Opinion
No. 06-2950-cr.
November 19, 2007.
Appeal from a judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Nicholas G. Garaufis, Judge).
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREEDthat the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.
APPEARING FOR APPELLANT: MITCHELL J. DINNERSTEIN, New York NY.
APPEARING FOR APPELLEE: MORRIS J. FODEMAN, Assistant United States Attorney (Roslynn R. Mauskopf, United States Attorney, David C. James, Assistant United States Attorney, of Counsel), United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, New York, NY.
PRESENT: JOSEPH M. McLAUGHLIN, JOSÉ A. CABRANES, ROBERT D. SACK, Circuit Judges.
Defendant-appellant Michael Murray appeals from a judgment of conviction sentencing him to 180 months of incarceration, five years of supervised release, and a special assessment of $100 pursuant to the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA"), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Defendant pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). He appeals the sentence as enhanced pursuant to the ACCA. In particular, he maintains that in order for the ACCA to apply to his case, he must either admit the fact of his prior convictions or have them proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury, neither of which happened in this case. We assume the parties' familiarity with the facts and the procedural history of the case.
On appeal, defendant argues that the District Court was precluded from determining itself whether at least three of his prior convictions constituted violent felonies. Defendant argues that the Supreme Court's holding in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224 (1998), that the fact of a prior conviction for sentence-enhancement purposes may be found by the court rather than a jury, no longer retains its vitality. He argues that subsequent Supreme Court rulings in Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005), Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227 (1999), have implicitly overruled Almendarez-Torres. Defendant contends that the District Court was therefore precluded from considering the record of defendant's three prior convictions since defendant did not admit the fact of the convictions when he pleaded guilty.
Defendant's argument is meritless. Almendarez-Torres has not been overruled. See James v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 1586, 1600 n. 8 (2007). "We are well aware of the Supreme Court's admonition that if a Supreme Court precedent has direct application in a case before us, but rests on reasons rejected in another line of Supreme Court cases, we should follow the directly controlling case and leave to the Supreme Court `the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.'" United States v. Logan, 419 F.3d 172, 180-81 (2d Cir. 2005) (quoting Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).
We have therefore rejected similar arguments in the past. In United States v. Snype, 441 F.3d 119 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 127 S. Ct. 285 (2006), we considered the sentencing enhancement of the "three strikes" statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3559, but we noted that in Apprendi "the Supreme Court created a specific exception to this rule for `the fact of a prior conviction'" to preserve the holding in Almendarez-Torres. Id. at 148; see also United States v. Massey, 461 F.3d 177, 179 (2d Cir. 2006) (holding that "the district court properly relied on the statutory elements of Massey's prior convictions in finding he had committed three prior violent felonies" in sentencing under the ACCA and noting that Almendarez-Torres remains good law), cert denied, 127 S. Ct. 988 (2007); United States v. Walker, 442 F.3d 787, 788-89 (2d Cir. 2006) (per curiam) (upholding district court's findings that defendant's prior convictions were violent felonies under the ACCA).
Upon a review of the record and the relevant law, we detect no error in the District Court's judgment of June 16, 2006. We have considered all of defendant's claims on appeal, including his argument that the ACCA as applied to him contravenes United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), and find them to be without merit. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the District Court.