Tyrone Kirklin v. United States of America

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 17‐1056
T YRONE KIRKLIN,
Petitioner‐Appellant,
v.
U NITED STATES OF A MERICA ,
Respondent‐Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 15‐CV‐09537 — Matthew F. Kennelly, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED D ECEMBER 6, 2017 — D ECIDED MARCH 5, 2018
____________________
Before W OOD, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and
HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
HAMILTON , Circuit Judge. For the second time we review
Tyrone Kirklin’s conviction for aiding and abetting a robbery
where his co‐conspirator brandished the guns he gave her. In
Kirklin’s first appeal, we found that the district judge erred by
making the brandishing finding rather than requiring a jury
to make this determination. The district judge had acted in
accord with controlling Supreme Court precedent at the time.

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2 No. 17‐1056
After oral argument in Kirklin’s first appeal, the Supreme
Court overruled its controlling precedent and held that the
brandishing determination must be made by a jury. Because
that later case controlled, we found the judge had erred. Nev‐
ertheless, we affirmed Kirklin’s conviction and sentence be‐
cause his attorney did not raise the issue in the district court,
and we found the error was not a plain error requiring rever‐
sal despite the lack of objection. United States v. Kirklin, 727
F.3d 711 (7th Cir. 2013).
Under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, Kirklin now asserts that his attor‐
ney’s failure to object in the district court amounted to ineffec‐
tive assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amend‐
ment. We disagree. The constitutional standard for perfor‐
mance under the Sixth Amendment does not require a crimi‐
nal defense attorney to anticipate that the Supreme Court is
about to overrule its controlling precedent, at least not in
these circumstances, before the Supreme Court had granted
review in a case presenting the question whether to overrule
the controlling precedent. We affirm the district court’s denial
of Kirklin’s motion to vacate his conviction.
This case began in November 2010, when Kirklin recruited
his friend Tiffany Jones to rob a bank in Homewood, Illinois.
Kirklin picked up Jones and his cousin, Justice McCallister,
and drove them to the bank. Kirklin instructed Jones to stand
guard at the front of the bank to prevent anyone from entering
or leaving the building while McCallister grabbed the money.
Kirklin gave Jones a semi‐automatic handgun and a revolver.
He also explained that one advantage of the revolver was that
it would not leave shell casings behind if she had to fire. Ar‐
riving at the bank, Jones used a gun to force a customer leav‐
ing the bank to go back inside, but she failed to stop another

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No. 17‐1056 3
customer who was leaving and who immediately called the
police. McCallister and Jones carried out the robbery and left
the bank with the stolen money, but they were arrested
quickly near the scene. They gave statements admitting the
robbery and implicating Kirklin.
Kirklin was tried and convicted of two counts: aiding and
abetting the robbery, and aiding and abetting the use or car‐
rying of a firearm during a crime of violence. He was sen‐
tenced to a total of 171 months in prison, which included an
84‐month consecutive sentence on the second count, under 18
U.S.C. § 924(c), because the firearms had been brandished
during the robbery. Section 924(c) provides mandatory mini‐
mum and consecutive prison sentences that vary based on
whether the defendant was responsible for merely carrying or
using the weapon, or for brandishing it, or for discharging it.
If the weapon is only used or carried during the crime of vio‐
lence, the mandatory minimum is five years. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i).
If the weapon is brandished, the mandatory minimum is
seven years. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii).
Video evidence and witness testimony showed that Jones
and McCallister had both brandished their weapons during
the robbery. The court did not, however, instruct the jury to
make a specific factual finding as to whether the government
had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Kirklin was re‐
sponsible for the brandishing. Instead, the district court made
this determination at sentencing in July 2012.
A decade before Kirklin’s sentencing, the Supreme Court
had held in Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545 (2002), that
whether a firearm was brandished in violation of
§ 924(c)(1)(A) was a sentencing factor rather than an element
of the offense so that it “need not be alleged in the indictment,

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4 No. 17‐1056
submitted to the jury, or proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Id. at 568. Under Harris, a judge could decide whether a fire‐
arm was brandished so that the seven‐year mandatory mini‐
mum would apply. The result in Harris depended on a distinc‐
tion between factual findings that increase a mandatory min‐
imum sentence and findings that increase the maximum sen‐
tence under a statute, which the Court had recently held must
be found by a jury in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466
(2000). Harris, 536 U.S. at 557.
Despite criticism of this fragile distinction, Harris re‐
mained the law when Kirklin was sentenced. Just three
months later, however, in October 2012 the Court granted a
writ of certiorari in Alleyne v. United States, which signaled
that the Court would consider whether to overrule Harris. See
Alleyne v. United States, 568 U.S. 936 (2012). The Court decided
Alleyne on the merits in June 2013, overruling Harris and hold‐
ing that juries must make factual determinations that increase
mandatory minimum sentences as well as maximum sen‐
tences permitted by statute. Alleyne, 570 U.S. 99, 103 (2013).
Alleyne addressed exactly the same statutory provision: the
brandishing enhancement under § 924(c)(1)(A). Alleyne held
that brandishing is an element of the conduct criminalized by
the seven‐year mandatory minimum and must be determined
by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. 570 U.S. at 117.
We decided Kirklin’s direct appeal after the Court issued
Alleyne. We held in that first appeal that the district court had
erred by imposing the seven‐year mandatory sentence with‐
out a jury determining the brandishing element. United States
v. Kirklin, 727 F.3d 711, 718 (7th Cir. 2013). Since Kirklin’s at‐
torney had not raised the matter in the district court, we ap‐

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No. 17‐1056 5
plied the “plain error” standard of review. We affirmed Kirk‐
lin’s sentence because the error did not affect the fairness, in‐
tegrity, or public reputation of the proceedings in the district
court. Id. at 719. The evidence that Kirklin’s accomplices bran‐
dished the firearms and that Kirklin was responsible for their
having done so was overwhelming. It seemed “highly un‐
likely” that the jury would have found Kirklin guilty of aiding
and abetting the use or carrying of the firearms without find‐
ing him equally responsible for the brandishing. Id.
After his loss on direct appeal, Kirklin sought relief from
his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, claiming that he was de‐
nied his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of
counsel. Under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), to
prove ineffective assistance of counsel, Kirklin must show
that his attorney’s performance “fell below an objective stand‐
ard of reasonableness” and that there is a “reasonable proba‐
bility that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result
of the proceeding would have been different.” Id. at 688, 694.
The district court held that Kirklin failed to establish that his
attorney’s performance was objectively unreasonable. We
agree. Since Kirklin’s appeal focuses only on the legal conclu‐
sions of the district court, we review the court’s decision de
novo. Spiller v. United States, 855 F.3d 751, 755 (7th Cir. 2017).
Kirklin contends that his attorney’s performance was ob‐
jectively unreasonable because he failed to anticipate the pos‐
sible overruling of Harris and thus failed to object to having
the district court make the factual finding whether Kirklin
was responsible for Jones and McCallister brandishing the
firearms. Kirklin argues that by the time of his sentencing, a
competent lawyer would have realized that the overruling of
Harris was imminent. Kirklin points to Alleyne’s own lawyer,

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6 No. 17‐1056
who raised the issue despite the continuing viability of Harris.
He also notes Justice Sotomayor’s later observation in Alleyne
itself that the majority coalition in Harris had relied on Justice
Breyer’s opinion, in which he had announced that he viewed
the logic of Apprendi and Harris as incompatible, but had con‐
curred with the majority’s judgment on the understanding
that Apprendi had been decided wrongly and should be over‐
ruled. Alleyne, 570 U.S. at 119–20 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
As the years passed, the broader reading of Apprendi
gained more force, and in Alleyne Justice Breyer ultimately
acknowledged that Apprendi was not going away. He con‐
ceded that his long‐held view that judges could make factual
findings that alter statutory sentencing ranges would not pre‐
vail and voted to overrule Harris to provide greater uni‐
formity in sentencing doctrine. Alleyne, 570 U.S. at 122 (Breyer,
J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). But
that does not mean Alleyne was a foregone conclusion.
For years the Court continued to deny certiorari in cases
arguing that Harris should be overruled, even as the principle
underlying Apprendi applied with greater force to sentencing
statutes. Most notably, in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220
(2005), the Court held unconstitutional the statutory provi‐
sions making the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines mandatory. And
in United States v. O’Brien, 560 U.S. 218 (2010), the Court held
that a factual finding that would trigger a mandatory mini‐
mum thirty‐year sentence under § 924(c)(1)(B) for use of a ma‐
chine‐gun was an element that must be decided by a jury be‐
cause the factual finding resulted in a “drastic … increase” in
the mandatory minimum as compared to the “incremental
changes” in § 924(c) then permitted under Harris. O’Brien, 560
U.S. at 229.

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No. 17‐1056 7
The most recent of those certiorari denials that we have
identified came just two months before Kirklin’s sentencing.
See Crayton v. United States, 566 U.S. 991 (2012) (order denying
certiorari on May 14, 2012). And the Court had repeatedly de‐
nied certiorari on the issue in the preceding years. See Krieger
v. United States, 628 F.3d 857 (7th Cir. 2010), cert. denied, 565
U.S. 835 (2011); Booker v. United States, 612 F.3d 596 (7th Cir.
2010), cert. denied, 562 U.S. 1182 (2011); Berroa v. United States,
374 Fed. App’x 266 (3d Cir. 2010), cert. denied, 562 U.S. 1061
(2010); Benford v. United States, 574 F.3d 1228 (9th Cir. 2009),
cert. denied, 560 U.S. 928 (2010); Clark v. United States, 538 F.3d
803 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 556 U.S. 1127 (2009). While certiorari
denials are not rulings on the merits, defense counsel reason‐
ably may read in them a reluctance on the Court’s part to re‐
visit a prior ruling, particularly when similar certiorari deni‐
als come over an extended period of time.
The central problem for Kirklin is that his claim of ineffec‐
tive assistance depends on hindsight, which Strickland warns
against: “A fair assessment of attorney performance requires
that every effort be made to eliminate the distorting effects of
hindsight … .” 466 U.S. at 689. With the benefit of hindsight,
the overruling of Harris can too easily seem almost inevitable.
But it was not inevitable to Justice Scalia, who concurred in
both Apprendi and Harris and dissented in Alleyne. Nor was it
inevitable or appropriate in the view of the other Justices who
dissented in Alleyne. See 570 U.S. at 124; 133 S. Ct. at 2167
(Roberts, C.J., dissenting); 570 U.S. at 132; 133 S. Ct. at 2172
(Alito, J., dissenting). We have said repeatedly that the guar‐
antee of effective assistance of counsel does not require an at‐
torney to anticipate every eventual change in the law. Valen‐
zuela v. United States, 261 F.3d 694, 700 (7th Cir. 2001); United
States v. Smith, 241 F.3d 546, 548 (7th Cir. 2001); Lilly v. Gilmore,

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8 No. 17‐1056
988 F.2d 783, 786 (7th Cir. 1993). We do not expect criminal
defense attorneys to follow all the procedural developments
in the Supreme Court to divine meaning from certiorari peti‐
tions and oracular denials when the Supreme Court already
has decided a controlling precedent on the question at hand.
Overruling precedent is serious and rare. It is not objectively
unreasonable for a defense lawyer to assume that the Court
will follow its precedents unless and until it signals clearly
that it will not do so.
Our reasoning here does not address the constitutional
standard for performance on this issue after the grant of a pe‐
tition for certiorari, which gives notice to the criminal defense
bar that an issue of previously settled law has become unset‐
tled, so that reasonable attorneys may need to take appropri‐
ate action in pending cases. Still, given the strength of the ev‐
idence against Kirklin on the brandishing issue, even after
certiorari was granted in Alleyne, a defense lawyer might have
made a reasonable strategic decision not to challenge the
brandishing issue.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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