UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 05-4537
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
STEVEN CARLIE CARTER,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Durham. William L. Osteen, District
Judge. (CR-04-446)
Submitted: October 20, 2005 Decided: October 26, 2005
Before NIEMEYER and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Louis C. Allen, III, Federal Public Defender, William C. Ingram,
Jr., First Assistant Federal Public Defender, Greensboro, North
Carolina, for Appellant. Anna Mills Wagoner, United States
Attorney, L. Patrick Auld, Assistant United States Attorney,
Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
See Local Rule 36(c).
PER CURIAM:
Steven Carlie Carter appeals from his 180-month sentence
entered following his guilty plea to being a felon in possession of
a firearm. Carter contends that his designation as an armed career
criminal is precluded by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Apprendi
v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S.
296 (2004), and United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005).
Carter’s claim is foreclosed by circuit precedent.
See United States v. Thompson, 421 F.3d 278, 286 (4th Cir. 2005)
(holding that prior convictions could not be severed from their
essential components, including integral facts such as the
statutory violation and date of offense, and that these facts were
inherent to convictions not extraneous to them); United States v.
Cheek, 415 F.3d 349, 350 (4th Cir. 2005) (holding that defendant’s
Sixth Amendment right to trial by a jury was not violated by
district court’s reliance on his prior convictions for purposes of
sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act). Moreover, Carter
did not challenge any factual findings regarding the prior
convictions, and he does not dispute the factual basis for the
district court’s conclusions that he was an armed career criminal.
Accordingly, Carter’s assertion that his sentence violated the
Sixth Amendment is without merit. See United States v. Collins,
412 F.3d 515, 523 (4th Cir. 2005) (holding that, where defendant
did not dispute any of the facts supporting the career offender
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status in district court, there is no constitutional violation in
relying on defendant’s prior convictions).
Accordingly, we affirm Carter’s sentence. We dispense
with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are
adequately presented in the materials before the court and argument
would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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