Background
Rodney Leroy Brown was convicted of Hobbs Act robbery and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence after a convenience-store robbery. The robber threatened a cashier and her five-year-old son, took money and the cashier’s purse, and fled. Investigators recovered a mask, coins, and a discarded bottle near the scene. DNA analyst Daniel Aguilar testified that his independent comparison of laboratory-generated DNA profiles showed that Brown’s DNA matched DNA found on the mask and bottle.
At sentencing, the district court applied the November 2023 Sentencing Guidelines and treated Hobbs Act robbery as a crime of violence under the career-offender provision. That increased Brown’s offense level and produced an advisory range of 294 to 348 months. The court imposed a total sentence of 324 months. Brown raised his Confrontation Clause and Ex Post Facto Clause arguments for the first time on appeal, so the Eleventh Circuit reviewed both for plain error.
The Court’s Holding
The Eleventh Circuit held that the district court did not plainly err by allowing Aguilar’s testimony. Unlike the substitute expert in Smith v. Arizona, Aguilar was personally involved in the case, independently repeated the DNA-comparison analysis, and testified to his own conclusions rather than merely relaying another analyst’s findings. His testimony about laboratory procedures was framed generally rather than as an account of the specific work performed by absent technicians.
The court emphasized that neither Supreme Court nor Eleventh Circuit precedent clearly requires the government to produce every laboratory employee involved in generating a DNA profile. It expressly declined to decide the merits of that broader issue and held only that admitting Aguilar’s testimony was not plain error.
The court separately held, consistent with the government’s concession, that using the 2023 Guidelines violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. Brown committed the offenses in March 2023, before Amendment 822 classified Hobbs Act robbery as a crime of violence for career-offender purposes. Under then-binding circuit precedent and the applicable 2021 Guidelines, Brown would not have received that enhancement. The court affirmed his convictions, vacated his sentence, and remanded for resentencing under the 2021 Guidelines.
Key Takeaways
- A DNA analyst who independently compares generated profiles and testifies to his own conclusions is materially different, for Confrontation Clause purposes, from a surrogate witness who merely repeats an absent analyst’s findings.
- The panel did not decide whether the Constitution requires testimony from every technician involved in generating a DNA profile; it decided only that any error was not plain under existing precedent.
- A sentencing court may not apply a later Guidelines amendment that increases the defendant’s advisory range above the range applicable when the offense occurred.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the limited reach of plain-error review in forensic-evidence challenges after Smith v. Arizona. An expert’s direct participation in analyzing data, coupled with testimony limited to general laboratory practices, may avoid the clear surrogate-testimony problem identified in Smith, although the Eleventh Circuit left the broader constitutional question unresolved.
The sentencing ruling also reinforces that courts must perform an ex post facto comparison before applying the Guidelines in effect at sentencing. When an intervening amendment makes an offense newly eligible for a substantial enhancement, the Guidelines in effect when the crime occurred must govern if the later version produces a higher range.