United States v. Y. C. T. , 805 F.3d 356 ( 2015 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-2556
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
Y.C.T., Male Juvenile,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Lipez, Circuit Judges.
Patricia A. Garrity, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Héctor
E. Guzmán, Jr., Federal Public Defender, and Héctor L. Ramos-Vega,
Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor, Appeals Division, on
brief for appellant.
Juan Carlos Reyes-Ramos, Assistant United States Attorney,
Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, and Nelson
Pérez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate
Division, on brief for appellee.
October 13, 2015
HOWARD, Chief Judge. Male juvenile Y.C.T. appeals the
district court's decision granting the government's request to
transfer him to adult status for criminal prosecution. 18 U.S.C.
§ 5032. He contends that the court violated his right to due
process and abused its discretion by relying on an inadequate
factual record developed before the magistrate judge to assess "the
nature of the alleged offense," one statutory factor in the overall
calculus under § 5032. We have jurisdiction of this interlocutory
appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm the transfer order.
The government filed a juvenile information against
Y.C.T. alleging two acts of delinquency stemming from an event that
occurred on April 29, 2013. Specifically, it alleged that Y.C.T.
committed a carjacking during which the male victim incurred a head
injury and the female victim was sexually assaulted, and that
Y.C.T. aided and abetted others who brandished a firearm in
relation to a crime of violence. See 18 U.S.C. § 2119(2); id. §
924(c)(1)(A). The government moved for a discretionary transfer of
Y.C.T. to the district court's criminal jurisdiction. 18 U.S.C. §
5032 (setting forth six statutory factors to consider in deciding
whether transferring the juvenile for criminal prosecution is
within "the interest of justice").
A magistrate judge conducted a transfer hearing at which
a federal agent testified about the details of the alleged
carjacking learned during the investigation. The agent's
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description of the alleged events characterized Y.C.T. as fully
participating in the carjacking along with three other men,
including personally committing acts of violence against both the
male and the female victims. The agent identified various sources
undergirding his factual description, including interviews of the
victims, of the arresting police officers, and of one of the men
arrested with Y.C.T. The magistrate judge subsequently issued a
written report recommending that Y.C.T. be transferred to adult
status, and the district court adopted the recommendation after
conducting a de novo review. See 28 U.S.C. § 636.
With respect to the "nature of the alleged offense"
factor in particular, the district court exercised its discretion
both to assume the truth of the allegations in the juvenile
information and to consider other evidence about the specifics of
the alleged offense. See United States v. Welch, 15 F.3d 1202,
1208 (1st Cir. 1993); see also 18 U.S.C. § 5032; In re Sealed Case,
893 F.2d 363, 369-70 (D.C. Cir. 1990). In ruling that the transfer
best served "the interest of justice," the district court placed
significant weight on the gravity of the charged offenses,
emphasizing that the agent's testimony showed that "Y.C.T.'s
actions as alleged indicate a prolonged episode of reckless and
violent behavior cut short by police intervention." See United
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States v. Male Juvenile E.L.C., 396 F.3d 458, 463 (1st Cir. 2005);
United States v. Smith, 178 F.3d 22, 27 (1st Cir. 1999).1
On appeal, Y.C.T. contends that the magistrate judge
foreclosed him from testing the veracity of the agent's testimony
because the magistrate erroneously believed that the court was
required to accept the entirety of the government's version of the
facts. More specifically, during the transfer hearing Y.C.T.'s
counsel attempted to question the federal agent about whether
another alleged participant in the carjacking was a cooperating
witness and was gaining a benefit by giving an account that blamed
Y.C.T. This prompted objections from the government, which the
magistrate judge sustained. Therefore, Y.C.T. argues, the
magistrate erroneously circumscribed the record on a vital issue --
the gravity of the charged offenses -- and the district court
abused its discretion by relying on that record to render its
merits decision. See Male Juvenile E.L.C., 396 F.3d at 461(reviewing for abuse of discretion); see also United States v.
Lopez-Matias, 522 F.3d 150, 154 (1st Cir. 2008) (noting that "legal
error is a per se abuse of discretion"). We disagree.
1
Male Juvenile E.L.C. and United States v. Female Juvenile,
A.F.S., 377 F.3d 27 (1st Cir. 2004), each provide background on the
requirements for transferring a juvenile to the adult criminal
justice system. For present purposes, we note that the district
court is required to consider "the extent to which the juvenile
played a leadership role in an organization, or otherwise
influenced others to take part in criminal activities, involving
the use or distribution of controlled substances or firearms" when
assessing "the nature of the alleged offense." 18 U.S.C. § 5032.
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Judicial transfer hearings afforded by statute require an
appropriate measure of due process, including extending an
opportunity for the juvenile to contest the value of the evidence
that is presented by the government. See Kent v. United States,
383 U.S. 541, 553, 563 (1966); In re Sealed Case, 893 F.2d at 369
& n.10.2 Here, Y.C.T. was able to do just that, albeit not to the
full extent that he desired. His counsel explored the basis for
the agent's testimony and, in so doing, sufficiently vetted the
concern that the eyewitness account provided by another participant
in the carjacking may have been a self-serving one. Cf. United
States v. Juvenile, 451 F.3d 571, 577 (9th Cir. 2006) (noting that
"if the district court has doubts about the [juvenile]'s guilt
based on the evidence presented" at the transfer hearing, it "may
take those doubts into account" in its ruling).
Y.C.T. argues, however, that because the magistrate
curtailed his cross-examination of the agent about the status of
that alleged accomplice as a cooperating witness, the reliability
of the agent's lengthy narrative was essentially left untested.
2
While the former version of the Federal Juvenile Delinquency
Act provided absolute discretion to the Attorney General to try
juvenile offenders as adults, since 1974 Congress has required
judicial transfer hearings for assessing "the interest of justice."
Welch, 15 F.3d at 1207 n.6; see United States v. Quiñones, 516 F.2d
1309, 1311 (1st Cir. 1975) (following other circuits to hold that
"Congress could legitimately vest in the Attorney General
discretion to decide whether to proceed against a juvenile as an
adult and that the exercise of such discretion does not require a
due process hearing").
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This is so, he contends, because on this record the accomplice's
eyewitness account was necessarily indivisible from the other
evidentiary sources relied upon by the agent. He misreads the
transcript of the hearing. In actuality, the agent's testimony
shows that law enforcement's interviews of the victims and the
arresting police officers served as the primary sources for his
factual description of the carjacking, and that the information
provided by the accomplice essentially confirmed what law
enforcement had already learned. Thus, we fail to see how the
magistrate's decision to foreclose this one particular line of
attack left the record deficient for the district court's
independent analysis of the § 5032 factors.
Moreover, Y.C.T. seems to elide the fact that the
district court expressly rejected his challenge to the adequacy of
the record. The district judge concluded that because "the [c]ourt
does not consider the strength of the government's evidence at the
transfer stage," Y.C.T.'s challenge to the agent's acquisition of
his information was "irrelevant to the transfer determination." In
so ruling, the court properly recognized that a transfer hearing is
not an adversarial process where the juvenile has a right to
challenge the government's evidence in a manner concomitant to that
of a defendant at a criminal trial. See Kent, 383 U.S. at 562; see
also Welch, 15 F.3d at 1208; United States v. Juvenile Male, 554
F.3d 456, 467 (4th Cir. 2009). In fact, the line of questioning
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sought by Y.C.T.'s counsel on the accomplice's bias involved a
rather ordinary credibility attack on one portion of the overall
evidence, not on a critical issue that precluded the district court
from soundly assessing the gravity of the alleged offenses based on
the evidence provided by the government. Cf. Kent, 383 U.S. at
553-54 (holding that a juvenile court's decision to waive
jurisdiction -- without first affording any hearing, any
participation or representation of the juvenile, or any statement
of reasons on the critical issues prescribed by statute -- violated
"basic requirements of due process and fairness").
All told, the district court's reliance on the record, as
developed by the magistrate judge, to conduct its de novo review
was not an abuse of discretion violative of Y.C.T.'s due process
rights.3 Accordingly, we affirm the transfer order.
3
To the extent that Y.C.T. suggests that the district court
improperly assumed that he was guilty of committing offenses beyond
those enumerated in the juvenile information, he is mistaken. See
Juvenile, 451 F.3d at 577; Male Juvenile E.L.C., 396 F.3d at 462.
The juvenile information itself alleged that serious bodily injury
was inflicted on both victims during the carjacking, and the
district court relied on the agent's testimony to identify the
basis for concluding that Y.C.T. directly participated in
inflicting those injuries as part of the alleged carjacking
offense. See 18 U.S.C. § 5032; In re Sealed Case, 893 F.2d at 370;
cf. Kent, 383 U.S. at 561 (decision on waiver of juvenile court
jurisdiction need not "necessarily include conventional findings of
fact").
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