Anderson v. United States

94 F.4th 564

Monta ANDERSON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 22-2666

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued May 19, 2023

Decided February 26, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 17-cv-01542 — Michael M. Mihm, Judge.

Andrew Vail, Michael T. Brody, Attorneys, Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner-Appellant.

W. Scott Simpson, Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Springfield, IL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before Flaum, Rovner, and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.

Rovner, Circuit Judge.

In this collateral challenge to his conviction, see 28 U.S.C. § 2255, petitioner Monta Anderson seeks to vacate his guilty plea on the ground that it was not knowing and voluntary due to his plea counsel's alleged ineffective assistance. Specifically, Anderson asserts that his counsel advised him to plead guilty to conspiring to distribute heroin in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) (effective Aug. 3, 2010 to Dec. 20, 2018),¹ stipulate to having distributed heroin that resulted, inter alia, in the death of James Reader, see § 841(b)(1)(A), and accept an agreed-upon sentence of 20 years pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C)—ostensibly in order to avoid a potential mandatory minimum prison term of life—without first consulting with a toxicology expert on the question of whether the heroin Anderson distributed was in fact a but-for cause of Reader's death. See Burrage v. United States, 571 U.S. 204, 218-19, 134 S. Ct. 881, 892, 187 L.Ed.2d 715 (2014). When this case was last before us, we concluded that Anderson had articulated a viable claim of attorney ineffectiveness and remanded for an evidentiary hearing. See Anderson v. United States, 981 F.3d 565, 577-78 (7th Cir. 2020) ("Anderson I").

Based on the testimony presented at that hearing, Anderson has now shown that consultation with a toxicology expert would have revealed the government's inability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the heroin he supplied to Reader was a but-for cause of Reader's death. Within the framework of our prior opinion, that showing likely would have been sufficient to establish that his plea counsel indeed was ineffective for failing to consult with such an expert. As the case was briefed and argued to us previously, it was the death-results enhancement that drove the prospective mandatory minimum prison term of life. The government did not dispute that if consultation with a medical expert would have revealed that the prosecution could not meet its burden of proof as to that enhancement, a mandatory sentence of life in prison would have been off the table and Anderson would have faced, at worst, a mandatory minimum term of 20 years, not life. Consistent with the premise of our prior opinion, Anderson would have thus established that he was prejudiced by his plea counsel's ineffectiveness.

However, the government now argues that there were two other grounds on which Anderson would have been subject to a mandatory life term apart from the death-results enhancement, such that Anderson was not prejudiced by his counsel's failure to consult with a toxicologist. This line of argument was developed on remand and relied upon by the district court below in denying Anderson relief. Although it turns out that Anderson's criminal history did not meet the criteria for one of these two alternative bases for a mandatory life term, we do agree that Anderson would have faced a mandatory life term given that he had at least one prior felony drug conviction and two individuals suffered serious bodily injuries when they overdosed on heroin that Anderson had supplied and required urgent intervention to resuscitate them. See § 841(b)(1)(A).

For this reason, we agree with the district court that Anderson ultimately was not prejudiced by any ineffectiveness on the part of his plea counsel: given that a mandatory life term remained on the table even without the death-results enhancement, pleading guilty and securing the benefit of a 20-year term was an eminently reasonable, positive outcome for Anderson. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment.

I.

Beginning in 2010, Anderson participated in a conspiracy to distribute heroin in central Illinois. Anderson obtained the heroin from a supplier in Chicago and distributed it to both dealers and users in central Illinois. Among the dealers whom Anderson supplied was Anthony Mansini. The pre-sentence report ("PSR") adopted by the district court at sentencing estimated conservatively that Anderson's overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy involved 1.6 kilograms of heroin; of that total, Anderson distributed 900 grams to Mansini. Crim. R. 111 at 6, 8 (Revised PSR ¶¶ 25, 35).²

On August 25, 2012, during the course of the conspiracy, Reader made two purchases of heroin. The first was from a dealer in Peoria unconnected to either Mansini or Anderson. Reader ingested that heroin early in the afternoon but indicated to the person with whom he was using heroin that he was not experiencing the high he desired. He then purchased heroin for a second time, this time from Mansini, who in turn had obtained the heroin from Anderson. After Reader ingested that second quantity of heroin, he died. The toxicology report on Reader would indicate the presence of both heroin metabolites (including morphine) and Benadryl in his system. The coroner's report identified the cause of Reader's death as "opiate intoxication" (R. 66-2 at 70) but did not attribute the death to either the first or second doses of heroin that Reader consumed, nor did it make findings as to the incremental effects of any other drugs in Reader's system. In junior and senior high school, Reader had been a star athlete with a strong academic record who dreamed of playing college basketball and studying marine biology, but those dreams were derailed when he began using heroin at age 18. He had struggled with addiction and had overdosed on five prior occasions, but according to his parents, he was in recovery, was working a steady job, and had refrained from heroin use in the eleven months prior to his fatal relapse. Reader was 21 years old.

Also during the course of the conspiracy, between September and early November 2012, two other individuals over-dosed on heroin that Anderson purportedly had supplied: Haley Heilman and William Holmes. Heilman was a criminal associate of Anderson's: beginning in 2011, she regularly drove him to Chicago to pick up heroin from his supplier, and he compensated her with user-quantities of heroin. Crim. R. 111 at 5 (Revised PSR ¶ 17). Heilman overdosed twice: on the first occasion in October 2012, after ingesting heroin she had obtained from Mansini—which Mansini had obtained from Anderson—Heilman was revived by paramedics with Narcan^®3 en route to a hospital; on the second occasion, in late October or early November 2012, after ingesting heroin she and a co-defendant had purchased directly from Anderson, Heilman was once again revived at the hospital with Narcan^®. Crim. R. 111 at 6 (Revised PSR ¶¶ 28-29). Holmes was one of Mansini's customers: he initially purchased user-sized quantities of heroin from Mansini and over time began to make larger, distribution-sized purchases. Holmes overdosed in September or October 2012 after buying heroin from Jesse Peak, who in turn had obtained the heroin from Mansini. Mansini's primary source of heroin at that time was Anderson. Holmes was revived with cardio-pulmonary resuscitation ("CPR") administered by a friend who noticed that he had stopped breathing and his face had turned blue. R. 111 at 7 (Revised PSR ¶ 30).

A grand jury indicted Anderson and four co-defendants in May 2013 with conspiring to distribute heroin in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(A). (The charged conspiracy involved more than those five individuals; others were charged separately.) The indictment alleged that the conspiracy began in 2010 and continued through the date of the indictment, that it involved over 1000 grams of heroin, and had resulted in death and serious bodily injury. The government also filed two notices pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 851 identifying three prior felony drug convictions that would trigger statutory enhancements to Anderson's prospective sentence: a 2006 conviction in Lake County, Illinois for possession of cocaine; a 2009 conviction in Lake County for attempted possession of heroin; and a 2013 conviction in Peoria County, Illinois for unlawful possession of heroin. Additionally, there were two other felony drug convictions in Anderson's criminal history not included in the section 851 notices that potentially might qualify as predicates sufficient to trigger an enhanced statutory penalty: a 2000 conviction in Cook County, Illinois for possession of 30-500 grams of cannabis and another conviction from the same year, also in Cook County, for the manufacture/delivery of 1-15 grams of cocaine.

Given Anderson's criminal history and the events that took place over the course of the conspiracy, there were three ways that Anderson potentially could be subject to a mandatory life term: (1) at least two of Anderson's prior convictions qualified as felony drug offenses, as defined in 21 U.S.C. § 802(44); (2) one of his prior convictions qualified as a felony drug offense and death resulted from the heroin that Anderson distributed, or (3) one of his prior convictions qualified as a felony drug offense and serious bodily injury resulted from the heroin that Anderson distributed. § 841(b)(1)(A)(i).

Also, as the government pointed out at the evidentiary hearing below and in its brief on appeal, there were three ways that Anderson could be subject to a mandatory minimum term of 20 years in prison (with a maximum possible term of life): (1) at least one of Anderson's prior convictions constituted a felony drug offense,⁴ (2) death resulted from the heroin that...