United States of America v. Robert James Jefferson

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 21-3875
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United States of America
lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee
v.
Robert James Jefferson
lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of Minnesota
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Submitted: October 20, 2022
Filed: February 21, 2023
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Before LOKEN, GRUENDER, and GRASZ, Circuit Judges.
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LOKEN, Circuit Judge.
In the early 1990s, Appellant Robert James Jefferson joined the 6-0 Tres Crips,
a violent St. Paul gang led by Jefferson’s half-brother, Robert George Jefferson,1 that
distributed cocaine and crack cocaine throughout the Twin Cities and engaged in
1To avoid confusion, we will refer to Appellant as Jefferson and his half-
brother as George.

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numerous acts of violence, including the firebombing murder of five young children
in February 1994, when Jefferson was sixteen. Jefferson and George committed the
firebombing to retaliate against a fellow member for breaking the gang’s code of
silence. Following a six-week trial in 1998, a federal jury convicted Jefferson of
twelve crimes he committed as part of the 6-0 Tres Crips, including the five murders
(Counts 51-55) and conspiracy to distribute cocaine and crack cocaine (Count 2).
Under the mandatory sentencing guidelines then in effect, the district court2 imposed
statutory maximum life imprisonment sentences on those counts. See 18
U.S.C. § 1959(a)(1) (1988); 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(b)(1)(A) (1988). On direct
appeal, we affirmed Jefferson’s convictions and sentence (and, with one exception,
the convictions and sentences of four co-defendants). United States v. Jefferson, 215
F.3d 820 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 911 (2000). We later denied his 2003 and
2004 motions for post-conviction relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.
In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), the Supreme Court held that
imposing a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole on a juvenile
violates the Eighth Amendment. In 2013, Jefferson petitioned for § 2255 relief,
arguing he should be resentenced under Miller, a decision subsequently made
retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016). The district court
vacated Jefferson’s sentence and, after a two-day sentencing hearing, varied
downward from the now advisory guidelines range of life in prison and resentenced
Jefferson to terms of 600 months imprisonment (50 years) for the firebombing murder
convictions, 120 months for the cocaine conspiracy conviction, 48 months on each
of two other counts, 120 months on each of three other counts, and 240 months on the
last count, all to be served concurrently. United States v. Jefferson, No. 97-276-04-
MJD, 2015 WL 501968 (D. Minn. Feb. 5, 2015). We affirmed. United States v.
Jefferson, 816 F.3d 1016 (8th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 2290 (2017).
2The Honorable Michael J. Davis, United States District Judge for the District
of Minnesota.
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In a pro se motion filed in May 2021, Jefferson sought § 2255 relief under
Section 404 of the First Step Act of 2018, which made relief under Sections 2 and 3
of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 available to eligible defendants sentenced prior
to 2010. See First Step Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-391, § 404, 132 Stat. 5194,
5222. Jefferson claimed that Section 2 of the Fair Sentencing Act reduced the
mandatory minimum penalties for his Count 2 cocaine conspiracy offense by raising
the drug quantity needed to trigger the mandatory minimum sentence from 50 grams
to 280 grams of cocaine base. See Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-220,
§ 2, 124 Stat. 2372. Count 2 is therefore a covered offense making him eligible for
the grant of discretionary First Step Act relief, Jefferson argued. He urged the district
court to reduce his 600-month sentence to time served plus five years of supervised
release. The government concedes that Count 2 is a covered First Step Act offense.
Invoking the concurrent sentence doctrine, the district court denied First Step
Act relief. Noting it had previously denied George’s First Step Act application for
a “full resentencing,” the court found that Jefferson’s concurrent 600-month
sentences on the five murder counts remain valid, and the court would not reduce the
sentences on the murder counts if the sentence on the drug count was reduced.
Jefferson’s sentence has already been reduced from life to 50 years, the court
explained, “and the arguments he makes for a further reduction . . . were all
considered by the Court at his 2015 resentencing.” United States v. Jefferson, No.
CR 97-276-4-MJD, 2021 WL 5494652, at *3 (D. Minn. Nov. 23, 2021).
Jefferson appeals this Order, raising a single issue on appeal: “The District
Court abused its discretion by employing the concurrent sentence doctrine to avoid
resentencing Mr. Jefferson.” Reviewing the district court’s use of the concurrent
sentence doctrine for an abuse of discretion, we conclude the court applied the
doctrine consistent with controlling Eighth Circuit decisions and therefore affirm.
See Smith v. United States, 930 F.3d 978, 981 (8th Cir. 2019) (standard of review).
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“The concurrent sentence doctrine allows courts to decline to review the
validity of a concurrent conviction or sentence when a ruling in the defendant’s favor
‘would not reduce the time he is required to serve’ or otherwise ‘prejudice him in any
way.’” Eason v. United States, 912 F.3d 1122, 1123 (8th Cir. 2019) (emphasis
added), quoting United States v. Olunloyo, 10 F.3d 578, 581-82 (8th Cir. 1993).
When the defendant’s underlying challenge is to the validity of a concurrent
conviction, we apply the doctrine “only when there was no possibility of prejudicial
collateral consequences attendant upon the [challenged] convictions.” Oslund v.
United States, 944 F.3d 743, 746 n.2 (8th Cir. 2019) (cleaned up). The Supreme
Court’s decision that the special assessment imposed on each count of conviction
constitutes sufficient prejudice to require § 2255 review of a concurrent conviction’s
validity “had the practical effect of eliminating the doctrine from challenges to
concurrent convictions.” Id. at 748 (Arnold, J., dissenting); id. at 746 n.2; see Ray
v. United States, 481 U.S. 736, 737 (1987). Here, however, there is no challenge to
the validity of Jefferson’s Count 2 conviction. He seeks First Step Act relief based
on the Fair Sentencing Act’s impact on his Count 2 sentence.
When the challenge is to the validity of a concurrent sentence, the prejudicial
consequences inquiry turns on whether a § 2255 ruling in defendant’s favor would
“reduce the time he is required to serve or otherwise prejudice him in any way.”
Eason, 912 F.3d at 1123 (cleaned up). As the Fourth Circuit described this standard:
[T]he doctrine still has continuing force as a species of harmless-error
review where a defendant seeks to challenge the legality of a sentence
that was imposed for a valid conviction, but where the challenged
sentence runs concurrently with a valid sentence of an equal or greater
duration.
United States v. Charles, 932 F.3d 153, 160 (4th Cir. 2019) (emphasis in original);
accord United States v. Stuckey, No. 20-1565, 2021 WL 2470308, at *2 (6th Cir. Feb.
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8, 2021); United States v. Parker, 993 F.3d 595, 607 (8th Cir. 2021). That is the
situation presented by this appeal.
Jefferson argues that retroactive application of Section 2 of the Fair Sentencing
Act makes his sentence on Count 2 invalid because it reduces, indeed eliminates, the
mandatory minimum sentence of ten years by changing the now advisory guidelines
range from 10 years to life to zero to 20 years. Assuming Jefferson is correct, but not
deciding the issue, the district court noted that the concurrent sentences on his eleven
other counts of conviction are not affected by the Fair Sentencing Act as made
applicable by § 404 of the First Step Act and then properly addressed the critical
concurrent-sentence-doctrine question -- whether a ruling in Jefferson’s favor would
“reduce the time he is required to serve or otherwise prejudice him in any way.”
Eason, 912 F.3d at 1123 (cleaned up).
Jefferson argued the court should “resentence him on all counts” for the same
reasons he argued for a reduced sentence in 2015 -- disparity between his sentence
and those of less culpable co-defendants, his status as a juvenile under Miller v.
Alabama, the length of time he has served, and his substantial rehabilitation,
including a discipline-free record while in custody. In effect, Jefferson asked the
court to reconsider its 2015 resentencing decision that we affirmed on appeal. He
argued that “[n]othing in the text of the First Step Act requires a sentencing guideline
to have changed for a court to consider whether to reduce an aggregate term of
imprisonment.” If he only faced a 20-year statutory maximum on the cocaine
conspiracy conviction when he was resentenced, this might have favorably affected
the district court’s resentencing on the murder counts.
In denying First Step Act relief, the district court squarely addressed these
contentions. The court explained that “the arguments [Jefferson] makes for a further
reduction . . . were all [expressly] considered by the Court” in its Miller factors and
Section 3553(a) analysis at Jefferson’s 2015 resentencing hearing. Jefferson, 2021
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WL 5494652, at *3.3 The court again rejected Jefferson’s sentencing disparity
arguments on the merits, distinguishing his case from two co-defendants who
benefitted from the First Step Act. Noting it had previously applied the concurrent
sentence doctrine in denying George’s First Step Act motion, the court expressly
found it would not reduce Jefferson’s sentences on the murder counts if his sentence
on the drug count was reduced. Id. at *2-3.
A district court considering whether to exercise its First Step Act discretion
conducts a “complete review,” not a full resentencing. United States v. Moore, 963
F.3d 725, 728 (8th Cir. 2020). “A complete review . . . means that a district court
considered [Jefferson’s] arguments . . . and had a reasoned basis for its decision.”
United States v. Hoskins, 973 F.3d 918, 921 (8th Cir. 2020) (quotation omitted).
Reducing Jefferson’s 120-month sentence on Count 2 would not require the court to
reduce the length of his other concurrent sentences. He points to no other evidence
of potential prejudice. When, as here, the district court ruling on a First Step Act
motion initially sentenced the defendant and later granted a sentence reduction, the
court’s “plain statement” that it declined to exercise its discretion to grant a further
reduction “closes the matter.” United States v. Howard, 962 F.3d 1013, 1015 (8th
Cir. 2020); see United States v. Downs, 830 F. App’x 482, 483-84 (8th Cir. 2020).
The district court properly treated the concurrent sentence doctrine as “a species of
harmless-error review.” Charles, 932 F.3d at 160. As it applied the proper analysis
in invoking the doctrine, and its analysis is consistent with our First Step Act
precedents, there was no abuse of its broad First Step Act discretion.
The Order of the district court dated November 23, 2021 is affirmed.
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3Likewise, we expressly considered these arguments in concluding that the
district court’s 600-month sentence was not substantively unreasonable. Jefferson,
816 F.3d at 1020-21.
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