EASTERLY, Associate Judge:
"[S]entencing is a critical stage of a criminal trial; to a criminal defendant, perhaps the most important."
In this case, Jerome Bradley was convicted of driving without a license,
In the early evening hours on March 24, 2010, Mr. Bradley was driving an all-terrain vehicle ("ATV") on 8th Street Southeast when he came head-to-head with a police car. Mr. Bradley veered around the police car, lost control of the ATV, and drove over the curb and into a group of people standing on the other side of the street. The ATV hit Julius Mgongo, who flipped over the vehicle and suffered a broken leg. After the accident, Mr. Bradley ran, and the police caught up to him a few blocks away.
Mr. Bradley's case was tried before a magistrate judge in a single afternoon. With no pause in the proceedings, the magistrate judge heard testimony from the police, Mr. Mgongo, a number of bystanders, and Mr. Bradley;
Immediately after announcing his verdict, the magistrate judge asked the government if it wanted "to get a presentence report" or to submit a victim impact statement; the magistrate judge acknowledged, however, that "it sounds like the victim has made peace with Mr. Bradley here." The government responded that it was "ready to proceed with sentencing now" and saw no "need for a presentence report." The magistrate judge then offered to order a presentence report if defense counsel wished one to be generated, but indicated that Mr. Bradley would be locked up pending sentencing, or, as the magistrate judge put it, Mr. Bradley was "going to jail tonight, right now." Counsel responded, "then we better proceed today."
The magistrate judge directed the government to make its sentencing recommendation. The prosecutor requested a sentence of at least six months of jail time. In support of this request the prosecutor quickly reviewed what the government considered to be the salient facts: that Mr. Mgongo suffered a broken leg which required surgery; Mr. Bradley had run from the scene of the accident; Mr. Bradley had prior convictions, including "run-ins with the law around drug[s] and guns"; and Mr. Bradley was on probation at the time of the accident.
Defense counsel and Mr. Bradley spoke next, with counsel representing that Mr.
The magistrate judge then said the following:
Having thus sketched this "picture of Jerome Bradley as we know him," the magistrate judge concluded, "[s]o, I don't have any sympathy whatsoever." The magistrate judge then sentenced Mr. Bradley to the maximum imprisonment or fine permitted for a total of eighteen months incarceration and $2,000 in fines.
Mr. Bradley filed a Motion for Judicial Review of Trial Court's Judgment under Super. Ct.Crim. R. 117(g)(1). He argued that the evidence was insufficient to support his reckless driving conviction. He
An associate judge of the Superior Court considered Mr. Bradley's motion and rejected his challenges to his conviction and sentence. Specifically with respect to Mr. Bradley's challenge to the magistrate judge's sentencing determination, the associate judge acknowledged that "some of the words used by Magistrate Judge Sullivan at the sentencing hearing were ill chosen." The associate judge elaborated,
Nonetheless the associate judge concluded that "a fair reading of the sentencing transcript does not reveal any improper prejudice or bias on the part of the trial judge" and discerned no reversible error in the imposition of Mr. Bradley's sentence. Mr. Bradley appealed the associate judge's ruling to this court.
After hearing oral argument, this court retained jurisdiction but remanded the record to the Superior Court for identification of any and all documents the magistrate judge relied upon in making his sentencing determination. In response, the associate judge transmitted to this court a one-paragraph statement from the magistrate judge. In that statement the magistrate judge explained that the parties had "requested immediate sentencing following the trial; therefore, no pre-sentence report was prepared." He further stated that he had "no present recollection of particular documents he relied upon for his sentencing determination." Even so, the magistrate judge recalled that he had "studied the Defendant's juvenile and criminal history by examining images of documents contained in CourtView; a total of 16 juvenile and adult criminal matters," and that these "records contained numerous complaints, indictments, petitions, affidavits, probation violation reports, pleadings and images of other documents which the Court reviewed." An accompanying statement by the associate judge noted, however, that there were only 15 juvenile and adult criminal matters on CourtView as of the date of Mr. Bradley's sentencing in this case, and that only seven of these matters (one of which was this case) had any corresponding documents that could be viewed in CourtView. The associate judge transmitted to this court the documents available in CourtView related to these seven matters, which amounted to 68 pages in all.
The volume of Mr. Bradley's records perhaps suggests a more serious criminal history than Mr. Bradley in fact possesses. After weeding out dismissed charges and matters that appear to have proceeded no further than an arrest, these records document
Upon review of these supplemental record materials, this court ordered the parties to file supplemental briefs
Supplemental briefs have been filed and we now resolve this case.
We begin by clarifying the scope of our review. In our system, magistrate judges may conduct certain non-jury criminal proceedings. See D.C.Code § 11-1732(j)(5) (2012 Repl.); Super. Ct.Crim. R. 117(c). While judgment by a magistrate judge is
Mr. Bradley did not seek review in Superior Court of one of the issues he seeks to raise on appeal to this court: his argument that his conviction must be overturned because his cross-examination of a witness was improperly constricted. Because of the very short time within which a Rule 117(g) motion must be filed, we construe Mr. Bradley's motion "more generously than we might otherwise for an indication that the issues raised on appeal were noted below." See Dorm, 559 A.2d at 1318. Nevertheless, because Mr. Bradley made only passing reference in the factual summary section of his Rule 117(g) motion to a ruling by the magistrate judge limiting his ability to "further confirm" a point of impeachment of a particular witness, and then said nothing about this ruling in his legal argument, we cannot say that Mr. Bradley gave any indication that he believed that the magistrate judge's ruling limiting cross-examination was reversible error (as he now argues to this court). Therefore, we do not address this claim.
With respect to Mr. Bradley's two remaining and related claims on appeal — that the magistrate judge's sentencing determination was based on material misinformation indicative of bias and that Mr. Bradley was prevented from fully allocuting at sentencing — the government argues that our review is restricted to plain error. But Mr. Bradley raised these claims in his Rule 117(g) motion in Superior Court, and in that forum, the government did not argue these claims were unpreserved. We have held in other contexts that the government may waive "waiver" as an argument on appeal. See, e.g., In re T.L., 859 A.2d 1087, 1090 n. 6 (D.C.2004). Here, we are mindful of the fact that Mr. Bradley's appeal is taken from the order of an associate judge,
Lastly, we note that, although we are reviewing the associate judge's denial of Mr. Bradley's Rule 117(g) motion, we do not defer to the associate judge's assessment of Mr. Bradley's claims. Our review and the associate judge's review are the same,
We turn now to examine Mr. Bradley's preserved challenge to the sentencing procedure in this case.
On appeal to this court, Mr. Bradley challenges the "trial judge's improper and unfounded comments about [a]ppellant at the time of sentencing," and alleges a violation of his due process rights. Although Mr. Bradley ascribes bias to the magistrate judge, the foundation of his argument on appeal is, as it was in his Rule 117(g) motion in Superior Court, that "the [magistrate] judge's comments, if taken literally, were not based on anything in the record."
Preliminarily we acknowledge that, ordinarily, "this court does not review sentences for substantive reasonableness." Saunders v. United States, 975 A.2d 165, 167 (D.C.2009). "This does not mean, of course, that the sentencing process ... is immune from appellate scrutiny." Matter of L.J., 546 A.2d 429, 434-35 (D.C.1988) (providing examples of some of the defects in the sentencing process that this court reviews). The standard by which we review sentencing procedures varies based on the measure of discretion given to the court under the circumstances. For example, we review for abuse of discretion a sentencing court's denial of a request for a continuance, which is intimately related to a court's discretionary management of its docket. See, e.g., Wheeler v. United States, 977 A.2d 973, 991-92 (D.C.2009). We also afford a sentencing court considerable discretion in marshalling the factual foundation for a sentence; a court "may examine any reliable evidence, including that which was not introduced at trial, and may consider a wide range of facts concerning a defendant's character and his crime." Caldwell v. United States, 595 A.2d 961, 966 (D.C.1991) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). But "this discretion has some limitations arising from the constitutional guarantee of due process"; in particular, "due process is violated when the sentencing judge relies on `material false assumptions as to any facts relevant to sentencing.'" Id. at 967 (quoting Hamid, 531 A.2d at 644).
We explained in Hamid that "[n]o [judge] can make valid judgments without knowledge of the facts," 531 A.2d at 645 (quoting Malcolm, 432 F.2d at 819), and that "[f]air administration of justice demands that the sentencing judge will not act on surmise, misinformation and suspicion." Id. (concluding that a court may not "rely on mistaken information or baseless assumptions") (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). As support for this pronouncement, we relied on United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 447, 92 S.Ct. 589, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972) (distinguishing between a sentence based on informed discretion and one "founded at least in part upon misinformation of constitutional magnitude"), and Townsend, 334 U.S. at 741, 68 S.Ct. 1252 (observing that "whether caused by carelessness or design," a sentencing determination based on inaccurate information "is inconsistent with due process of law").
Hamid examined a sentencing court's reliance on misinformation in the context of reviewing a trial court's grant of writ of error coram nobis; thus it did not address the standard of review that would apply on direct review of such claims. We have, in other contexts, observed that "[w]e review fundamental legal errors in the sentencing process ... de novo." Dalton v. United States, 58 A.3d 1005, 1015 (D.C.2013) (internal quotation marks omitted) (affirming that it violates due process to enhance a defendant's sentence as a punishment for exercising his right to go to trial). But this court, in Caldwell, stated without further exposition that we reviewed for abuse of discretion the appellant's claim that the sentencing court had "relied on the prosecutor's recitation of unsworn evidence, unverified statements of persons unavailable for cross-examination,
The magistrate judge described Mr. Bradley as an inveterate gun-wielding, drug-dealing criminal who had managed to evade any real consequences for his actions. But, as the government conceded in supplemental briefing, that portrait lacked an adequate foundation in the record evidence.
The magistrate judge said that Mr. Bradley had "engaged in risky conduct [his] whole life, selling drugs, being around guns, fleeing from the police," a statement that the reviewing associate judge recognized as "overstated and exaggerated." Mr. Bradley was thirty years old at the time of his sentencing in 2010 and his four 2008 convictions — a felony and misdemeanor each from two discrete incidents — were his only priors.
The magistrate judge further observed, "no matter how much time I give you, you're going to sell your drugs, you're going, you're going to shoot somebody." But as the reviewing associate judge noted, not only had Mr. Bradley never been convicted of selling drugs, there also was no indication that Mr. Bradley had ever used or attempted to use a gun to threaten or injure anyone. Although Mr. Bradley's prior possession of a gun was illegal, carrying a pistol without a license is a far cry from assault with a dangerous weapon. In fact, the government never specifically pressed the point that Mr. Bradley was a dangerous person. Rather, the prosecutor argued that Mr. Bradley deserved jail time because he had "had run-ins with the law around drug[s] and guns, which are not small potatoes," and his past convictions showed "disregard for police officers and for their orders." Mr. Bradley's single prior conviction for drug possession, in conjunction with his present convictions related to illegally and recklessly driving an ATV, did not provide an adequate foundation for a prediction that he would sell drugs in the future. Nor did his single conviction for illegal possession of a gun, either alone or in conjunction with his past or present convictions, reasonably support the judge's prediction that Mr. Bradley would shoot someone in the future.
Lastly, the magistrate judge determined that Mr. Bradley was a bad apple who had duped the judge in his 2008 cases and had gotten off too easily. The magistrate judge asserted that Mr. Bradley "could have gone to jail for about 40 years, 60 years maybe, I don't know, and Judge Jackson gave you probation." But that statement has no record foundation, as the government volunteered at oral argument. As a result of his 2008 convictions, Mr. Bradley was required to serve an aggregate of 10 months in jail; he was not merely given probation. Perhaps more importantly, he never faced anything approaching 40 to 60 years of prison time on the charges for which he was convicted.
Having determined that the magistrate judge's statements at sentencing contained a number of unfounded assertions regarding Mr. Bradley, we consider whether Mr. Bradley's due process rights were violated. We conclude they were, for two, interrelated reasons.
To begin with, "courts must be concerned ... when the sentencing process [has] created a significant possibility that misinformation infected the decision." (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). Here there can be no question that the magistrate judge's unfounded statements were material to his decision-making. See Hamid, 531 A.2d at 644. Indeed, the reason the magistrate judge made these statements was to explain why he, unlike the judge who had sentenced Mr. Bradley in 2008, was "not going to be kind." The magistrate judge announced that "the buck stops here," and that Mr. Bradley was "not going to fool [him]." Rather, the magistrate judge asserted he "knew" Mr. Bradley and that he had "a picture of Jerome Bradley as we know him." And it was with that "picture" in mind that the magistrate judge sentenced Mr. Bradley, expressing disappointment that he could not "put [Mr. Bradley] away for longer ... because [he] would." For this reason alone, remand for resentencing is thus necessary.
In addition, a due process violation warranting remand arises from the record in this case, or, more to the point, from the lack of a record — a condition that was only cured by this court's order of a record remand. The magistrate judge failed to document his reliance on extra-record information, namely, Mr. Bradley's records in CourtView. Although the magistrate judge was unable to recall, by the time of the record remand, which CourtView records in particular he relied upon, he represented to this court that he had "studied" the entirety of Mr. Bradley's "juvenile and criminal history." We can only conclude that this study at least contributed to the magistrate judge's inaccurate portrait of Mr. Bradley; meanwhile, Mr. Bradley was left entirely in the dark about the source of the court's information about him and was unable to correct the court's mistaken understanding of his criminal history. Indeed, unaware that the magistrate judge had an extra-record source of information, Mr. Bradley could only make sense of the magistrate judge's sentencing statements by ascribing bias to the magistrate judge.
It is fortuitous that this court even ordered a record remand, as it is not obvious from the trial transcript that the magistrate judge examined materials outside the trial record, other than an alleged violation
This court ordered a record remand only because it seemed improbable that the record available to us had served as the basis for the magistrate judge's harsh statements about Mr. Bradley. The trial transcript
But by ordering such a record remand, we did not mean to imply that it was acceptable for the magistrate judge to examine extra-record CourtView documents without identifying them and without making them part of the record in this case. And we now clarify that the magistrate judge should not have done this.
We have previously acknowledged that a "defendant has the right to be informed of [the] information" a trial court considers "in evaluating the appropriate sentence for a defendant." Foster v. United States, 615 A.2d 213, 220-21
We acknowledge that the extra-record documents consulted by the magistrate judge in this case were located in the Superior Court's own electronic filing system; and we do not question that a court may take judicial notice of these records,
Indeed, this is precisely what happened
In short, we conclude that Mr. Bradley's due process rights were violated both because the magistrate judge relied on misinformation in making its sentencing determination and because the magistrate judge failed to disclose and make a record of the extra-record information in CourtView that it erroneously thought provided a foundation for its sentencing determination.
The government suggested for the first time at oral argument that any challenge to Mr. Bradley's sentencing determination is moot because Mr. Bradley has already served his jail sentence. "Although we, unlike the federal courts, are not bound by the `case or controversy' requirement of Article III of the Constitution, we have adopted this requirement for prudential reasons, and therefore we will not normally decide questions that have become moot." District of Columbia v. Grp. Ins. Admin., 633 A.2d 2, 12 (D.C. 1993). An event that "renders relief impossible or unnecessary" — even one that occurs while an appeal is pending — renders the appeal moot. Vaughn v. United States, 579 A.2d 170, 175 n. 7 (D.C.1990).
The government had ample opportunity and incentive to raise mootness earlier if it had a basis for this argument.
Because the magistrate judge relied on misinformation to sentence Mr. Bradley, misinformation derived from CourtView records the magistrate judge failed either to disclose to the parties or to make part of the record, we remand for resentencing.
So ordered.
Nevertheless, we acknowledge the possibility that the magistrate judge meant to say that Mr. Mgongo "could have died" as a result of the accident. Caldwell, 595 A.2d at 967-68 (finding permissible judge's statement at sentencing that the victim "could have died" even though victim never went to the hospital for her injuries). And if that is what the magistrate judge meant, we would not question such an assessment of the severity of the injury that a pedestrian could suffer as the result of being hit by an ATV, and ultimately of the riskiness of Mr. Bradley's conduct driving an ATV in the District.
It is not evident that Mr. Bradley's trial counsel (who did not represent Mr. Bradley in his 2008 cases) either possessed a copy of this report prior to sentencing or knew that the magistrate judge had a copy and would be relying on information therein to make his sentencing determination. Rather, in his Rule 117(g) motion, Mr. Bradley expressed some uncertainty about the identity of the document to which the magistrate judge had referred. We possess a copy of this report only because the government, in the proceedings before Judge Pan, first moved to supplement the record with this document and then, in conjunction with its initial briefing to this court, moved to include it in the appellate record.
Of course, beyond court records and matters that are properly the subject of judicial notice, there are limits on a court conducting its own investigation of matters related to sentencing. See Belton v. United States, 581 A.2d 1205, 1214-15 (D.C.1990).