United States v. Damien Stevenson

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-4553
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
DAMIEN STEVENSON,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Catherine C. Blake, District Judge.
(1:12-cr-00549-CCB-1)
Submitted: February 27, 2014 Decided: April 16, 2014
Before MOTZ, GREGORY, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Meghan S. Skelton,
Appellate Attorney, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J.
Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Michael C. Hanlon, Assistant
United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Damien Stevenson pled guilty to possession with intent
to distribute cocaine base and was sentenced to 120 months of
imprisonment. At sentencing, Stevenson objected to the
inclusion in his presentence report (“PSR”) of a Maryland state
court conviction for possession with intent to distribute
(“state conviction”), which was determined to be a predicate
offense for the purpose of designating him as a career offender
under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (“USSG”) § 4B1.1 (2012).
Stevenson raises this issue again on appeal. For the reasons
that follow, we affirm.
Stevenson argues that his state conviction was
obtained without the assistance of counsel in violation of the
Sixth Amendment. To be classified as a career offender under
USSG § 4B1.1, a defendant must have been at least eighteen years
old at the time he committed the offense of conviction, the
offense of conviction must be “a crime of violence or a
controlled substance offense,” and the defendant must have two
prior felony convictions “of either a crime of violence or a
controlled substance offense.” USSG § 4B1.1(a). The district
court found that the record revealed Stevenson had the
assistance of counsel for his state conviction.
Generally, unless a prior conviction has been
“reversed, vacated, or invalidated in a prior case,” the court
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must count the conviction as a predicate conviction. United
States v. Bacon, 94 F.3d 158, 161 (4th Cir. 1996). Moreover,
defendants typically cannot collaterally challenge a predicate
conviction during a sentencing proceeding. See id. at 163-64.
The exception to this rule permits a defendant to challenge the
convictions used to enhance his sentence when such convictions
are “obtained in the absence of counsel.” Id. at 162 (citing
Custis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485 (1994)). When a defendant
challenges his conviction on this ground, the determination of
whether the right to counsel has been waived is a question of
law that we review de novo. United States v. Hondo, 366 F.3d
363, 365 (4th Cir. 2004). When a defendant raises this type of
challenge to a prior conviction, he “bears an especially
difficult burden of proving that the conviction was invalid.”
Id. (citation omitted).
The district court relied on state court records
showing that Stevenson had counsel when he pled guilty to the
state charge. Stevenson relies on his own affidavit as the
basis for contending that he lacked any useful assistance of
counsel when pleading guilty to the state charge. We have
previously held, however, that the “self-serving testimony of
the defendant” may not be enough to defeat the presumption of
regularity that attaches to final judgments. United States v.
Jones, 977 F.2d 105, 111 (4th Cir. 1997).
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We conclude that Stevenson has failed to establish the
demanding burden of showing that his conviction was invalid.
Hondo, 366 F.3d at 365; Bacon, 94 F.3d at 162-63. Accordingly,
we affirm. We dispense with oral argument as the facts and
legal contentions are adequately addressed in the materials
before this Court and argument would not aid the decisional
process.
AFFIRMED
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