Steiger: No Plain Error Concerning The Reasonableness Of A Twenty-Year Prison Sentence, Which District Court Imposed Following The Revocation of Appellant's Probation Sentence Based On His New Conviction Of Second-Degree Murder

In United States v. Steiger, No. 22-10742 (July 16, 2024) (CJ Pryor, J. Pryor, Coogler of N.D. Ala.), the Court (on remand from the en banc Court) affirmed Mr. Steiger’s twenty-year-prison sentence, which the district court imposed upon revoking Mr. Steiger’s original sentence of probation for four wire-fraud-related convictions.

The revocation stemmed from Mr. Steiger's intervening state-court conviction of second-degree murder.

The Court held that Mr. Steiger failed to demonstrate plain error with respect to the prison sentence’s procedural reasonableness. This is because the district court stated that it had considered the following: (1) every 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factor; (2) the applicable guidelines and policy statements from the Sentencing Commission; (3) court decisions; (4) the issues presented in the underlying case; (5) evidence presented at the revocation hearing, part of which concerned the nature and circumstances of the offense, as set forth in § 3553(a)(1); and (6) statements Mr. Steiger made in his defense. Additionally, the record indicated that the district court was aware of argument that the guidelines sentence was inadequate because of the seriousness of Mr. Steiger’s probation violation. Although the district court never explain why it had rejected Mr. Steiger’s request for a time-served sentence, the Court deemed it sufficient that the district court had relied on the record while making clear that it considered the parties’ arguments and the § 3553(a) factors.

The Court likewise held that Mr. Steiger failed to demonstrate plain error with respect to the prison sentence’s substantive reasonableness. Again, the district court had addressed the § 3553(a) factors, including having specifically mentioned that it considered evidence concerning the nature and circumstances of the second-degree murder. Also, the district court ordered that the sentences for each wire-fraud-related conviction run concurrently, rather than consecutively to each other.

Buselli: The Federal Murder-For-Hire Statute Is Intended to Describe the Generic Conduct Prohibited And Thus, Does Not Require Jury Instructions On Defenses to Murder Under State Law

In United States v. Buselli, No. 23-10272 (July 11, 2024) (Jordan, Lagoa, Hull), the Court affirmed Ms. Buselli’s convictions for murder for hire and making false statements to a federal agent, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1958(a) and 1001(a), respectively.

The murder-for-hire plot was intended for Ms. Buselli’s ex-boyfriend or some other third party to murder Ms. Buselli’s estranged husband. The related jury instruction provided that “[m]urder is the unlawful, premeditated killing of a human being with malice aforethought and is a violation of the laws of the State of Florida.” The Court rejected Ms. Buselli’s claim that this instruction needed to include language concerning Florida’s defenses of justifiable and excusable homicide and justifiable use of deadly force because such defenses could have resulted in a lawful killing. In any event, the Court added, the district court’s failing to provide defense instructions was harmless. Florida law on the defenses required evidence that Ms. Buselli sought either third party to kill the husband by accident or misfortune, or in an effort to defend Ms. Buselli herself from an attempted murder or from a forcible felony by the husband. But the record contained no such evidence. Additionally, evidence of the steps Ms. Buselli took to arrange for the husband’s killing belied argument that she intended to prevent an imminent forcible felony, as Florida law also required.

As to the false-statement conviction, Ms. Buselli made two statements to investigators: “I would never ask anyone to do something like this,” and “I don’t want something to happen to him.” The Court doubted that these statements—which were made after Ms. Buselli had been Mirandized and told that lying to a federal agent was a crime—were akin to pleading not guilty or demanding a jury trial under the Sixth Amendment. And given the lack of cited statutory text or binding precedent directly resolving such doubt, the Court held that Ms. Buselli’s false-statement conviction did not constitute plain error. Nor did the district court plainly err in instructing the jury on the false-statement statute’s mens rea elements.

Hernandez: A Pre-First Step Act Sentence That is Vacated Does Not Trigger § 403(a)’s Modified Stacking Rule

In United States v. Hernandez, No. 22-13311 (July 8, 2024) (Rosenbaum, Newsom, Luck), the Court affirmed Mr. Hernandez’s sentence for several 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) convictions, among other offenses on the same indictment.

Although Mr. Hernandez’s original sentence was pronounced before the First Step Act’s passage, it was judicially vacated after such passage. He therefore argued—and the government conceded—that the modified stacking rule under § 403(a) of the Act applied to his case. 

A majority of the panel disagreed. Mr. Hernandez’s argument, it reasoned, depends on whether the vacated sentence qualifies as “a sentence” that “has been imposed as of [the] date of [the Act’s] enactment,” within the meaning of § 403(b) of the Act. It does, the majority held. This is so because the vacated sentence satisfies the dictionary definition of “sentence.” Meanwhile, Congress’s use of the indefinite “a” indicates that § 403(b) covers any type of “sentence”—even one that was subsequently vacated. Further, the phrase “has not been” refers to a completed act, and Eleventh Circuit precedent establishes that the verb “imposed,” as used in the criminal sentencing context, refers to the historical fact of pronouncement. So because the district court had pronounced a sentence for Mr. Hernandez before the Act’s enactment, and because “a sentence” was therefore “imposed as of [the] date of such enactment,” the majority held that § 403(a)’s modified stacking rule did not apply to Mr. Hernandez’s case.

Dissenting, Judge Rosenbaum determined that § 403(a)’s modified stacking rule applies to all sentencings that follow the Act's enactment.