United States v. Christopher Chappell

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 22-2503
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United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
Christopher Chappell
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Western District of Missouri - Kansas City
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Submitted: March 13, 2023
Filed: June 2, 2023
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Before COLLOTON, MELLOY, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.
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GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.
A woman discovered an unknown man asleep in her car in front of her home.
She called the police. When officers arrived, they roused the man, ordered him out,
searched him, and found a pistol. The man told the officers that he did not know
how he ended up in the car or came to possess the pistol but that he remembered
consuming alcohol and methamphetamine the day before. He was later identified as
Christopher Chappell, a felon.
Chappell was indicted on one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. See
18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2). While in jail prior to pleading guilty, he sexually
assaulted multiple corrections officers. Later, following his guilty plea, jail
personnel discovered him with a six-inch metal shank.
At sentencing, one of the assaulted corrections officers testified. She
described how Chappell, without her consent, rubbed her thigh and buttocks with
his hand while she was serving breakfast. Another jail employee testified about the
shank. Based on these accounts, the district court1 concluded that Chappell did not
qualify for an acceptance-of-responsibility reduction. See U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1(a). The
court further found that Chappell had a prior felony conviction in Kansas for
attempted aggravated assault of a police officer with a deadly weapon and that this
offense was a crime of violence that qualified him for a base offense level of 20
under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A). Determining an advisory sentencing guidelines
range of 100 to 120 months’ imprisonment, the court sentenced Chappell to 108
months.
On appeal, Chappell argues that the district court erred in denying an
acceptance-of-responsibility reduction and in determining that the attempted-
aggravated-assault offense is a crime of violence under the sentencing guidelines.
We reject both points.
Beginning with acceptance of responsibility, a district court may apply a two-
level reduction under § 3E1.1(a) where a defendant has shown “a recognition and
affirmative responsibility for the offense and sincere remorse.” United States v.
Cooper, 998 F.3d 806, 810 (8th Cir. 2021). Merely pleading guilty does not entitle
a defendant to this reduction. Id. Rather, § 3E1.1(a) is intended “to distinguish a
sincerely remorseful defendant from a defendant not manifesting penitence.” Id.
(brackets omitted). Thus, we have consistently affirmed denials of this reduction to
1
The Honorable Greg Kays, United States District Judge for the Western
District of Missouri.
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defendants whose conduct “belies their claims of contrition,” id., even where that
conduct was unrelated to the underlying offense and committed in jail while awaiting
sentencing, see, e.g., United States v. Arellano, 291 F.3d 1032, 1035 (8th Cir. 2002).
We give “great deference” to a sentencing judge’s denial of an acceptance-of-
responsibility reduction and review for clear error only. United States v. Davis, 875
F.3d 869, 875 (8th Cir. 2017).
Chappell insists that he should have received a § 3E1.1(a) reduction because
he pleaded guilty and promptly withdrew from continued criminality, emphasizing
that the first of the sexual assaults was committed well over a year after his arrest.
But we agree with the district court that, Chappell’s guilty plea notwithstanding, this
is “probably as clear a case” as one could find of a defendant who has not accepted
responsibility for his criminal conduct. Chappell’s deviant behavior while
incarcerated—molesting corrections officers and carrying a shank—is hardly
emblematic of a “sincerely remorseful defendant.” See Cooper, 998 F.3d at 810.
That this behavior may have occurred after some cessation of his offense conduct
does not convince us otherwise. See United States v. Tjaden, 473 F.3d 877, 879-80
(8th Cir. 2007) (affirming the denial of a § 3E1.1(a) reduction where the defendant
had terminated his check-kiting operation but later initiated a new fraud scheme).
Thus, we find no clear error in the district court’s denial of an acceptance-of-
responsibility reduction under § 3E1.1(a).
We now address the district court’s crime-of-violence determination. The
sentencing guidelines provide for a base offense level of 20 if the defendant
committed the underlying offense “subsequent to sustaining one felony conviction
of . . . a crime of violence.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A). The guidelines define a
“crime of violence” to include an offense that “has as an element the use, attempted
use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.” U.S.S.G.
§ 4B1.2(a)(1). “Physical force” is “force capable of causing physical pain or injury
to another person.” United States v. Quigley, 943 F.3d 390, 394 (8th Cir. 2019). We
review de novo a sentencing judge’s determination that an offense qualifies as a
crime of violence. United States v. Fields, 863 F.3d 1012, 1013 (8th Cir. 2017).
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Chappell’s prior Kansas conviction was for attempted aggravated assault of a
police officer with a deadly weapon. At the time of his conviction, the statute
proscribing this offense read, in relevant part:
21-5412. Assault; aggravated assault; assault of a law enforcement
officer; aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer.
(a) Assault is knowingly placing another person in reasonable
apprehension of immediate bodily harm . . . .
(c) Assault of a law enforcement officer is assault, as defined in
subsection (a), committed against:
(1) A uniformed or properly identified state, county or city law
enforcement officer while such officer is engaged in the
performance of such officer’s duty . . . .
(d) Aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer is assault of a law
enforcement officer, as defined in subsection (c), committed:
(1) With a deadly weapon . . . .
Kan. Ann. Stat. § 21-5412 (2011).
Chappell argues that this offense lacks a physical-force element because the
underlying assault portion of the statute requires only that the defendant cause
“reasonable apprehension” of bodily harm, not that he cause, or even threaten, bodily
harm itself. We rejected a virtually identical argument in United States v. Price,
where the defendant had been convicted of attempted aggravated assault under § 21-
5412’s predecessor statute. 851 F.3d 824, 825-26 (8th Cir. 2017). There, we
explained that the statute’s underlying assault clause “requires that the defendant
make the victim reasonably fear immediate physical harm,” which, we concluded,
requires at least the threatened use of violent force. Id. at 826; 2 see also Jones v.
2
The version of Kansas’s assault statute that we considered in Price differed
from the version here in the following respect only: it defined assault as
“intentionally placing another person in reasonable apprehension of immediate
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United States, 922 F.3d 864, 867 (8th Cir. 2019) (“[W]e previously have held that
statutes that involve ‘knowingly placing another person in fear of imminent bodily
harm’ or intentionally ‘causing fear in another of immediate bodily harm or death’
satisfy the force clause [of the Armed Career Criminal Act].” (brackets omitted)).
And Chappell does not dispute that if the assault offense is a crime of violence under
the guidelines, an attempt to commit that offense qualifies as well. See Price, 851
F.3d at 826; United States v. Brown, 1 F.4th 617, 620-21 (8th Cir. 2021) (confirming
that a “crime of violence” under the guidelines encompasses inchoate offenses).
Accordingly, the district court did not err in determining that Chappell’s conviction
for attempted aggravated assault of a police officer with a deadly weapon was a
conviction for a crime of violence that raised his base offense level under U.S.S.G.
§ 2K2.1(a)(4)(A).
We therefore affirm Chappell’s sentence.
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bodily harm,” rather than “knowingly” doing the same. See 851 F.3d at 826. We
see no reason why this difference should render Price’s holding any less binding,
and Chappell does not argue otherwise or even cite Price in his briefs.
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