In United States v. Richards, --- F.4th ---, No. 21-10190 (9th Cir. 2022), the Court affirmed the district court’s imposition of consecutive 24-month sentences on James Richards after finding he violated the conditions of his supervised release by possessing two guns and ammunition.
On appeal, Richards argued that the consecutive sentences: violate his rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as explained in United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369 (2019); violate his rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause; and are not supported by sufficient evidence.
The Court rejected these arguments:
Richards has not shown that the district court violated his rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause or abused its discretion in giving Richards two consecutive 24-month sentences for violating his conditions of supervised release. The district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Richards had possessed two separate firearms (with ammunition). We reject Richards’ claim that his violations should have been determined beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury, as that argument is not supported by Justice Breyer’s controlling concurring opinion in Haymond, was previously rejected in Henderson, and has been uniformly rejected by our sister circuits.
We reject Richards’ challenges to his consecutive sentences because he was found to have possessed two distinct firearms (with ammunition) which were found in different places and at different times. Moreover, the district court based the sentences on two distinct counts in Richards’ underlying indictment, and the consecutive sentences are supported by evidence proving four charges in the Amended Petition as well as evidence concerning a fifth charge.
Finally, Richards has not shown that, when considered in the light most favorable to the government, a rational trier of fact could not have concluded that the preponderance of evidence established that Richards had possessed the firearms and ammunition.
