months, the low end of the guideline range.
To be afforded a sentencing reduction under § 3582(c)(2), a defendant must
show that his term of imprisonment was “based on a sentencing range that has
subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission.” Mr. Gilmore argued
that his 168 month sentence mirrored the low end of a guideline sentence
corresponding to a total offense level of 32 and a criminal history category of IV,
and was thus “based on” a guidelines sentencing range. The district court, relying
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on Freeman v. United States, 564 U.S. 522 (2011), dismissed Mr. Gilmore’s
motion, concluding it lacked jurisdiction to reduce his sentence. 1 It reasoned that
it was not authorized to reduce Mr. Gilmore’s sentence because it was based on
the parties’ stipulation and not on “‘a sentencing range that [had] subsequently
been lowered’ by the Sentencing Commission.” Aplt. App. at 109 (quoting 18
U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)). This appeal followed.

II
Mr. Gilmore contends the district court erred in concluding that it lacked
authority to reduce his sentence. As a general rule, a district court “may not
modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed.” 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c).
“However, Congress has established a few narrow exceptions to this rule of
finality,” United States v. Williams, 575 F.3d 1075, 1077 (10th Cir. 2009),
including the one at issue here. “We review de novo the scope of a district
court’s authority in a proceeding under § 3582(c) . . . .” Id. at 1076.

1

Mr. Gilmore does not contend the district court erred in dismissing his
motion for lack of jurisdiction rather than denying it on the merits for failure to
state a claim, and the government is silent on this question. Cf. United States v.
Taylor, 778 F.3d 667, 669-71 (7th Cir. 2015) (discussing an intra-circuit split and
concluding that “a district court has subject-matter jurisdiction to consider a
motion for relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) regardless of whether the moving
defendant is actually eligible for such discretionary relief”). Our resolution of
this appeal in no way turns on the answer to this question, which we do not
address.
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“To ask whether a particular term of imprisonment is ‘based on’ a
Guidelines sentencing range is to ask whether that range serves as the basis or
foundation for the term of imprisonment.” Freeman, 564 U.S. at 535 (Sotomayor,
J., concurring). In United States v. Graham, 704 F.3d 1275, 1277-78 (10th Cir.
2013), we explained the divided nature of the Court in Freeman with respect to
this issue. Then, applying the rule from Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188,
193 (1977) (“When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale
explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, the holding of the Court
may be viewed as that position taken by those [m]embers who concurred in the
judgment on the narrowest grounds.”), we held that “Justice Sotomayor’s
concurrence is the narrowest grounds of decision and represents the Court's
holding.” Graham, 704 F.3d at 1278. We stated:
Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence charted a middle ground between
the plurality and the dissent. She observed Rule 11(c)(1)(C) permits
the parties to “agree that a specific sentencing range is the
appropriate disposition of the case.” Id. at 2696-97 (Sotomayor, J.,
concurring). If the parties do so, she reasoned, the imposed sentence
is “‘based on’ the agreed-upon sentencing range.” Id. Accordingly,
when the Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea is based on a Guideline sentencing
range that is retroactively amended, the defendant is entitled to the
amendment. Id. at 2697-99. But, when the plea deal does not “use”
or “employ” a Guideline sentencing range, the defendant is not
entitled to the benefit of the amendment. See id.
Id. at 1277-78.
Justice Sotomayor’s reasoning is applicable here. In her view, “the term of
imprisonment imposed by a district court pursuant to [a (C) agreement] is ‘based
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on’ the agreement itself, not on the judge’s calculation of the Sentencing
Guidelines.” Freeman, 564 U.S. at 534 (Sotomayor, J., concurring). She
explained that a court can say a (C) agreement was “based on” a sentencing range
when it “call[s] for the defendant to be sentenced within a particular Guidelines
sentencing range,” id. at 538, or when the agreement makes “clear that the basis
for the specified term is a Guidelines sentencing range applicable to the offense to
which the defendant pleaded guilty.” Id. at 539. Thus, if a plea agreement does
not itself use or employ a guideline sentencing range, she concluded, then the
defendant is not entitled to the benefit of a retroactive Sentencing Guideline
Amendment.
Mr. Gilmore disputes the applicability of Freeman, contending that the
sentencing agreement in this case is fundamentally different than a (C) agreement.
In Freeman, he says, Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence was contingent on the fact
that a (C) agreement binds the court to a specific sentence, and the sentence it
imposes is therefore automatically “based on” the agreement. But here, Mr.
Gilmore maintains, the sentencing agreement did not bind the court. Instead, it
stated that “[i]t is solely within the Court’s discretion whether to accept the
proposed agreement and sentence as an appropriate disposition of the case.” Aplt.
App. at 51.
But context matters. The agreement in this case was produced after the
district court held in a § 2255 proceeding that Mr. Gilmore had received
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constitutionally deficient representation in his initial trial. The court ordered the
parties to meet and confer about an appropriate remedy. The two sides agreed on
a remedy—Mr. Gilmore would admit to knowingly committing the crime for
which he had already been convicted in exchange for a term of imprisonment he
would have received from a plea agreement had his counsel been constitutionally
adequate. 2 While the parties did discuss the guidelines in their negotiations, a
“term of imprisonment imposed by the district court . . . is not ‘based on’ . . .
background negotiations.” Freeman, 564 U.S. at 538 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
The written sentencing agreement neither called for Mr. Gilmore to be sentenced
within a sentencing range nor made clear that a guideline sentencing range was
the basis for the parties’ stipulation that a 168 month term of imprisonment was
appropriate. The only discernable difference between the written agreement in
this case and a (C) agreement is that the two parties labeled it a sentencing
agreement instead of a plea agreement. Just like a (C) agreement, Mr. Gilmore
admitted guilt in exchange for the government “agree[ing] that a specific sentence
[was] the appropriate disposition.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(1)(C).

2

We note that the proposed remedy was entirely consistent with the
purpose of the Sixth Amendment. See Lafler v. Cooper, 132 S. Ct. 1376, 1388-89
(2012) (explaining that a Sixth Amendment remedy “must ‘neutralize the taint’ of
a constitutional violation . . . while at the same time not grant a windfall to the
defendant or needlessly squander the considerable resources the State properly
invested in the criminal prosecution.” (quoting United States v. Morrison, 449
U.S. 361, 365 (1981))).
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Mr. Gilmore overstates the importance of the section in the agreement
acknowledging that the district court was under “no obligation to accept the
proposed agreement and sentence.” Aplt. App. at 51. This fact does not
distinguish the sentencing agreement from a (C) agreement. When the
government and a defendant enter into a (C) agreement, a district court is always
free to either “accept the agreement, reject it, or defer a decision until the court
has reviewed the presentence report.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)(3)(A). Thus, the
parties in this case merely made explicit what is true of every (C) agreement, that
a court is always free to reject it. The sentencing agreement’s overt recognition
of this fact thus does not differentiate it from a (C) agreement, but instead likens
it to one.
In Freeman, Justice Sotomayor noted that because a court is bound to give
effect to the parties’ agreed upon term of imprisonment once it accepts a (C)
agreement, the term of imprisonment imposed pursuant to a (C) agreement is, for
purposes of § 3582(c)(2), “based on” the agreement itself. 564 U.S. at 535-36. It
was this fact—that a court is bound to enter the (C) agreement’s term of
imprisonment once it accepts the agreement—that was dispositive for Justice
Sotomayor. In this case, during the resentencing hearing, the district court stated,
“[T]he Court is prepared to and does hereby accept that sentencing agreement and
agree to be bound to sentence in accordance with it.” Aplt. App. at 65. Just as in
the context of a (C) agreement, the district court was bound to sentence Mr.
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Gilmore according to the terms of the sentencing agreement once it decided to
accept the agreement as the appropriate remedy in the habeas case. In sum, we
see no meaningful difference between the sentencing agreement here and the (C)
agreement analyzed in Freeman.
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that Mr. Gilmore’s term of
imprisonment was not “based on” a guidelines sentencing range. We AFFIRM.

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