Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-03-03030/USCOURTS-caDC-03-03030-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Vincent Andrews
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 6, 2007 Decided March 23, 2007

No. 03-3030

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

VINCENT ANDREWS,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 02cr00255-01)

Lisa B. Wright, Assistant Federal Public Defender, was

on the brief for appellant. With her on the briefs was A. J.

Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Neil H. Jaffee, Assistant

Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance.

Katherine M. Kelly, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Jeffrey A. Taylor,

U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese, III, David B. Goodhand,

and Matthew P. Cohen, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: GRIFFITH and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

USCA Case #03-3030 Document #1030346 Filed: 03/23/2007 Page 1 of 17
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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

Concurring opinion filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: This appeal presents the issue

of whether the district court committed plain error when it held

that the appellant’s prior conviction for first-degree sexual abuse

of a ward was a crime of violence under the Sentencing

Guidelines. Because we find that the district court did not

plainly err, we affirm the sentence.

I.

While a police officer with the District of Columbia

Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) in September 1998,

appellant Vincent Andrews booked a woman who had been

arrested for prostitution. With the woman in his sole custody,

Andrews drove her a short distance away from the police station

and stopped the car where she performed oral sex on him in the

backseat. After returning to the police station, Andrews realized

that the woman had kept the condom used during the sexual

encounter. When she refused to give him the used condom, he

tackled her, held her down, and groped her, ultimately

recovering the condom from her person. The woman

immediately reported the incident to other police officers at the

station, and Andrews was arrested. After a jury trial, he was

convicted in November 1999 in the District of Columbia

Superior Court of first-degree sexual abuse of a ward, tampering

with physical evidence, obstruction of justice, and simple

assault. Andrews was sentenced to two to six years

imprisonment, with all but one year suspended. He was also

fired from the MPD. 

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In January 2002, Andrews visited a law enforcement

equipment store and, allegedly holding himself out as a police

officer, attempted to purchase police equipment. The owner

refused to make the sale and notified the police. The police

executed a search warrant on Andrews’s apartment and

discovered a shotgun. Andrews was charged with false

personation of a police officer and being a felon in possession of

a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). After a jury trial

in November 2002, Andrews was convicted on the weapons

charge but was cleared of impersonating a police officer. It was

his sentencing on this conviction that gave rise to the current

appeal. 

The presentence investigation report (“PSR”) prepared

by the Probation Office relied on the federal Sentencing

Guidelines and reported a base offense level of 20 for

Andrews’s firearm conviction because it determined that his

prior conviction for first-degree sexual abuse of a ward was a

“crime of violence.” See U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A). Andrews

did not argue to the district court that the prior D.C. conviction

was not a crime of violence. Had Andrews’s prior conviction

not been a “crime of violence,” his offense level would have

been 12 rather than 20. In addition, Andrews would have been

able to invoke as a defense to his sentence the terms of

§ 2K2.1(b)(2), which provides a base offense level of 6 if the

firearms were possessed for “lawful sporting purposes or

collection.” Id. § 2K2.1(b)(2). Andrews attempted to interpose

that defense to the PSR, arguing that his gun was a “collectible”

because it was forty years old. The district court rejected

Andrews’s argument because the “collectible” exception is not

available to those who have been previously convicted for a

crime of violence. See Transcript of Sentencing Proceedings at

15, United States v. Andrews, Crim. No. 02-255 (D.D.C. Mar. 4,

2003); see also U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4). A base offense level of

20 corresponds to a recommended sentence range of 41-51

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months. A level of 12 corresponds to 15-21 months. A level of

6 corresponds to 2-8 months. The district court’s conclusion

that Andrews’s prior conviction was a crime of violence

increased the sentencing range for his firearms conviction from

a possible level of 6 or more likely level of 12 to a base offense

level of 20. Being found to have previously committed a crime

of violence therefore provides a significant “bump” to a sentence

for felon in possession of a firearm.

II.

Because Andrews failed to argue to the district court that

his conviction for first-degree sexual abuse of a ward was not a

crime of violence, we review his sentence only for plain error.

See, e.g., United States v. (Adrian) Williams, 358 F.3d 956, 966

(D.C. Cir. 2004) (citing FED. R. CRIM. P. 52(b)). “Plain error”

occurs “where (1) there is error (2) that is plain and (3) that

affects substantial rights, and (4) the court of appeals finds that

the error seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public

reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Johnson,

437 F.3d 69, 74 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (citing United States v. Olano,

507 U.S. 725, 732 (1993)). Our sole inquiry here is whether it

was an “obvious” error. United States v. Saro, 24 F.3d 283, 286

(D.C. Cir. 1994) (quoting Olano, 507 U.S. at 734).

“Obviousness is assessed from the perspective of the trial court;

the error must be ‘so ‘plain’ the trial judge and prosecutor were

derelict in countenancing it, even absent the defendant’s timely

assistance in detecting it.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Frady,

456 U.S. 152, 163 (1982)). Were we considering this case under

a more rigorous standard of review, we might need to address

the more difficult methodological issues regarding how a

sentencing court should regard prior convictions that are

discussed so cogently in Judge Williams’s concurrence. We

need not reach these issues to dispose of the appeal because we

are convinced that the district court did not plainly err.

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To determine whether the district court committed an

“obvious” error by categorizing Andrews’s prior conviction for

first-degree sexual abuse of a ward as a crime of violence, we

start with the definition of crime of violence in the Guidelines:

(a) The term “crime of violence” means any

offense under federal or state law, punishable by

imprisonment for a term exceeding one year,

that—

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

threatened use of physical force against the

person of another, or

(2) is burglary of a dwelling, arson, or extortion,

involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves

conduct that presents a serious potential risk of

physical injury to another. 

U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a) (emphasis added). To analyze whether

Andrews’s prior conviction fits within that definition of crime

of violence, we “must look only to the statutory definition [of

the crime for which he has been convicted], not to the

underlying facts or evidence presented.” United States v.

Mathis, 963 F.2d 399, 408 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (citing Taylor v.

United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602 (1990)). Under this categorical

approach, if the statutory definition itself does not yield an

obvious answer, for example, where it covers both violent and

non-violent crimes, we can then look to “the charging paper and

jury instructions” to determine whether a jury was required to

find elements supporting the determination that the prior

conviction was a crime of violence. Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602; see

also Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 26 (2005).

Under D.C. law, first-degree sexual abuse of a ward is

defined as “a sexual act with another person . . . when that other

person [i]s in official custody, or is a ward or resident, on a

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permanent or temporary basis, of a hospital, treatment facility,

or other institution.” D.C. CODE § 22-3013 (formerly § 22-

4113). “Sexual act” covers a variety of conduct, including

vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex, and penetration by other objects.

Id. § 22-4101(8) (1998) (repealed 2000). Because physical

force—the touchstone of the first prong of the Guidelines’

definition of “crime of violence”—is not an element of firstdegree sexual abuse of a ward, we must look to the second prong

of the definition—whether this conduct “presents a serious

potential risk of physical injury to another.” U.S.S.G.

§ 4B1.2(a)(2). As we have observed, “[t]he issue, then, is

whether the offense of [first-degree sexual abuse of a ward]—as

a category—carries appreciably less risk of injury to another

than do the listed crimes [burglary, arson, extortion].” United

States v. Thomas, 361 F.3d 653, 660 (D.C. Cir. 2004). Because

consent is not a defense to this crime, see D.C. CODE § 22-3017

(formerly § 22-4117), and the statute covers a wide range of

conduct, it is possible to imagine situations in which the statute

could be violated without posing “a serious potential risk of

physical injury to another.” As per Taylor, we therefore look to

the indictment and jury instructions to see what the jury actually

determined.

The jury instructions make clear the conduct for which

Andrews was convicted. The jury was charged to find whether

Andrews engaged in a “sexual act” with the victim “[t]hat is

contact between his penis and her mouth.” Trial Transcript at

35, United States v. Andrews, No. 6601-98 (D.C. Super. Ct.

Sept. 21, 1999). Our determination is therefore limited to the

question of whether oral sex with a ward, as a categorical

determination, “presents a serious potential risk of physical

injury to another.” U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(2). We note two

factors, sufficient to withstand plain error review, that suggest

this crime could present a serious potential risk of physical

injury. First, there exists a potential risk of injury that is

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inherent in the coercive nature of the supervisor-ward

relationship. The fact that consent is not a defense to sexual

abuse of a ward, see D.C.CODE § 22-3017 (formerly § 22-4117),

might be taken to demonstrate that District legislators believed

there existed an inherent power imbalance in the relationship.

Although it is an open question that we need not resolve whether

the coercive nature of the relationship alone might be enough to

make this a crime of violence, there is also in the very nature of

the sex act a risk of exposing the victim to sexually transmitted

infections. See, e.g., Sarah Edwards & Chris Carne, Oral Sex

and the Transmission of Non-Viral STIs, 74 SEXUALLY

TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS 95-100 (1998) (providing a

comprehensive literature review on the role of oral sex in

transmitting infections). For those reasons, it is not “obvious”

to us that first-degree sexual abuse of a ward does not constitute

a crime of violence, and the district court did not plainly err in

so finding.

Andrews’s argument to the contrary fails to the extent

that it relies on consent not constituting a defense to first-degree

sexual abuse of a ward. Although the unavailability of a consent

defense could conceivably criminalize behavior that might not

involve violent behavior, this court “cannot accept the

defendant[’]s contention that an offense is not categorically a

crime of violence unless every such offense is.” Thomas, 361

F.3d at 659 n.11 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

Just because Andrews “can hypothesize circumstances in which

[first-degree sexual abuse of a ward] can be committed without

either force or risk or injury cannot be dispositive under

§ 4B1.2(a), as such an analytical approach would eviscerate the

notion of a ‘categorical’ definition.” Id. at 658. Andrews’s

reliance on the comments of the judge who sentenced him on

first-degree sexual abuse of a ward, see Appellant’s Br. at 17-20,

also misses the mark for two reasons. First, that judge did not

consider whether sexual abuse of a ward is a crime of violence

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under the federal Sentencing Guidelines. Second, we are

compelled to make a categorical determination, but Andrews’s

arguments rely upon the underlying facts supporting the

conviction. See Mathis, 963 F.2d at 408 (citing Taylor, 495

U.S. at 602). Finally, Andrews cites to no authority supporting

his view that first-degree sexual abuse of a ward is not a crime

of violence. We have yet to consider the issue, and other

circuits that have considered the analogous situation of statutory

rape (for which consent is also not a defense) have generally

found that to be a crime of violence. See, e.g., United States v.

Asberry, 394 F.3d 712, 717-18 (9th Cir. 2005); see also United

States v. Searcy, 418 F.3d 1193, 1196-98 (11th Cir. 2005)

(holding that use of interstate commerce channel to entice minor

into sexual contact is a crime of violence). But see United States

v. Houston, 364 F.3d 243, 248 (5th Cir. 2004). As we described

the matter in a similar sentencing case: “Whatever one might say

about the merits of [appellant’s] argument, it certainly does not

leap from the text of the Guideline and the commentary. We

could hardly expect the district court to come up with it sua

sponte.” United States v. (Norman) Williams, 350 F.3d 128, 130

(D.C. Cir. 2003).

III.

Because the district court did not plainly err when it

considered first-degree sexual abuse of a ward as a crime of

violence for sentencing under the federal Guidelines, the

judgment of the district court is affirmed.

So ordered.

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WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring: I join the 

majority opinion, but write separately to discuss some 

principles that I believe underlie our decision. I particularly 

want to address the relation between: (1) Taylor v. United 

States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), which prescribes how a 

sentencing court should assess whether a prior conviction was 

for a “crime of violence”; (2) Almendarez-Torres v. United 

States, 523 U.S. 224 (1998), which excepts prior convictions 

from the requirement of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 

466, 490 (2000), that factors increasing a sentence beyond the 

statutory maximum be found by a jury beyond a reasonable 

doubt; and (3) conventional principles of issue preclusion. 

In Taylor the Supreme Court held that a court sentencing 

under the Armed Career Criminal Act could look to statutory 

elements, charging documents, and jury instructions to 

determine whether an earlier conviction after trial was a 

“crime of violence.”1

 The Court affirmed this narrow 

exception to Congress’s “categorical approach” in Shepard v. 

United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005), but strictly curtailed 

recourse to a larger set of sources, such as police reports. 

The rationale and scope of Taylor’s exception pose 

difficult methodological questions. Why are we limited to the 

indictment, information, and jury instructions? And are we 

limited as to which facts we may draw from those sources? In 

the present case, the happenstance that our review is only for 

 

1

 Although Taylor specifically involved prior burglaries, its 

holding covered other predicate offenses under that statute, as well 

as its residual provision for prior crimes involving “serious potential 

risk of physical injury,” see 495 U.S. at 600 n.9, which parallels the 

provision at issue here, i.e., § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A) of the U.S. Sentencing 

Guidelines. 

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plain error has largely mooted these questions; future courts 

will often lack that advantage. 

In Shepard at least four members of the Court suggested 

that Taylor reflects Sixth Amendment concerns subsequently 

voiced in cases such as Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 

243 n.6 (1999), and Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490. See Shepard, 

544 U.S. at 24; but see id. at 37 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) 

(“[T]oday’s decision reads Apprendi to cast a shadow possibly 

implicating recidivism determinations, which until now had 

been safe from such formalism.”). And, indeed, Taylor does 

mesh nicely with the Almendarez-Torres exception from 

Apprendi. Taylor directs courts to look to the fact of prior 

conviction, and Almendarez-Torres allows them to rely on 

that fact without meeting Apprendi’s requirement of a jury 

finding beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Resting Taylor’s exception on the rationale of 

Almendarez-Torres may raise more questions than it answers, 

however. Almendarez-Torres itself relied on an arguably 

formalistic distinction between elements and sentencing 

factors, see 523 U.S. at 229-35, a distinction that has since 

been heavily eroded by the Apprendi line. See Shepard, 544 

U.S. at 27 (Thomas, J., concurring) (“Almendarez-Torres, like 

Taylor, has been eroded by this Court’s subsequent Sixth 

Amendment jurisprudence, and a majority of the Court now 

recognizes that Almendarez-Torres was wrongly decided.”); 

see also Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 520-21 (2000) (Thomas, J., 

concurring); but see Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545 

(2002). The question is whether Taylor can survive these 

developments, and in what form, or whether its exception now 

amounts to constitutional error, as Justice Thomas has 

suggested. Compare Shepard, 544 U.S. at 27 (Thomas, J., 

concurring) (“Taylor and today’s decision thus explain to 

lower courts how to conduct factfinding that is, according to 

the logic of this Court’s intervening precedents, 

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unconstitutional in this very case.”), with id. at 30-31 

(O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“Taylor left room for courts to 

determine which other reliable and simple sources might aid 

in determining whether a defendant had in fact been convicted 

of generic burglary. . . . I would expand that list to include 

any uncontradicted, internally consistent parts of the record 

from the earlier conviction.”). 

Fortunately, I believe Taylor’s readiness to rely on 

charging documents and jury instructions can be sustained 

independently of Almendarez-Torres’s historical treatment of 

recidivism as a sentencing factor, namely, by reliance on an 

entirely non-formalistic principle of litigation: issue 

preclusion. 

The standard application of issue preclusion requires that 

a party be estopped from relitigating an identical issue 

previously decided if three conditions are satisfied: 

(1) The issue must have been actually litigated, that 

is contested by the parties and submitted for 

determination by the court. 

(2) The issue must have been actually and 

necessarily determined by a court of competent 

jurisdiction in the first trial. 

(3) Preclusion in the second trial must not work an 

unfairness. 

Milton S. Kronheim & Co. v. District of Columbia, 91 F.3d 

193, 197 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (internal punctuation omitted). 

Though most applications of issue preclusion occur in 

civil litigation, the “principle is as applicable to the decisions 

of criminal courts as to those of civil jurisdiction.” Frank v. 

Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 334 (1915). Most invocations in the 

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criminal arena are by the defendant, on the basis of either the 

Double Jeopardy Clause, Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 447 

(1970), or due process more generally, see Akhil Reed Amar 

& Jonathan L. Marcus, Double Jeopardy Law After Rodney 

King, 95 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 31 (1995) (“[T]he Ashe idea must 

be rooted outside the strict text of the Double Jeopardy 

Clause, in the more spacious—but also more flexible, less 

absolute—language of due process.”). See, e.g., Green v. 

United States, 426 F.2d 661 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (per curiam) 

(precluding the Government from relitigating a question of 

fact determined in defendants’ favor in a previous partial 

verdict). Offensive uses in criminal suits are extremely rare, 

see Richard B. Kennelly, Jr., Precluding the Accused: 

Offensive Collateral Estoppel in Criminal Cases, 80 Va. L. 

Rev. 1379 (1994) (collecting cases), despite judicial 

acknowledgements of the theoretical appropriateness, as in 

Frank v. Mangum. One reason may be that issue preclusion is 

inapt for the superficially most inviting use—cases where a 

prior conviction is an element of the new crime; there, the 

only necessary “fact” is the existence of the prior conviction 

itself. Id. at 1381-82 n.12. 

But for sentencing provisions that turn on particular 

characteristics of a prior conviction, the court must decide not 

only the fact of conviction but the facts determined by that 

conviction. And in this context, a sentencing court would 

seem able to rely on issue preclusion without offending any of 

the interests reflected in the Apprendi-line of cases. After all, 

the facts to be introduced and precluded from contestation at 

sentencing will have been established beyond a reasonable 

doubt by a jury (unless waived). 

Moreover, reliance on the principles of preclusion 

provides contour to the holdings of Taylor and Shepard, while 

at the same time providing support for Almendarez-Torres’s 

outcome without the formalism of its analysis. First, by 

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focusing on precluded issues, it becomes clear why Taylor 

and Shepard limited inquiry to charging documents and jury 

instructions: The latter are proof of what a jury found beyond 

a reasonable doubt, and the former by law must include the 

specific elements that must be so found for conviction.2

 

Accord United States v. Thompson, 421 F.3d 278, 282 (4th 

Cir. 2005) (“The common denominator of the approved 

sources is their prior validation by process comporting with 

the Sixth Amendment.”). Recourse to charging documents 

and jury instructions thus ensures that a defendant’s prior 

conviction is labeled a “crime of violence” only when the 

requisite elements were actually and necessarily decided 

beyond a reasonable doubt as part of the conviction. 

Likewise, issue preclusion provides coherent justification 

for a “categorical approach” that bypasses facts or 

determinations elicited at trial but not found in the charging 

documents or jury instructions. In the instant case, for 

example, Andrews invokes observations of the trial judge in 

his prior case to the effect that the “victim” may have 

consented. See Appellant’s Br. at 17-19. The observations 

are of no help to him. Under the law governing the prior 

conviction neither consent nor its absence was relevant; 

accordingly, no finding one way or the other could have been 

necessary to the conviction. Here the Taylor requirements 

themselves exclude fact statements that would not meet the 

criteria for issue preclusion. 

 

2

 Because the rules limiting variances between indictment and 

proof are a bit porous, however, see United States v. Baugham, 449 

F.3d 167, 175 (D.C. Cir. 2006), the indictment or information may 

be a somewhat defective tool for exact ascertainment of the crime 

of conviction. 

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Second, a focus on preclusion also helps clarify which

facts may appropriately be drawn from the charging 

documents and jury instructions. Reflecting congressional 

desire for a “categorical approach,” Taylor and Shepard 

permit inquiry beyond the statutory text for the limited 

purpose of determining the necessary elements of a 

defendant’s crime when the statute in question prohibits 

offenses both covered and not-covered by the definition of a 

“crime of violence.” This exercise is akin to a court’s 

determination of which elements would be precluded as 

“necessarily decided” and therefore conclusively resolved by 

prior litigation. The analogy reminds us that not every fact 

which happens to be decided is actually necessary to the prior 

judgment or conviction, a point that Taylor and Shepard 

treated as central. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 21. 

Consider then the Seventh Circuit’s en banc decision in 

United States v. Shannon, 110 F.3d 382 (7th Cir. 1997). 

There the court’s appraisal of whether the statutory rape of 

which defendant had previously been convicted posed a 

“serious potential risk of physical injury” turned in significant 

part on the fact that the victim was 13 years old (as opposed to 

15, for example). See id. at 387-89. But the statute under 

which the defendant was charged simply criminalized “sexual 

contact or sexual intercourse with a person who has not 

attained the age of 16.” Id. at 384 (citing Wis. Stat. 

§ 948.02(2)). A finding that the victim was younger than, say, 

15, was in no way necessary to the conviction; it was 

established simply because the defendant happened to plead 

guilty to an information that stated the victim’s date of birth. 

Id. Analogizing the Taylor inquiry to one of issue preclusion 

makes clear why this is troubling: The Shannon decision is 

based in large part on a statement that, while contained in a 

charging document, was not truly necessary to the crime 

charged nor worth quarrelling about from the perspective of 

the parties (so long as the victim’s age was under 16). See 

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Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 27 cmt. j (1982) (“The 

appropriate question, then, is whether the issue was actually 

recognized by the parties as important and by the trier as 

necessary to the first judgment.”); id. cmt. h (1982) (“If issues 

are determined but the judgment is not dependent upon the 

determinations, relitigation of those issues in a subsequent 

action between the parties is not precluded. Such 

determinations have the characteristics of dicta . . . .”).3 

The question whether a particular finding was necessary 

for conviction might have been critical in a quite plausible 

variation on today’s case. As the court’s opinion makes clear, 

judicial readiness to include statutory rape as a crime of 

violence has turned in material part on the dangerous diseases 

associated with sexual contact—dangers of which a minor is 

unlikely to have been adequately aware when giving consent. 

Yet while the transmittal rates from oral sex may be difficult 

to determine with accuracy, they are universally regarded as 

significantly lower than for conventional sex. See, e.g., 

Primary HIV Infection Associated with Oral Transmission, 

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/oralsexqa.htm; 

see also Oral Sex, http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHPRC/

 

3

 Reliance on the alleged age of the victim enabled the court in 

Shannon to disaggregate offenses under Wisconsin’s statutory rape 

provision, thereby leaving for another day whether statutory rape of 

a 14-year-old or 15-year-old would qualify as a crime of violence. 

See Shannon, 110 F.3d at 389 (“[O]ur decision leaves unresolved 

the proper treatment of cases in which the victim of the statutory 

rape is above the age of 13.”). There are obvious advantages to 

such disaggregation, see United States v. Chambers, 473 F.3d 724 

(7th Cir. 2007), but, as the last paragraph of this opinion argues, 

there is at least a serious linguistic difficulty with using fact 

variations irrelevant to a specific criminal offense to apply a 

sentence enhancement purportedly based on the fact of conviction. 

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ch4_ora.html. Suppose (1) the record suggested that the 

transmittal rates for oral sex were lower than for conventional 

sex by a margin sufficient to preclude a finding that it 

generated a serious risk of physical injury; (2) the prosecution 

in the initial case claimed that defendant had engaged in both 

forms of sexual conduct; but (3) the statute and jury 

instructions did not differentiate between the two acts and the 

jury found the defendant guilty simply of the basis of the 

generic element of “sexual conduct.” In this hypothetical, we 

could not say that facts sufficient to show a “serious risk of 

physical injury” had been actually and necessarily decided in 

reaching the conviction. Cf. Restatement (Second) of 

Judgments § 27 cmt. i (1982) (“If a judgment of a court of 

first instance is based on determinations of two issues, either 

of which standing independently would be sufficient to 

support the result, the judgment is not conclusive with respect 

to either issue standing alone.”). Thus, under the assumptions 

used in this example, the prior conviction could not be 

classified as a “crime of violence.” 

Two remaining complexities: First, prior convictions 

triggering sentence enhancements will commonly be from a 

different jurisdiction, and in such cases there will be a want of 

mutuality. But the Supreme Court has found that a lack of 

mutuality is not so troubling as to require an across-the-board 

ban on the offensive use of issue preclusion in civil cases 

where mutuality is missing. Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 

439 U.S. 322 (1979). Although the circumstance should alert 

courts to exercise special care in assuring themselves there 

would be no unfairness in applying issue preclusion, it seems 

as weak a basis for a categorical rule here as in the civil 

context. 

Second, courts may be tempted to rely on facts admitted 

by the defendant in a prior proceeding, or which otherwise 

seem indisputable. This reflects a natural resistance to the 

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lumpiness of a truly categorical approach, which forces courts 

to treat what may seem large and somewhat diverse swaths of 

conduct as “crimes of violence” (or not). See supra n.3. But 

sentence enhancements for prior convictions are just that—for 

convictions. Conviction-based enhancements should not rest 

on collateral evidence of the defendant’s bad character. Those 

facts can flow into the sentencing decision independently, as a 

basis for the sentencing judge’s exercise of discretion.

USCA Case #03-3030 Document #1030346 Filed: 03/23/2007 Page 17 of 17