[00:00:00] Speaker 03: The next case before us is 23-6159, United States versus Ruiz. [00:00:08] Speaker 03: Counsel for appellant, please make your appearance and proceed. [00:00:24] Speaker 02: May it please the court. [00:00:25] Speaker 02: My name is Bonnie Blumer. [00:00:27] Speaker 02: I'm an assistant federal defender. [00:00:28] Speaker 02: And I'm here on behalf of Ronnie Ruiz. [00:00:32] Speaker 02: The purpose of the Assimilative Crimes Act and cases like McGirt is not to bring Native folks into federal court and sentence them more harshly than folks in state court. [00:00:42] Speaker 02: The district court's incomplete interpretation of statute and precedent did just that for Mr. Ruiz. [00:00:49] Speaker 02: That is not what this body of law is for. [00:00:53] Speaker 02: Mr. Ruiz was eligible for probation under both the federal and the state statute. [00:00:58] Speaker 02: If Mr. Ruiz had been convicted in state court, the judge there would not have been required to impose a one-year term of incarceration for aggravated eluding. [00:01:07] Speaker 02: The district court was wrong to interpret precedent to require a mandatory prison term. [00:01:14] Speaker 02: For these reasons, this court should vacate Mr. Ruiz's sentence and remand him for re-sentencing. [00:01:21] Speaker 02: The Oklahoma aggravated eluding statute does not impose a mandatory minimum under the ACA. [00:01:26] Speaker 02: Mr. Ruiz was eligible to receive a probationary sentence here in federal court or a non-prison sentence. [00:01:33] Speaker 02: The district court ruled otherwise based on its interpretation of Polk, incorrectly believing that Polk required it to adhere to a mandatory one-year prison term through the non-application of the safety valve, specifically saying that Mr. Ruiz did not meet the requirements for the federal safety valve to allow the court to go below the minimum. [00:01:56] Speaker 02: But Polk was not addressing whether there was a mandatory minimum. [00:01:59] Speaker 02: Polk was specifically addressing what the defendant in Polk raised, which is that he said, I'm eligible under the state safety valve, and you can give me a sentence below this number. [00:02:10] Speaker 02: That was the bottom of his particular statute. [00:02:13] Speaker 02: That's not the situation we have here. [00:02:15] Speaker 02: Mr. Ruiz is not asking this court, and did not ask the district court, to give him a sentence below his minimum. [00:02:21] Speaker 02: What we are asking for [00:02:23] Speaker 02: is a probationary sentence, essentially saying that there was no minimum under the assimilated state statute. [00:02:31] Speaker 02: The defendants in both Wood and Polk were asking the court to go below their minimum. [00:02:36] Speaker 02: Mr. Ruiz is not asking for that. [00:02:40] Speaker 02: Native folks are supposed to receive a like punishment under ACA. [00:02:43] Speaker 03: You're saying there's no minimum. [00:02:44] Speaker 03: Why isn't that a more dramatic ask than the one that took place in Wood, in A for sure A? [00:02:49] Speaker 03: Why shouldn't Wood, therefore, say that your argument doesn't work? [00:02:53] Speaker 02: Wood was a case specifically about the mesh of the guidelines that were mandatory at the time, pre-booker, with the conflict of the state statute. [00:03:04] Speaker 02: Section 991A was raised in that case, but that individual was talking about the availability of a suspended sentence and asking the court to essentially give it a sentence like that. [00:03:15] Speaker 02: Mr. Ruiz is not asking for a suspended sentence. [00:03:18] Speaker 02: That is not available in the federal court, as the district court noted, and that we acknowledged at sentencing. [00:03:24] Speaker 02: Mr. Ruiz is not relying on section 991 to say, I should get that type of sentence. [00:03:30] Speaker 02: He's relying on 991 to say the fact that it exists means that the minimum that's laid out in 540 AB is not actually a minimum. [00:03:41] Speaker 02: That it does not say that a sentencing judge is required to sentence a person to incarceration for one year. [00:03:48] Speaker 02: That one to five year language, functionally in state court under section 991, [00:03:52] Speaker 02: restricts the length of time of an incarceration sentence or even a suspended sentence because of how a suspended sentence works under that statute. [00:04:04] Speaker 02: The thing that makes Mr. Ruiz's case different from these other cases that seem fairly on point, Mr. Ruiz's situation is different because he is eligible under federal statute under 18 USC 3551 and 3561 that's part of that chapter. [00:04:22] Speaker 02: eligible under state statute because there's no minimum 540 AB. [00:04:27] Speaker 02: The analysis that should be applied to Oklahoma's 540 AB is the same analysis that was given to the New Mexico statute in Jones, where Jones essentially said, we understand that there's this language in the face of the statute that seems to lay out a minimum, or a New Mexico statute, a basic sentence, and then gives prescriptive language that says, in no case shall [00:04:50] Speaker 02: a sentencing judge go below two-thirds of this basic sentence. [00:04:56] Speaker 02: But then Jones recognizes that there is a separate New Mexico statute in a separate section that says sentencing judges are permitted to defer, suspend sentences, to give a sentence to a person that doesn't involve incarceration at all. [00:05:10] Speaker 02: And because of that existence of that statute and how New Mexico reads together, that there was no minimum to apply to the defendant in Jones. [00:05:20] Speaker 02: That is the analysis that should be done here for Mr. Ruiz. [00:05:24] Speaker 03: But in this case, we aren't talking about a separate statute, right? [00:05:29] Speaker 03: We're talking about aspects of the same statute. [00:05:32] Speaker 02: They are separate, essentially that there's the language within the statute that criminalizes conduct. [00:05:37] Speaker 02: So in Oklahoma, 21 OS 540 AB, the aggravated eluding statute, lays out the punishment. [00:05:44] Speaker 02: But we look to section 991 A of Title 22 of the Oklahoma statutes [00:05:50] Speaker 02: to give us the overarching guidance for how a judge is supposed to interpret language within each individual statute. [00:05:57] Speaker 02: We do that in federal court. [00:05:59] Speaker 02: In 3551, sentencing judges are told how they sentence every defendant. [00:06:05] Speaker 02: And then within that, they look to the individual statute to see what the actual term is, what the conditions are. [00:06:12] Speaker 02: 3551 says that a person is generally eligible for probation. [00:06:18] Speaker 02: And then 3561 lays out the times where somebody is not eligible for probation. [00:06:22] Speaker 02: 3561 gives those three particular conditions. [00:06:30] Speaker 02: And then one of them says, there's two that don't apply, and I think even the government acknowledges that. [00:06:35] Speaker 02: It's section B of that part that says, unless it's expressly precluded. [00:06:41] Speaker 02: 3551 and 3561 also function together to let a court know what type of sentence they can give to an individual when they're sentencing them under Title 18 or whatever in a normal federal criminal conviction. [00:06:55] Speaker 02: We do not look at statutes in a vacuum. [00:06:57] Speaker 02: We do not look at just an individual criminal offense and look at that language and then say, that's it, we're done. [00:07:05] Speaker 02: And that is essentially what has been happening. [00:07:08] Speaker 02: And that's what this court should not do. [00:07:10] Speaker 02: because we don't look at statutes in a vacuum. [00:07:12] Speaker 02: That's a general understanding, a general rule of statutory construction. [00:07:15] Speaker 03: And you described a variety of overarching principles that would guide how a federal court sentences a defendant for an offense. [00:07:25] Speaker 03: I take it by that description that you're accepting that those overarching principles would apply in every case in which a federal court sentences a defendant, right? [00:07:36] Speaker 03: Yes, Judge. [00:07:37] Speaker 03: Okay. [00:07:37] Speaker 03: Well, if that's true, then why is not the overarching principle related to safety valve one that would govern as well? [00:07:47] Speaker 03: I mean, it is a matter of how one makes a sentence in federal court that if you aren't eligible for a safety valve, you don't go below a mandatory minimum, right? [00:07:57] Speaker 02: Yes, Judge. [00:07:58] Speaker 02: The application of safety valve in this case is not [00:08:02] Speaker 02: appropriate under Mr. Ruiz's circumstance, because what we are asserting is that there's not a minimum to need to go below. [00:08:09] Speaker 02: The bottom is a suspended, it's a probation, it's a deferred sentence. [00:08:13] Speaker 02: It's a non-incarceration sentence. [00:08:15] Speaker 03: And what about United States versus Troy, which the government cites in its brief in response? [00:08:20] Speaker 03: What do you do with that case where the First Circuit rejected the notion that probation could exist as an alternative to mandatory minimum sentence? [00:08:29] Speaker 03: I know it's not controlling, but talk to me about what you think about that case. [00:08:34] Speaker 02: The language there, they were talking about whether it's an express preclusion by virtue of a statute saying, [00:08:41] Speaker 02: person must receive a prison term of 5 to 10 years, 1 to 10 years, whatever the number is. [00:08:50] Speaker 02: But that doesn't exactly make a lot of sense because the whole idea of something being expressed is that it is stated. [00:08:56] Speaker 02: And in those, it's not stated. [00:08:58] Speaker 02: They're essentially saying it's implied. [00:09:00] Speaker 02: And it doesn't say in 3561, for example, that [00:09:06] Speaker 02: you're not eligible for probation if it's precluded or if it's impliedly precluded. [00:09:10] Speaker 02: It says expressly precluded. [00:09:15] Speaker 02: The times that express preclusion is used in those statutes is talking specifically about statutes that say, with specific words, for example, in 18 U.S.C. [00:09:27] Speaker 02: 841, the court shall not place on probation or suspend the sentence of any person sentenced under this paragraph. [00:09:34] Speaker 02: That's the type of express preclusion language that 3561 is referencing. [00:09:40] Speaker 02: The First Circuit case and the Ninth Circuit case that the government references say that when there's a mandatory minimum that that's an express preclusion, but that's not unexpressed preclusion. [00:09:49] Speaker 02: It's potentially an implied preclusion, but it would depend also then under the ACA how each state interprets [00:09:56] Speaker 03: their statute of their language. [00:09:58] Speaker 03: If there's a mandatory minimum and then Congress defines circumstances under which you can go below the mandatory minimum, doesn't by principles of statutory construction that tell you that you can't reach outside those circumstances to state law and plug in one that says that, oh no, now Congress says this is the mandatory minimum in order to get below this mandatory minimum and there are only a limited number of circumstances when you can do that, you have to be eligible for the safety valve. [00:10:26] Speaker 03: You aren't eligible for the safety valve. [00:10:28] Speaker 03: At that point, why would it be appropriate, given that Congress has enumerated the instances in which you can get below that mandatory minimum, that you can go to state law and plug in something? [00:10:39] Speaker 02: So in this case, we're not looking at a specific federal mandatory minimum. [00:10:43] Speaker 02: There is no like sentence for aggravated eluding in federal statute. [00:10:48] Speaker 02: And that's why we use the ACA to pull from state court. [00:10:52] Speaker 02: And we look at state court under Garcia and all [00:10:54] Speaker 02: and I think Martinez that talk about when we're determining what a light punishment is, we look to state statute to determine the bounds of a sentencing range, a one to five in this case, for example. [00:11:07] Speaker 02: But under the Jones case and statutory construction concepts, that there is no mandatory minimum that's being pulled from the state case in this circumstance. [00:11:17] Speaker 02: So even though the federal statute, the federal safety valve would mean that [00:11:22] Speaker 02: There's a mandatory minimum. [00:11:24] Speaker 02: There's only one way around it through the safety valve. [00:11:27] Speaker 02: There's not a federal mandatory minimum in this case. [00:11:29] Speaker 03: No, but there is a state mandatory minimum that's been assimilated into federal law. [00:11:34] Speaker 03: And why wouldn't it then be appropriate to treat it like you would a federal mandatory minimum? [00:11:41] Speaker 02: It's not a mandatory minimum. [00:11:44] Speaker 03: It says not less than one year, right? [00:11:47] Speaker 03: What am I missing? [00:11:48] Speaker 02: It says that, and then you have to look to 991 to understand what that language means, that that one to five years is actually a bound on either a length of incarceration that a judge can impose. [00:11:59] Speaker 02: It's also the bound on the length of a suspended sentence. [00:12:02] Speaker 02: In state court, a suspended sentence is actually a sentence to incarceration, where the judge says, I'm sentencing you to, for example, four years of prison, but I'm suspending the sentence. [00:12:13] Speaker 02: Under 548B, a defendant would not be permitted to get a suspended sentence below one year. [00:12:18] Speaker 02: That one year is a limitation even on a suspended. [00:12:22] Speaker 02: So if a court wanted to give Mr. Ruiz, if you were in state court, a six-month suspended sentence, it could not do that. [00:12:29] Speaker 02: It would be bound by 991 and 548B as read together. [00:12:34] Speaker 02: So 1 to 5 is the limitation on both of those types of sentences. [00:12:39] Speaker 02: Certainly, the language looks like it's talking exclusively about prison. [00:12:43] Speaker 02: But New Mexico's looked like that also. [00:12:46] Speaker 02: And that is not the case because of New Mexico's overarching sentencing scheme in section 18 instead of their section 15. [00:12:54] Speaker 03: What do you say about United States versus Mason? [00:12:57] Speaker 02: Mason is very similar to the argument that Mr. Ruiz is making largely with the basis of urging that section 991 essentially obliterates the minimum. [00:13:08] Speaker 02: The distinction here is that this court did not grapple with [00:13:12] Speaker 02: The idea of statutory construction 991 being analogous to 3551 as an overarching guide for how to interpret 540 AB or the burglary statute in that case. [00:13:25] Speaker 02: The second issue is that Mr. Ruiz is asserting that he is eligible under federal statute separately. [00:13:32] Speaker 02: That when the district court in that case is looking at what types of sentences are available, that the federal statute still allows that. [00:13:41] Speaker 02: did not object to that during sentencing procedure and did not object, excuse me, when we were arguing in front of the court. [00:13:49] Speaker 01: Are you saying that Mason was wrongly decided then? [00:13:54] Speaker 02: I think Mason is wrongly decided to the extent that Mr. Ruiz is raising an additional argument and that Mason doesn't fully acknowledge the effect of 991. [00:14:10] Speaker 02: on how a state court in Oklahoma truly interprets what the individual punishment language means. [00:14:17] Speaker 01: But I thought you were admitting that your argument here is very similar to that made in Mason. [00:14:23] Speaker 02: It is very similar, essentially saying that that's what 991 does. [00:14:27] Speaker 02: But in terms of an additional argument, where I'm analogizing 991 to 3551 in terms of an overall statutory construction. [00:14:35] Speaker 01: So we would have to say Mason. [00:14:38] Speaker 01: We would, as this panel would have to say, then that Mason got it wrong. [00:14:43] Speaker 01: Yes, Judge. [00:14:44] Speaker 01: Mostly. [00:14:45] Speaker 01: I don't think we can do that, Kim, with counsel. [00:14:48] Speaker 02: Acknowledging here, though, that Mr. Ruiz has a different circumstance where he's alleging that he is still eligible under federal statute and that those federal statutes control when there's nothing else that conflicts. [00:14:59] Speaker 03: I admit that you acknowledge, I understand you're making a discreet argument than the one that was in Mason. [00:15:06] Speaker 03: Was 991 at issue in Mason? [00:15:08] Speaker 03: I mean, did they make other arguments relative to that? [00:15:11] Speaker 02: I see that I'm out of time. [00:15:12] Speaker 02: You're on a mayor's line. [00:15:13] Speaker 02: Please answer. [00:15:13] Speaker 02: Yes, they did talk about 991, fairly lengthy. [00:15:17] Speaker 03: OK, thank you. [00:15:20] Speaker 02: Thank you. [00:15:29] Speaker 00: May it please the court? [00:15:30] Speaker 00: Stephen Krueger on behalf of the United States. [00:15:33] Speaker 00: The district court properly concluded [00:15:35] Speaker 00: that a stand-alone sentence of probation was not permitted in this case. [00:15:42] Speaker 00: Most of the discussion with regard to Title 22 of Section 991A of the Open List statutes, I think, can be summarily rejected in light of both Wood and Mason. [00:15:55] Speaker 00: This court has grappled with 991A and fairly explicitly said that it is not assimilated into federal law. [00:16:02] Speaker 00: This leaves the stand-alone argument under 18 U.S.C. [00:16:05] Speaker 00: Section 3551B1 and 3561A. [00:16:11] Speaker 00: Those two statutes authorize a sentence of probation subject to what other statutes say, and specifically at issue here 3561A2 prohibits the imposition of a stand-alone sentence of probation if, quote, the offense is an offense for which probation has been expressly precluded. [00:16:30] Speaker 00: This gets into the question of whether or not there's a statutory minimum. [00:16:37] Speaker 00: Mason answers that question. [00:16:38] Speaker 00: It explains that the phrase not less than is, quote, traditionally associated with a mandatory minimum. [00:16:47] Speaker 00: This court has routinely read Oklahoma's use of not less than as establishing a statutory mandatory minimum. [00:16:55] Speaker 00: Thus, the question about if it's expressly precluded [00:17:00] Speaker 00: hinges on whether the imposition or the definition of a statutory mandatory minimum expressly precludes a standalone sentence of probation. [00:17:11] Speaker 00: As Judge Holmes mentioned, there's Troy in the First Circuit. [00:17:14] Speaker 00: There's also Mueller in the Ninth Circuit that have both said a statutory mandatory minimum sentence expressly precludes probation. [00:17:26] Speaker 00: Opposing counsels argued that how can an implication be expressed? [00:17:34] Speaker 00: And I think, simply put, Congress is presumed to be aware of background principles of sentencing law. [00:17:40] Speaker 00: And the background principle of sentencing law with regard to statutory mandatory minimums is that they are mandatory minimums. [00:17:47] Speaker 00: They are the minimum that must be imposed. [00:17:51] Speaker 00: And so because there is a minimum term of imprisonment that must be imposed, [00:17:57] Speaker 00: A standalone sentence of probation simply is not authorized. [00:18:04] Speaker 00: Unless the court has any further questions, I think that pretty well wraps it up. [00:18:13] Speaker 00: I'd ask that you affirm the judgment in sentence blue. [00:18:15] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:18:16] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:18:16] Speaker 03: The case is submitted. [00:18:18] Speaker 03: Counsel, you have one minute if you want it. [00:18:28] Speaker 02: Judge, I think it's important that the analysis performed on the New Mexico statute in Jones is somehow distinguished in the Mason case. [00:18:37] Speaker 02: Mason says, we can't give the treatment we gave to New Mexico to Oklahoma's because Oklahoma's has this mandatory not less than language. [00:18:47] Speaker 02: But that is a distinction without a difference. [00:18:50] Speaker 02: New Mexico's statute has the same exact structure, the same exact setup, [00:18:55] Speaker 02: the same exact controlling language up front that would seem to imply there's a mandatory minimum prison term. [00:19:02] Speaker 02: Oklahoma has that same appearance. [00:19:05] Speaker 02: The court in Jones, the 10th Circuit dug below that, and this court should do that here as well. [00:19:10] Speaker 02: Thank you. [00:19:10] Speaker 02: Thank you, counsel. [00:19:11] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:19:12] Speaker 03: Cases are submitted. [00:19:13] Speaker 03: The last case for this morning is on the brief, which is 23-1311, Straker v. Stansfield. [00:19:22] Speaker 03: Consequently, we are in recess until tomorrow at 8.30 a.m. [00:19:27] Speaker 03: Thank you.