PER CURIAM: Elias Echeverria-Mendez pled guilty to eight counts of a superseding indictment, which charged him with drug trafficking, money laundering, and alien re-entry offenses. The district court sentenced him to 360 months imprisonment on the controlled substance offenses, and 240 months on the money laundering and illegal reentry convictions, all to run concurrent with each other. On appeal EcheverriaMendez argues that his sentence was unlawfully enhanced based on prior convictions.* In United States v.
Cheek, 415 F.3d 349 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 126 S.Ct. 640, 163 L.Ed.2d 518 (2005), we considered and rejected an argument identical to that which Echeverria-Mendez raises on appeal. We concluded: It is thus clear that the Supreme Court continues to hold that the Sixth Amendment (as well as due process) does not demand that the mere fact of a prior conviction used as a basis for a sentencing enhancement be pleaded in an indictment and submitted to a jury for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even were we to agree with Cheek’s prognostication that it is only a matter of time before the Supreme Court overrules Almendarez-Torres [v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998) ], we are not free to overrule or ignore the Supreme Court’s precedents. Cheek, 415 F.3d at 352-53; see Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am.
Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989) (“If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.”). We therefore affirm Echeverria-Mendez’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.