Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca4-09-04375/USCOURTS-ca4-09-04375-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Willie Lee Alston
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.  No. 09-4375

WILLIE LEE ALSTON,

Defendant-Appellant. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore.

Andre M. Davis, District Judge.

(1:08-cr-00305-AMD-1)

Argued: March 25, 2010

Decided: July 2, 2010

Before NIEMEYER and KING, Circuit Judges, and

Eugene E. SILER, Jr., Senior Circuit Judge of the United

States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit,

sitting by designation.

Vacated and remanded by published opinion. Judge Niemeyer

wrote the opinion, in which Judge King and Senior Judge

Siler joined.

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OPINION

ARGUED: Meghan Suzanne Skelton, OFFICE OF THE

FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Greenbelt, Maryland, for

Appellant. George Jarrod Hazel, OFFICE OF THE UNITED

STATES ATTORNEY, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF: James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United

States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

OPINION

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the question of whether Willie Alston’s sentence for possession of a firearm in violation of 18

U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) was properly enhanced under the Armed

Career Criminal Act ("ACCA"), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), which

provides for an enhancement based on a defendant having

three prior convictions for a violent felony or a serious drug

offense. In enhancing Alston’s sentence, the district court

relied on a prior conviction resulting from Alston’s Alford*

plea to a Maryland charge for second-degree assault. Under

Maryland law, the second-degree assault offense includes several different generic crimes, some of which are violent felonies and some of which are not. See United States v. Coleman,

158 F.3d 199, 202 (4th Cir. 1998) (en banc); see also Cruz v.

State, 963 A.2d 1184, 1188 n.3 (Md. 2009). To demonstrate

that Alston’s conviction was for a violent felony, the government submitted the transcript of Alston’s Alford plea proceeding, which showed that the state prosecutor’s proffer of the

facts that the State would have presented at trial indicated that

*North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970) (authorizing a defendant

to waive trial and to consent to punishment without admitting participation

in the acts constituting the crime). 

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Alston had committed a violent felony, but also that Alston

never agreed to those facts.

Because Alston’s Alford plea to second-degree assault did

not necessarily rest on facts establishing his participation in

a type of assault that qualifies as a violent felony, see Shepard

v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 20-21, 24 (2005), in that (1) he

admitted to no such facts and (2) such facts are not inherent

in a Maryland conviction for second-degree assault, we cannot conclude that Alston’s conviction for second-degree

assault qualifies as a predicate conviction under ACCA.

Accordingly, we vacate Alston’s sentence and remand for

resentencing.

I

In March 2008, officers stopped a vehicle driven by Antoinetta Green for failure to stop at a stop sign. When officers

smelled a strong odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle, they asked the passenger, Willie Alston, to step out of the

car. When he did, the officers saw a 9 mm handgun resting

on the seat he had vacated. Alston subsequently pleaded

guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

The presentence report indicated that Alston qualified for

a sentencing enhancement under ACCA based on his Maryland convictions for (1) robbery with a deadly weapon, (2)

second-degree assault, and (3) manufacturing a controlled

dangerous substance. Alston objected to the report’s designation of him as an armed career criminal, contending that there

was a lack of evidence from which to determine that the

second-degree assault offense for which he was convicted was

a violent felony qualifying as an ACCA predicate offense.

At Alston’s sentencing hearing, the district court agreed

with Alston that the charging document for his second-degree

assault conviction did not show on its face that the crime was

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a violent felony. The court, however, continued the hearing to

allow the government to obtain materials approved by Shepard, 544 U.S. at 26, to demonstrate that Alston’s seconddegree assault conviction was for a violent felony.

The government obtained and submitted the transcript of

the proceeding in which Alston pleaded guilty to seconddegree assault, which revealed that on March 7, 2002, in the

Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Alston entered an Alford

plea to three counts of second-degree assault and three counts

of unlawfully wearing, carrying, or transporting a handgun.

During the course of the proceeding, the state prosecutor proffered the evidence that she would have presented at trial, indicating that the State’s witnesses would have testified that

Alston pointed a gun at three victims and threatened to kill

them. Following the proffer, Alston, through counsel, stipulated that the State’s witnesses would have testified to that

effect, but Alston never agreed to the truth of the proffered

facts. The state judge accepted Alston’s Alford plea and sentenced Alston to five years’ imprisonment, with all but three

years suspended.

When Alston’s sentencing hearing in this case was reconvened, Alston maintained his objection to being designated as

an armed career criminal on the ground that the state prosecutor’s proffer in connection with the second-degree assault

conviction did not satisfy the demands of Shepard. Alston

argued that although "an Alford plea results in a conviction

for criminal history purposes[,] . . . it does not result in the

kind of certainty that Shepard requires for the Court to know

. . . what the defendant [was] pleading guilty to."

The district court rejected Alston’s argument, reasoning

that "by his plea of guilty [in the state court], the defendant

effectively acquiesced in" the state judge’s acceptance of the

facts proffered in support of the guilty plea. Accordingly, the

court found that the government had carried its burden of

showing that Alston qualified as an armed career criminal

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under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) and sentenced him to the statutory

mandatory minimum term of 180 months’ imprisonment. Alston appealed, raising the single issue:

Where the defendant enters a plea under the doctrine

announced in North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25

(1970), can the district court consider the disputed

facts proffered by the prosecutor to establish the

nature of a prior conviction and whether that conviction qualifies as a [violent felony] under the Armed

Career Criminal Act?

II

A violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) ordinarily carries a maximum prison term of 10 years. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2). But

ACCA specifies that a defendant who has "three previous

convictions . . . for a violent felony or a serious drug offense,

or both, committed on occasions different from one another"

must be sentenced to at least 15 years’ imprisonment. Id.

§ 924(e)(1). The Act defines a "violent felony" as "any crime

punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year"

that

(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or

threatened use of physical force against the person of

another; or

(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of

explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to

another[.]

Id. § 924(e)(2)(B).

The sole question here is whether the district court properly

found that Alston’s second-degree assault conviction was a

conviction for a "violent felony" when the conviction was

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obtained pursuant to an Alford plea, during which the state

prosecutor proffered evidence of conduct constituting a violent felony but Alston agreed only that if the case were tried,

"the State’s witnesses would testify" as indicated in the proffer.

In Maryland, the statute prohibiting second-degree assault

provides simply that "[a] person may not commit an assault"

and that a person found guilty "is subject to imprisonment not

exceeding 10 years." Md. Code Ann., Crim. Law § 3-203.

"Assault" is defined to mean "the crimes of assault, battery,

and assault and battery, which retain their judicially determined meanings." Id. § 3-201(b). The Maryland courts treat

"assault" as a term of art "‘connot[ing] any of three distinct

ideas: 1. A consummated battery or the combination of a consummated battery and its antecedent assault; 2. An attempted

battery; and 3. A placing of a victim in reasonable apprehension of an imminent battery.’" Cruz v. State, 963 A.2d 1184,

1188 n.3 (Md. 2009) (quoting Lamb v. State, 613 A.2d 402,

404 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1992)). A "battery," in turn, is

defined in Maryland common law to include "any unlawful

force used against the person of another, no matter how

slight." State v. Duckett, 510 A.2d 253, 257 (Md. 1986) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Relying on state

court cases, we have previously noted the resulting broad

scope of the Maryland crimes of battery and assault:

The common law offense of battery thus embraces a

wide range of conduct, including kissing without

consent, touching or tapping, jostling, and throwing

water upon another. It may include even indirect

applications of force such as directing a dog to attack

or exposing a helpless person to the inclemency of

the weather. . . . At the other end of the spectrum, a

battery includes a fatal shooting or stabbing of a victim.

United States v. Kirksey, 138 F.3d 120, 125 (4th Cir. 1998)

(internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Thus, under

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Maryland law, second-degree assault encompasses several

distinct crimes, some of which qualify as violent felonies and

others of which do not. See Johnson v. United States, 130 S.

Ct. 1265, 1269, 1273 (2010) (suggesting that although a battery conviction for merely "[a]ctually and intentionally

touch[ing]" another would not be a conviction for a violent

felony, other battery offenses criminalized by the same Florida statute would qualify as violent felonies).

Recognizing this ambiguity, the district court invited the

government to produce the transcript of Alston’s guilty plea

proceeding to determine, under the "modified categorical

approach" of Shepard, whether Alston was convicted of a violent felony. See Johnson, 130 S. Ct. at 1273 (noting that

"[w]hen the law under which the defendant has been convicted contains statutory phrases that cover several different

generic crimes, some of which require violent force and some

of which do not, the ‘modified categorical approach’ that we

have approved permits a court to determine which statutory

phrase was the basis for the conviction" (internal quotation

marks and citation omitted)); United States v. Harcum, 587

F.3d 219, 224-25 (4th Cir. 2009) (applying the modified categorical approach to determine whether a conviction for

second-degree assault in Maryland was for a violent felony);

United States v. Simms, 441 F.3d 313, 315-16 (4th Cir. 2006)

(same); United States v. Coleman, 158 F.3d 199, 202 (4th Cir.

1998) (en banc) (same); see also Johnson, 130 S. Ct. at 1273

(citing Simms approvingly).

The transcript from Alston’s plea hearing, however,

revealed that Alston’s conviction was based on an Alford plea

during which Alston did not adopt or accept the facts proffered by the government. Indeed, when Alston elected to tender an Alford plea, the state judge explained to him that "[an

Alford plea] [i]s when you say, ‘I want the deal. I’ve talked

it over with my lawyer. I know what the witnesses are going

to say. I think it’s in my best interests to take the deal rather

than go to trial and run the risk I might get the maximum penUNITED STATES v. ALSTON 7

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alty. So I want the deal, but I don’t want to say I did the

crime.’" After ascertaining that Alston wished to proceed with

an Alford plea, the state court instructed Alston to "have a seat

because I still have to make sure that the State can prove the

charges against you." The court then asked the prosecutor,

"What would the witnesses say, what would the State prove

if there was a trial?" After the prosecutor outlined the evidence she would have introduced at trial, which indicated that

Alston had pointed a gun at three victims and stated that he

would kill them all, Alston’s counsel "agree[d] that if the case

were called, the State’s witnesses would testify to that effect."

The district court concluded that the state prosecutor’s proffer of facts in the state proceeding was imputable to Alston

and therefore could be used under Shepard to conclude that

Alston’s conviction was necessarily for a violent felony.

Alston contends that the district court erred in relying on

the proffer to qualify his second-degree assault conviction as

a predicate conviction under ACCA. He maintains that the

transcript of the plea hearing could be considered only if he

had admitted or confirmed the factual basis for the plea during the plea colloquy. He argues that because the State’s

charging documents simply alleged that he had committed

second-degree assault and because he entered a guilty plea

pursuant to Alford, the transcript of his plea hearing does not

show that his guilty plea necessarily rested on facts identifying his second-degree assault offense as a type of assault that

qualifies as a violent felony. The district court, he contends,

therefore violated his Sixth Amendment rights by making a

finding of fact about the nature of his second-degree assault

conviction in order to impose a sentence above what would

otherwise be the statutory maximum.

The question that Alston presents is one of first impression,

although a few courts of appeals have addressed analogous

questions within the context of the Sentencing Guidelines,

and most have adopted a position that supports Alston. See

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United States v. Ventura, 565 F.3d 870, 878-79 (D.C. Cir.

2009) (holding that a factual proffer accompanying a defendant’s nolo contendere plea is not "within the limited set of

evidence that we may look to under Shepard’s modified categorical approach"); United States v. Savage, 542 F.3d 959,

966 (2d Cir. 2008) (holding that because the defendant

entered an Alford plea, the plea colloquy contained no factual

admissions on which the government could rely to establish

the predicate nature of the prior conviction). But see United

States v. Guerrero-Velasquez, 434 F.3d 1193, 1197 (9th Cir.

2006).

Beginning with Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602

(1990), the Supreme Court has held that ACCA "generally

requires the trial court to look only to the fact of conviction

and the statutory definition of the prior offense" when determining whether a prior conviction qualifies a defendant for

the Act’s sentencing enhancement. But the Court qualified

this general principle by specifying that "[t]his categorical

approach . . . may permit the sentencing court to go beyond

the mere fact of conviction in a narrow range of cases where

a jury was actually required to find all the elements of [a qualifying offense]" in order to convict the defendant. Id. For

example, the Court posited, even though a burglary is only a

violent felony under ACCA if it is a "generic" burglary—that

is, an "unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a

building or structure, with intent to commit a crime," id. at

599—a defendant’s conviction under a burglary statute that

also criminalizes the entry of an automobile may nonetheless

qualify as an ACCA predicate "if the indictment or information and jury instructions show that the defendant was

charged only with a burglary of a building, and that the jury

necessarily had to find an entry of a building to convict," id.

at 602 (emphasis added).

In Shepard, the Court refined this "modified categorical

approach" by extending Taylor to convictions stemming from

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guilty pleas. Looking for "the right analogs for applying the

Taylor rule to pleaded cases," the Court specified that

[i]n cases tried without a jury, the closest analogs to

jury instructions would be a bench-trial judge’s formal rulings of law and findings of fact, and in

pleaded cases they would be the statement of factual

basis for the charge, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11(a)(3),

shown by a transcript of plea colloquy or by written

plea agreement presented to the court, or by a record

of comparable findings of fact adopted by the defendant upon entering the plea.

Shepard, 544 U.S. at 20 (emphasis added). The Court emphasized that "[w]ith such material in a pleaded case, a later court

could generally tell whether the plea had ‘necessarily’ rested

on the fact identifying" the crime as a predicate offense under

ACCA. Id. at 20-21 (quoting Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602); see

also id. at 24 (plurality opinion) (describing the Court’s holding as "adher[ing] to the demanding requirement that any sentence under the ACCA rest on a showing that a prior

conviction ‘necessarily’ involved (and a prior plea necessarily

admitted) facts equating to" a predicate offense). Accordingly,

the Court held that a sentencing court determining whether a

guilty plea "necessarily admitted elements of [a predicate]

offense is limited to the terms of the charging document, the

terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between

judge and defendant in which the factual basis for the plea

was confirmed by the defendant, or to some comparable judicial record of this information." Id. at 26 (majority opinion)

(emphasis added).

Two distinct rationales underpin these limitations. First, in

confining the materials that can be consulted in determining

the nature of a prior conviction, "collateral trials" are avoided.

Shepard, 544 U.S. at 23; see also United States v. Dean, 604

F.3d 169, 175 (4th Cir. 2010) (noting that one aim of Taylor

and Shepard "was to protect sentencing courts from becoming

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forums in which the prosecution and defense attempt to reproduce the defendant’s earlier trial"). And second, by limiting

sentencing courts to a specified set of conclusive records, a

"concern that a wider inquiry would violate the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury" is addressed. Dean, 604 F.3d at

172; see also Shepard, 544 U.S. at 24-26 (plurality opinion).

Although the Sixth Amendment jury trial right does not

include a right to have a jury find the fact of a prior conviction, see Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224,

239-47 (1998), at least a plurality of the Shepard Court was

concerned about inquiries into facts about prior convictions

that could not be conclusively established from the record and

therefore could be disputed. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 24-26

(plurality opinion). The plurality noted that Taylor had been

prescient in asking, "‘If the sentencing court were to conclude, from its own review of the record, that the defendant

[who was convicted under a nongeneric burglary statute] actually committed a generic burglary, could the defendant challenge this conclusion as abridging his right to a jury trial?’"

Id. at 24 (quoting Taylor, 495 U.S. at 601). It indicated that

the problem arises when the sentencing court seeks to determine, absent conclusive judicial records, what the state court

was "required to find" in convicting the defendant. Id. at 25.

As a plurality of the Shepard Court explained:

[T]he sentencing judge considering the ACCA

enhancement would (on the Government’s view)

make a disputed finding of fact about what the

defendant and state judge must have understood as

the factual basis of the prior plea, and the dispute

raises the concern underlying Jones and Apprendi:

the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee a

jury standing between a defendant and the power of

the State, and they guarantee a jury’s finding of any

disputed fact essential to increase the ceiling of a

potential sentence. While the disputed fact here can

be described as a fact about a prior conviction, it is

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too far removed from the conclusive significance of

a prior judicial record, and too much like the findings subject to Jones and Apprendi, to say that

Almendarez-Torres clearly authorizes a judge to

resolve the dispute.

Id. To avoid serious risks of unconstitutionality, the plurality

determined that the Court should limit the scope of judicial

factfinding on the disputed nature of a prior conviction. Id. at

25-26.

Thus, only when the underlying charging document narrows the charge to a crime that amounts to a predicate offense

or when "jury instructions, or bench-trial findings and rulings,

or (in a pleaded case) . . . the defendant’s own admissions or

accepted findings of fact confirming the factual basis for a

valid plea" establish that the crime for which the defendant

was convicted was a predicate offense may a sentencing court

rely on Almendarez-Torres and enhance the defendant’s sentence without running afoul of the Sixth Amendment. Shepard, 544 U.S. at 25 (plurality opinion). But when there are no

such conclusive judicial records and the ACCA inquiry

requires a sentencing court to "make a disputed finding of fact

about what the defendant and the state judge must have understood as the factual basis of the prior plea," the disputed fact,

although "about a prior conviction, . . . is too far removed

from the conclusive significance of a prior judicial record . . .

to say that Almendarez-Torres clearly authorizes a judge to

resolve the dispute." Id. (emphasis added). In this way, then,

Shepard restricts the materials that a sentencing court may

consult when evaluating the nature of a prior conviction in

order to ensure that the court, consistent with the Sixth

Amendment, is only finding facts inherent in the fact of a

prior conviction or admitted by the defendant. See Dean, 604

F.3d at 173; United States v. Thompson, 421 F.3d 278, 281-83

(4th Cir. 2005).

In short, Shepard prevents sentencing courts from assessing

whether a prior conviction counts as an ACCA predicate con12 UNITED STATES v. ALSTON

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viction by relying on facts neither inherent in the conviction

nor admitted by the defendant.

Against this standard, a prosecutor’s proffer of the factual

basis for an Alford plea does not satisfy the requirements of

the modified categorical approach. In entering an Alford plea,

the defendant waives a trial and accepts punishment, but he

does not admit guilt, and the prosecutor’s proffer of what the

State would have proved at trial does not amount to an admission or acceptance of the facts by the defendant. Rather, it

serves the role of providing the court with a basis by which

to evaluate the voluntariness of the defendant’s plea. See

Alford, 400 U.S. at 38.

In Alford, the defendant was indicted for first-degree murder and chose to plead guilty to second-degree murder. At a

plea hearing, the court heard the sworn testimony of a police

officer who summarized the State’s case and the testimony of

two additional witnesses. After Alford testified that he had not

committed the murder but that he wanted to plead guilty to a

reduced charge rather than face the possibility of the death

penalty, the trial court accepted his guilty plea and sentenced

him to 30 years’ imprisonment. Alford, 400 U.S. at 26-29.

Vacating the grant of Alford’s petition for post-conviction

relief, the Supreme Court held that the trial court committed

no constitutional error in accepting Alford’s plea "[i]n view of

the strong factual basis for the plea demonstrated by the State

and Alford’s clearly expressed desire to enter it despite his

professed belief in his innocence." Alford, 400 U.S. at 38. The

Court noted that although a judgment of conviction resting on

a guilty plea is ordinarily "justified by the defendant’s admission that he committed the crime charged against him and his

consent that judgment be entered without a trial of any kind,"

"a guilty plea can be accepted when it is accompanied by protestations of innocence and hence contains only a waiver of

trial but no admission of guilt." Id. at 32-33 (emphasis added).

The Alford Court relied on Hudson v. United States, 272 U.S.

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451 (1926), which had held that a federal court has the power

to impose a prison sentence after accepting a plea of nolo contendere, finding implicit in that case the principle that "the

Constitution does not bar imposition of a prison sentence

upon an accused who is unwilling expressly to admit his guilt

but who, faced with grim alternatives, is willing to waive his

trial and accept the sentence." Id. at 36. The Court further reasoned that there was no material difference between a defendant’s refusal to admit guilt and a defendant’s affirmative

protestation of innocence "when, as in the instant case, a

defendant intelligently concludes that his interests require

entry of a guilty plea and the record before the judge contains

strong evidence of actual guilt." Id. at 37.

Thus, although a court presented with an Alford plea "must

make a careful inquiry into the factual basis" for the plea

before accepting it, United States v. Morrow, 914 F.2d 608,

613 (4th Cir. 1990), "[t]he distinguishing feature of an Alford

plea is that the defendant does not confirm" that factual basis,

Savage, 542 F.3d at 962 (emphasis added). And it is this same

feature that makes it clear that, under Shepard, the prosecutor’s proffer of the factual basis for an Alford plea may not

later be used by a sentencing court to identify the resulting

conviction as an ACCA predicate. Shepard held, after all,

"that enquiry under the ACCA to determine whether a plea of

guilty . . . necessarily admitted elements of [a qualifying]

offense is limited to the terms of the charging document, the

terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between

judge and defendant in which the factual basis for the plea

was confirmed by the defendant, or to some comparable judicial record of this information." Shepard, 544 U.S. at 26

(emphasis added).

Here, Alston tendered an Alford plea to second-degree

assault, and his plea was accepted after the trial court found

it was supported by a sufficient factual basis. But his plea did

not "necessarily rest[ ] on" facts establishing his seconddegree assault offense as a type of assault that qualifies as a

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violent felony. Shepard, 544 U.S. at 21 (internal quotation

marks omitted). To be sure, the prosecutor’s proffer that the

State’s witnesses were prepared to testify that Alston pointed

a gun at three individuals and threatened to kill them would

have established the predicate nature of the second-degree

assault offense had Alston admitted these facts during his

plea. But he explicitly pleaded guilty without admitting those

facts. Nor was the trial court required to find those facts in

order to accept Alston’s plea and return a conviction. Instead,

the judge’s evaluation of the prosecutor’s proffer was concerned solely with whether the defendant’s guilty plea was

voluntary and with whether the government had sufficient

evidence to support the charge, not with the truth of the government’s account of how the offense had been committed.

As a result, we cannot say that the facts indicating the violent

nature of the second-degree assault charge to which Alston

tendered his plea are inherent in the fact of his conviction.

These facts therefore could not be found by the sentencing

court without risking a violation of the Sixth Amendment.

By analogy, it is clear under Taylor and Shepard that if

Alston had proceeded to trial before a jury on the charge of

second-degree assault and the jury had found him guilty after

the State’s witnesses testified exactly as forecasted by the

prosecutor during Alston’s Alford plea hearing, the resulting

second-degree assault conviction could not later be used to

enhance his sentence under ACCA unless the jury had been

instructed that it was required to find all the facts that would

establish the second-degree assault offense as a violent felony. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 22 (noting that, under Taylor,

a jury conviction for a burglary offense under a nongeneric

burglary statute could not be counted as a predicate conviction unless the jury had been instructed that it had to find that

the defendant broke into a building or structure, even though

"[i]f the trial record showed no evidence of felonious entrance

to anything but a building or structure, the odds that the

offense actually committed was generic burglary would be a

turf accountant’s dream"). Similarly, here, the State’s proffer

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of the factual basis for Alston’s Alford plea, although necessary for the state court’s acceptance of the plea, cannot now

establish, with the requisite certainty, that the conviction for

second-degree assault that followed Alston’s plea was a conviction for a violent felony under ACCA.

We therefore conclude that the district court improperly

relied on Alston’s conviction for second-degree assault in

enhancing his sentence under ACCA. Accordingly, we vacate

Alston’s sentence and remand for resentencing without consideration of that conviction as a predicate conviction under

ACCA.

VACATED AND REMANDED

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