United States v. Garza

In United States v. Garza, —- F.4th —-, No. 22-11007 (5th Cir. Feb. 26, 2024), the Fifth Circuit rejected the defendant’s two arguments and affirmed his judgment and sentence. At trial, Garza had been convicted of (1) conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana, (2) possession with intent to distribute marijuana, and (3) unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.

Ruling 1: Before trial, Garza filed a motion to suppress statements he had made to officers, but the district court denied that motion based on a finding that Miranda’s public safety exception applied. On appeal, Garza renewed his suppression claim, but the Fifth Circuit held that he had “waived his right to complain of the … statement by affirmatively eliciting it at trial in front of the jury,” and even if he had not, the district court was right that the public safety exception applied.

The court noted that this was not a situation where the Government introduced the statement and Garza then attempted to reframe it in his favor; instead, Garza was the first to bring up the statement, which he did through counsel’s cross examination of a Government witness. That “affirmative, unprompted injection of the … statement … opened the door to its use at trial; Garza cannot complain of this ‘invited error.”

Ruling 2: In the district court, Garza received an enhanced sentence of 235 months in prison because of a “felony drug offence sentencing enhancement” — the Fifth Circuit’s opinion provides no citation or clarification of that phrase, but this enhancement likely came under one or both of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(D) and USSG § 4B1.1 (although both spell the word as “offense” rather than “offence”). Garza argued that his prior convictions for marijuana trafficking should not qualify as “felony drug offenses” because in 2018, the Agricultural Improvement Act had removed “hemp” from marijuana’s definition and his 2016 convictions could have been based on hemp.

The Fifth Circuit rejected that argument this way: “What matters is that, at the time Garza was convicted in 2016, hemp was included in marijuana’s definition and those convictions were final at the time the District Court sentenced him here.” Nevertheless, even if Garza’s argument had merit, the Fifth Circuit would have affirmed anyway because the district court said it would have imposed the same sentence either way.