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Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Donald Conelious Voltz
Appellant

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-10733

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

DONALD CONELIOUS VOLTZ, 

Defendant- Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Alabama

D.C. Docket No. 4:21-cr-00011-CLM-JHE-1

____________________

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-10733

Before JILL PRYOR, LAGOA, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Donald Conelious Voltz was convicted of possessing a firearm as a felon and sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment followed by 60 months of supervised release. Voltz now appeals that 

sentence. First, Voltz argues that the district court erred in finding 

that his 2001 Alabama marijuana conviction was a “serious drug 

offense” under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”), and thus 

erred in applying an ACCA enhancement to his sentence. Second, 

Voltz contends that the district court erred in finding that his 2001 

Alabama marijuana conviction was a “controlled substance offense” under U.S.S.G. §§ 2K2.1, 4B1.2, and thus erred in calculating 

his base offense level. Finally, Voltz says the district court committed reversible constitutional error in determining, via judicial factfinding at sentencing, that he had three prior ACCA predicate convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses committed on 

different occasions. After careful review, we affirm.

I.

“We review de novo whether a conviction qualifies as a serious drug offense under the ACCA.” United States v. White, 837 

F.3d 1225, 1228 (11th Cir. 2016).

The ACCA imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 

years for defendants who violate 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) after having 

been convicted of three prior violent felonies or “serious drug offense,” committed on different occasions. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). 

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The ACCA defines a “serious drug offense,” in relevant part, as “an 

offense under State law, involving manufacturing, distributing, or 

possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute, a controlled 

substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances 

Act (21 U.S.C. [§] 802)), for which a maximum term of ten years or 

more is prescribed by law.” Id. § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii). Section 102 of the 

CSA, in turn, defines a “controlled substance” as “a drug or other 

substance, or immediate precursor, included in [the federal drug 

schedules].” 21 U.S.C. § 802(6).

The Sentencing Guidelines provide that “[a] defendant who 

is subject to an enhanced sentence under the provisions of 18 

U.S.C. § 924(e) is an armed career criminal.” U.S.S.G. § 4B1.4(a). 

Section 4B1.4(b) provides enhanced offense levels for such defendants. See id. § 4B1.4(b).

In determining whether a prior state conviction counts as a 

“serious drug offense” under the ACCA, we apply the “categorical 

approach.” United States v. Jackson, 55 F.4th 846, 850 (11th Cir. 

2022), aff’d sub nom. Brown v. United States, 602 U.S. 101 (2024). “Under this approach, a state conviction cannot serve as an ACCA predicate offense if the state law under which the conviction occurred 

is categorically broader—that is, if it punishes more conduct—than 

[the] ACCA’s definition of a ‘serious drug offense.’” Id. In Jackson, 

we held that the “ACCA’s definition of a ‘serious drug offense’ under state law . . . incorporate[s] the version of the federal controlled-substances schedules in effect when [the defendant] was 

convicted of his prior state drug offenses.” Id. at 855; see id. at 859. 

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The Supreme Court affirmed our reading of the ACCA in Jackson, 

holding that “a state drug conviction counts as an ACCA predicate 

if it involved a drug on the federal schedules at the time of that 

offense.” Brown, 602 U.S. at 123.

At the time of Voltz’s 2001 Alabama marijuana conviction, 

the CSA regulated “all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., 

whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from 

any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin.” 

21 U.S.C. § 802(16) (2001). The CSA included no exemption for 

hemp. See id. The Alabama law that governed Voltz’s 2001 conviction incorporated a definition of “marihuana” that matched the 

2001 CSA’s definition of “marihuana” nearly verbatim and did not 

include an exemption for hemp. See Ala. Code §§ 13A-12-213, 20-

2-2(15) (2001).

Here, as Voltz concedes, his argument is foreclosed by the 

Supreme Court’s decision in Brown and our decision in Jackson. Because the Alabama law that governed Voltz’s 2001 conviction incorporated a definition of “marihuana” that categorically matched 

the 2001 CSA’s definition of “marihuana,” and because neither statute contained an exemption for hemp, the district court did not err 

in finding that Voltz’s 2001 Alabama marijuana conviction was a 

“serious drug offense” under the ACCA.

II.

We review de novo a district court’s interpretation of the 

term “controlled substance offense” under the Sentencing 

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22-10733 Opinion of the Court 5

Guidelines. United States v. Bishop, 940 F.3d 1242, 1253 (11th Cir. 

2019). Under the prior-panel-precedent rule, we are bound to adhere to a prior panel’s holding “unless and until it is overruled or 

undermined to the point of abrogation by the Supreme Court or 

by this court sitting en banc.” In re Lambrix, 776 F.3d 789, 794 (11th 

Cir. 2015) (quotation marks omitted). Additionally, a calculation 

error under the Sentencing Guidelines is harmless where the error 

does “not affect [the] advisory guidelines range or sentence.” 

United States v. Brown, 805 F.3d 1325, 1328 (11th Cir. 2018).

Under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2), a defendant convicted of unlawful possession of firearms or ammunition receives a base offense level of 24 if he “committed any part of the instant offense 

subsequent to sustaining at least two felony convictions of either a 

crime of violence or a controlled substance offense.” The commentary to U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 states that “controlled substance offense” has the meaning set forth in U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(b) and Application Note 1 of the Commentary to § 4B1.2. U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1, 

comment. (n.1). Section 4B1.2(b), in turn, defines “controlled substance offense” as follows:

[A]n offense under federal or state law, punishable by 

imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, that 

prohibits the manufacture, import, export, distribution, or dispensing of a controlled substance (or a 

counterfeit substance) or the possession of a controlled substance (or a counterfeit substance) with intent to manufacture, import, export, distribute, or 

dispense.

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U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(b) (2018).

In determining whether a state conviction counts as a “controlled substance offense” under U.S.S.G. §§ 2K2.1(a)(4)(A), 

4B1.2(b), we apply the categorical approach. United States v. Dubois, 

94 F.4th 1284, 1295 (11th Cir. 2024). Under the categorical approach, we compare the definition of “controlled substance offense” under the Sentencing Guidelines with the state statute of 

conviction. Id. “Unless the least culpable conduct prohibited under the state law qualifies as a predicate controlled substance offense, the defendant’s state conviction cannot be the basis of an enhancement under the guidelines, regardless of the actual conduct 

underlying the conviction.” Id. (cleaned up).

Under Dubois, a “‘controlled substance’ under section 

4B2.1(b)’s definition of ‘controlled substance offense’ is, for prior 

state offenses, a drug regulated by state law at the time of the conviction, even if it is not federally regulated, and even if it is no longer 

regulated by the state at the time of federal sentencing.” Id. at 1300 

(emphasis added).

At the time of Voltz’s 2001 Alabama marijuana conviction, 

Alabama law defined “marihuana” as “[a]ll parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not, the seeds thereof, the resin 

extracted from any part of the plant and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the plant, its 

seeds or resin.” Ala. Code § 20-2-2(15) (2001). Alabama law did not 

contain any exemptions for hemp. Id.

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Here, as an initial matter, because Voltz would have received the ACCA’s statutory minimum sentence of 180 months’ 

imprisonment regardless of whether he had two prior controlled 

substance offenses, any error the district court made in finding that 

Voltz had two prior controlled substance offenses would ultimately be harmless. See Brown, 805 F.3d at 1328. In any event, 

Voltz’s hemp-overbreadth argument is foreclosed by intervening 

precedent in Dubois. At the time of Voltz’s 2001 conviction, Alabama law regulated all parts of the cannabis plant, including hemp. 

Thus, the district court did not err in finding that Voltz’s 2001 conviction was a “controlled substance offense.”

III.

Unless a constitutional error amounts to a “structural error,” 

we review preserved constitutional errors using a harmless error 

standard. United States v. Roy, 855 F.3d 1133, 1142 (11th Cir. 2017). 

We only consider a preserved constitutional error to be 

“structural” in the rare case that the error involves “a structural defect affecting the framework within the trial proceeds, rather than 

simply an error in the trial process itself.” United States v. Nealy, 232 

F.3d 825, 829 n.4 (11th Cir. 2000) (quotation marks omitted). Structural error “affect[s] the entire conduct of the [proceeding] from 

beginning to end” and is a “highly exceptional” category of constitutional error subject to automatic reversal on appeal. Greer v. 

United States, 593 U.S. 503, 513 (2021) (quotation marks omitted). 

Examples of these “rare instances” include “extreme deprivations 

of constitutional rights, such as denial of counsel, denial of self 

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representation at trial, and denial of a public trial.” Nealy, 232 F.3d 

at 829 n.4.

“[D]iscrete defects in the criminal process,” on the other 

hand, “such as the omission of a single element from jury instructions . . . are not structural because they do not necessarily render 

a criminal trial fundamentally unfair or an unreliable vehicle for 

determining guilt or innocence.” Greer, 593 U.S. at 513 (quotation 

marks and emphasis omitted). These “discrete defects,” id., include 

district court errors that “infringe upon the jury’s factfinding role,” 

Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 18 (1999). For example, a “[f]ailure

to submit a sentencing factor to the jury . . . is not structural error,” 

and is instead subject to harmless error review. Washington v. 

Recuenco, 548 U.S. 212, 221–22 (2006). So too for the “failure to 

submit the issue of drug quantity to the jury.” Nealy, 232 F.3d at

829. We will not reverse a sentence for such errors if “the record 

does not contain evidence that could rationally lead [a jury] to a 

contrary finding.” Id. at 830. If, however, the defendant has “raised

evidence sufficient to support a contrary finding,” then the error is 

not harmless. Neder, 527 U.S. at 19.

In Apprendi v. New Jersey, the Supreme Court held that, 

“[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases 

the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum 

must be submitted to a jury[] and proved beyond a reasonable 

doubt.” 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000). In Nealy, we held that Apprendi errors are not structural, and are instead subject to harmless error 

review. 232 F.3d at 829.

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In Erlinger v. United States, the Supreme Court held that judicial factfinding by a preponderance of evidence that a defendant 

has three ACCA predicate convictions committed on different occasions violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process 

of law and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee to a jury trial. 144 S. 

Ct. 1840, 1851–52 (2024). The Court held that this finding must be

either made by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt or freely admitted 

by the defendant in a guilty plea. See id. In explaining its reasoning, 

the Court noted that its decision was “on all fours with Apprendi . . . 

as any we might imagine.” Id. at 1852. The Court emphasized that 

the ACCA’s different-occasions inquiry can be “intensely factual” 

and noted that while judges may use Shepard documents—that is, 

documents like “judicial records, plea agreements, and colloquies 

between a judge and the defendant”—for the limited function of 

“determining the fact of a prior conviction and the then-existing 

elements of that offense,” judges may not use Shepard documents 

to determine whether the “past offenses differed enough in time, 

location, character, and purpose to have transpired on different occasions.” Id. at 1847, 1854–55; see also Shepard v. United States, 544 

U.S. 13, 21–21, 26 (2005). The Court explained that “no particular 

lapse of time or distance between offenses automatically separates 

a single occasion from distinct ones.” Erlinger, 144 S. Ct. at 1855. 

The Court also noted that “in many cases the occasions inquiry will 

be ‘straightforward,’” such as when “a defendant’s past offenses 

[are] different enough and separated by enough time and space,” 

though the Court stressed that this finding must still be made by a 

jury rather than a judge. Id. at 1856.

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In Wooden v. United States, the Supreme Court described the 

factors that juries must consider under the ACCA’s different-occasions inquiry. 595 U.S. 360, 369 (2022). The Court explained that 

while “offenses committed close in time, in an uninterrupted 

course of conduct, will often count as part of one occasion,” this is 

not so for “offenses separated by substantial gaps in time or significant intervening events.” Id. The Court further stressed that 

“[p]roximity of location is also important; the further away crimes 

take place, the less likely they are components of the same criminal 

event.” Id. The Court also noted that “the character and relationship of the offenses may make a difference: [t]he more similar or 

intertwined the conduct giving rise to the offenses—the more, for 

example, they share a common scheme or purpose—the more apt 

they are to compose one occasion.” Id.

Here, Voltz is correct that the district court erred in determining, via judicial factfinding, that Voltz had three ACCA predicate convictions committed on different occasions. Under Erlinger, 

this was a question of fact that needed to be sent to a jury (or that 

Voltz needed to freely admit in his guilty plea). See 144 S. Ct. at 

1851–52. The district court, therefore, erred in determining by a 

preponderance of the evidence, and by judicial factfinding, that 

Voltz’s qualifying ACCA offenses were “separate and distinct.” 

And Voltz properly preserved this constitutional error.

The district court’s Erlinger error was not structural, however, because it did not affect the entire proceeding or render the 

criminal process fundamentally unfair. See Greer, 593 U.S. at 513.

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Instead, it was a “discrete defect[] in the criminal process” analogous to the omission of a single element from a jury instruction and 

is therefore subject to harmless error review. See Greer, 593 U.S. at 

513 (quotation marks omitted). What’s more, the Supreme Court 

in Erlinger stated that its opinion was “on all fours with Apprendi . . . 

as any we might imagine,” 144 S. Ct. at 1852, and we review Apprendi errors under a harmless error standard, see Nealy, 232 F.3d at 

829. See also Erlinger, 144 S. Ct. at 1860 (Roberts, C.J., concurring) 

(“[A]s Justice Kavanaugh explains, violations of [the right to have a 

jury determine whether predicate offenses were committed on different occasions] are subject to harmless error review.”); id. at 

1866–67 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (explaining that the Supreme 

Court “has long ruled that most constitutional errors, including 

Sixth Amendment errors, can be harmless” and applying the harmless error standard to Erlinger’s facts (internal quotation omitted)). 

We are, in short, persuaded that the harmless error standard applies to an Erlinger error. 

Here, we conclude that the district court’s Erlinger error was 

harmless because none of the evidence in the record could rationally support a finding that Voltz’s ACCA predicate offenses were 

not committed on different occasions. See Nealy, 232 F.3d at 830. 

Voltz has never contested that his three ACCA predicate offenses 

were separated by years; no evidence in the record indicates that 

the offenses shared a common scheme or purpose; and the district 

court’s reliance on Shepard documents—though Erlinger cautions 

against it—did not affect the harmlessness of the error itself given 

the lack of record support for a contrary finding. Thus, the district 

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court committed harmless error in determining, via judicial factfinding at sentencing, that Voltz committed three predicate ACCA 

offenses on different occasions.

AFFIRMED.

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