United States v. Stanley Dale Pearson, Sr.

312 F.3d 1287 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Stanley Dale PEARSON, Sr., Defendant-Appellant. No. 01-50148. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted July 12, 2002. Filed December 16, 2002. James H. Locklin, Deputy Federal Public Defender, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendant-appellant. Ronald L. Chen, Assistant United States Attorney, Nancy B. Spiegel, Assistant United States Attorney, Los Angeles, CA, for the plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Robert J. Timlin, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CR-98-00049-RT-01. Before: NOONAN, WARDLAW and BERZON, Circuit Judges. NOONAN, Circuit Judge: 1 The narrow issue before the court is whether the district court correctly increased Stanley Dale Pearson's sentence for bank robbery and escape because he had a previous conviction that resulted in him being "incarcerated." See U.S. Sentencing Guidelines § 4A1.2(e)(1) (2001) (U.S.S.G.). Within the fifteen years before he committed the current crimes, Pearson had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Under the usual circumstances, this sentence would have been counted under…

The narrow issue before the court is whether the district court correctly increased Stanley Dale Pearson’s sentence for bank robbery and escape because he had a previous conviction that resulted in him being “incarcerated.” See U.S. Sentencing Guidelines § 4A1.2(e)(l) (2001) (U.S.S.G.). Within the fifteen years before he committed the current crimes, Pearson had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Under the usual circumstances, this sentence would have been counted under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(e)(l). Pearson had escaped that confinement and so was not physically incarcerated during the critical period. We hold that the time during which Pearson was on escape status under his 1980 conviction was correctly counted as a period of “incarceration” under § 4A1.2(e)(1).

BACKGROUND

On December 15, 1998, Stanley Dale Pearson was indicted on two counts of bank robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113 (a) and one count of escape in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 751 . Pearson entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to concurrent sentences of 151 months of incarceration on each count of bank robbery and 60 months of incarceration on the escape count. The district court included in its sentencing…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent.

*1290 In determining criminal history and career offender status, U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(e)(l) directs the sentencing judge to “count [for criminal history category calculation] any prior sentence of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month whenever imposed, that resulted in the defendant being incarcerated during any part of [the fifteen years prior to the commencement of the current offense].” Pearson maintains that, because he had escaped his confinement in Oregon prison more than fifteen years before he committed the current offense, his incarceration under the 1980 Oregon sentence ended with his escape and did not continue into the requisite fifteen-year window of time. The majority disagrees.

A densely interwoven set of Guidelines provisions governs this case:

First, Section 4B1.1 describes who shall be considered a “career offender” and what are the consequences of that determination. It provides:

U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. Section 4B1.2, Definitions of Terms Used in Section 4-Bl.l, specifies that a defendant has “two prior felony convictions” if:

U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(c). Section 4A1.1, which defines Criminal History Category, states, in…