United States v. Castevens , 209 F. App'x 320 ( 2006 )

ON REHEARING
UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 05-4043
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
WILLIAM GLENN CASTEVENS,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. James A. Beaty, Jr.,
District Judge. (CR-04-268)
Submitted: March 8, 2006 Decided: December 13, 2006
Before LUTTIG,* WILLIAMS, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Louis C. Allen, III, Federal Public Defender, William C. Ingram,
First Assistant Federal Public Defender, Greensboro, North
Carolina, for Appellant. Anna Mills Wagoner, United States
Attorney, Michael F. Joseph, Assistant United States Attorney,
Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
*
Judge Luttig was a member of the original panel but did not
participate in this decision. This opinion is filed by a quorum of
the panel pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(d).
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
William Glenn Castevens pled guilty to being a felon in
possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)
(2000). He was sentenced to forty months in prison. Castevens
appealed his sentence, and we affirmed by unpublished per curiam
opinion. We now grant Castevens’ petition for rehearing and,
dispensing with briefing and oral argument, modify our prior
opinion in light of United States v. Rodriguez, 433 F.3d 411 (4th
Cir. 2006), so as to vacate the sentence and remand for
resentencing.
Castevens asserts that his sentence violates United
States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), because the district court
sentenced him under a mandatory sentencing guidelines scheme.
After Booker, we held that treating the guidelines as mandatory was
plain error. United States v. White, 405 F.3d 208, 215-17 (4th
Cir.), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. 668 (2005). We declined to presume
prejudice, id. at 217-22, and held that the “prejudice inquiry,
therefore, is . . . whether after pondering all that happened
without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, . . . the
judgment was . . . substantially swayed by the error.” Id. at 223(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In Rodriguez, we
held that a defendant who makes an objection at sentencing based on
Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), has preserved his claim
of statutory error (mandatory application of the guidelines) under
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Booker. Rodriguez, 433 F.3d at 415. The appeals court is obliged
to review the claim for harmless error, and the burden is on the
government to show that the Booker error did not affect the
defendant’s substantial rights. Id. at 416.
In this case, the district court announced an alternative
“Blakely guideline range” of 21-27 months and stated that it would
impose a sentence of twenty-four months if that range applied. See
White, 405 F.3d at 224. Given this alternative sentence, the
government cannot show that the error in treating the guidelines as
mandatory did not affect Castevens’ substantial rights. See id. at
223 (noting that substantial rights inquiry is the same under plain
or harmless error and that only difference is which party bears
burden of proof). We conclude that the government has not proven
that Castevens’ substantial rights were not violated.
Accordingly, we vacate Castevens’ sentence and remand for
resentencing. We leave intact our previous conclusion that
Castevens’ placement in criminal history category IV did not
violate the Sixth Amendment under Booker.
VACATED AND REMANDED
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