Sentencing; Enhancement for prior serious drug felonies; 21 USC § 841(b)(1)(A)(viii); The procedure for imposing conviction-based statutory sentence enhancements under § 841; § 851; Fifth Amendment challenge to § 851(b); Constitutionality of § 851(c) under the Sixth Amendment; Whether the district court followed § 851 procedure; “Serious drug offense” defined; 18 USC § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii)

The court held that because defendant-Fields never asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself during the colloquy for his § 841 sentence enhancement, his claim the requirement that he admit or deny his prior convictions violated the Fifth Amendment failed. It also held that “the district court’s application of § 851 did not produce a Sixth Amendment violation.” But it vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing where one of the prior state felonies used to enhance his sentence did not qualify as a “serious drug offense.” A jury convicted Fields of possessing 500 grams or more of meth with intent to distribute. The district court imposed a 25-year mandatory-minimum sentence enhancement under § 841(b)(1)(A)(viii), finding that he had convictions for two prior "serious drug felonies" in Kentucky—one for possessing a meth “precursor” with intent to manufacture, the other for trafficking in meth. As part of the § 851 procedure, a defendant is asked “to ‘affirm or deny’ prior convictions” and warned they “may forfeit challenges they do not raise” before sentence is imposed. During the colloquy, Fields admitted the convictions. On appeal, he challenged the procedure the district court used to impose the enhancement. The court held that he did not suffer a Fifth Amendment violation where, despite being informed of his right not to testify, he did not invoke it “when asked if he affirmed or denied his prior convictions. Indeed, prior to being asked that question, he voluntarily stipulated that he had been convicted of those offenses.” Fields next argued that § 851(c) is “unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment because it requires the judge to decide facts—the length and recency of incarceration—that should be decided by the jury.” But those facts were submitted to the jury in this case. Thus, he “suffered no personal constitutional violation.” His facial challenge likewise failed. The court also considered whether § 851 prohibited the district court from “sending the incarceration-related facts to the jury via a bifurcated proceeding at trial.” It concluded that “the district court’s bifurcated procedure in this case did not violate § 851. Nothing in the statute explicitly forbids the district court from submitting to the jury the factual questions it submitted at the point it did so.” But the court vacated Fields’s sentence and remanded for resentencing because it held that his Kentucky meth precursor offense “was not a ‘serious drug offense’ and therefore cannot serve as a ‘serious drug felony’ for purposes of” his 25-year mandatory-minimum enhancement.