Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-93-05130/USCOURTS-ca10-93-05130-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Billy W. Hill
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

FILED 

t1Dited State1 Court of Appt~~" Tt"~tlo! t"l••mll 

PATRICK FISHER 

Clerk 

vs. No. 93-5130 

BILLY W. HILL, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

ON REHEARING EN BANC 

Susan L. Foreman, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Michael G. 

Katz, Federal Public Defender, with her on the brief), Denver, 

Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant. 

Stephen C. Lewis, United States Attorney (Allen J. Litchfield, 

Assistant United States Attorney, with him on the brief), Tulsa, 

Oklahoma, for Plaintiff-Appellee. 

Before SEYMOUR, Chief Judge, MOORE, ANDERSON, TACHA, BALDOCK, 

BRORBY, EBEL, KELLY, and HENRY, Circuit Judges. 

BALDOCK, Circuit Judge. 

Defendant Billy w. Hill appeals his sentence imposed by the 

district court pursuant to the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA"), 

18 U.S.C. § 924(e) (1). A panel of this court reversed Defendant's 

sentence holding that the government had failed to prove that one 

of his prior convictions constituted a violent felony for purposes 

of enhancement under the ACCA. See United States v. Hill, 36 F.3d 

978 (lOth Cir. 1994). We sua sponte ordered en bane consideration 

of this case in order to resolve an apparent conflict between our 

Appellate Case: 93-5130 Document: 01019282134 Date Filed: 04/26/1995 Page: 1 
decision in Hill and prior circuit precedent. Today, we vacate 

that portion of Hill that addressed Defendant's sentencing claim 

and replace it with the following opinion. In all other respects, 

we affirm the panel's decision in Hill. 

I. 

The facts underlying this action are set forth in our panel 

opinion in Hill, 36 F.3d at 979; however, we restate the relevant 

facts and rulings to frame our analysis. On February 3, 1993, 

Defendant was charged in a one-count indictment with a violation 

of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) (1), felon in possession of a firearm. 

Subsequently, the government filed a notice that it was seeking to 

have Defendant sentenced as an armed career criminal pursuant to 

the ACCA. The notice cited three prior convictions as a basis for 

the enhancement: (1) a June 4, 1980 Kansas conviction for 

aggravated robbery; (2) a February 2, 1973 Kansas conviction for 

aggravated robbery; and (3) an October 19, 1966 Oklahoma 

conviction for second degree burglary. 

On June 4, 1993, at the sentencing hearing, Defendant 

objected to the use of the 1966 Oklahoma conviction as a basis for 

the enhancement. The district court overruled Defendant's 

objection. Relying upon the charging information and the 

"judgment and sentence on plea of guilty" from the 1966 burglary 

conviction, the district court determined that the 1966 Oklahoma 

burglary conviction was a violent felony under the ACCA. 

Consequently, the court sentenced Defendant to 235 months 

imprisonment as an armed career criminal. Defendant appealed. 

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On September 27, 1994, a panel of this court reversed 

Defendant's se~tence under the ACCA. Specifically, the panel 

concluded that the government had failed to prove Defendant's 1966 

Oklahoma conviction for second degree burglary constituted a 

violent felony. Hill, 36 F.3d at 981. Relying upon our decision 

in United States v. Barney, 955 F.2d 635, 638 (lOth Cir. 1992), 

the panel concluded that the government's failure to introduce the 

text of Defendant's guilty plea to the 1966 conviction prevented 

the district court from "knowing precisely what acts Defendant 

admitted to committing." Hill, 36 F.3d at 981. The panel further 

concluded that the judgment of conviction introduced by the 

government failed to compensate for the lack of the guilty plea 

text because the judgment merely stated that Defendant pleaded 

guilty to "second degree burglary." Id. Consequently, the panel 

concluded the district court improperly sentenced Defendant as an 

armed career criminal. 

On November 18, 1994, the government filed a petition for 

rehearing, arguing that Hill conflicted with our decision in 

United States v. Couch, No. 93-6383, 1994 vffi 242205 (lOth Cir. 

June 7, 1994) (unpublished), in which we upheld an enhancement 

under facts almost identical to those in Hill. On December 7, 

1994, we sua sponte ordered en bane consideration of the case in 

order to resolve the apparent conflict between Hill and Couch. 

With this predicate in mind, we turn to the issue presented for en 

bane consideration. 

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II. 

We review a sentence enhancement under the ACCA de novo. 

United States v. Maines, 920 F.2d 1525, 1527 n.4 (lOth Cir. 1990), 

cert. denied, 502 U.S. 894 (1991). The government must prove a 

sentence enhancement by a preponderance of the evidence, United 

States v. Kirk, 894 F.2d 1162, 1164 (lOth Cir. 1990), and "' [w]e 

review the entire record and supporting documentation to determine 

the legitimacy of the sentence[] imposed below.'" United States 

v. Lujan, 9 F.3d 890, 891 (lOth Cir. 1993) (quoting Barney, 955 

F.2d at 638)). 

The ACCA provides a fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence 

for anyone who is convicted as a felon in possession of a firearm, 

18 U.S.C. § 922(g) (1), and has three prior convictions for violent 

felonies or serious drug offenses. Id. § 924(e) (1). Burglary is 

a violent felony under the ACCA. See id. § 924(e) (2) (B) (iii). 

Because of the wide variances in state law burglary statutes, the 

Supreme Court in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), 

created a generic definition of burglary for purposes of 

enhancement under the ACCA. In Taylor, the Court defined burglary 

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

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

599. If a state statute on its face defines burglary more broadly 

than Taylor, "then a conviction obtained under such a statute may 

not, except in narrowly defined circumstances, be counted toward 

enhancement." Barney, 955 F.2d at 638. 

The Oklahoma law under which Defendant was convicted defines 

second degree burglary as follows: 

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Every person who breaks and enters any building or 

any part of any building, room, booth, tent, railroad 

car, automobile, truck, trailer, vessel or other 

structure or erection, in which any property is kept, or 

breaks into or forcibly opens, any coin-operated or 

vending machine or device with intent to steal any 

property therein or to commit any felony, is guilty of 

burglary in the second degree. 

Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 21, § 1435. Because this definition of 

burglary is broader than that supplied by the Supreme Court in 

Taylor, Defendant's conviction under the Oklahoma statute cannot 

as a categorical matter provide a basis for enhancement under the 

ACCA. See, e.g., Barney, 955 F.2d at 638 (burglary statute which 

included automobiles and vending machines overbroad for purposes 

of Taylor and cannot provide a categorical basis for enhancement 

under the ACCA) . 

Nevertheless, in instances where a defendant has been 

convicted under a state statute which defines burglary broader 

than Taylor, the conviction may be used for enhancement purposes 

if "the charging paper and jury instructions actually required the 

jury to find all the elements of generic burglary in order to 

convict the defendant." Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602. Where no jury 

instructions exist because the defendant pleaded guilty, we ruled 

in Barney that the sentencing court may review "the underlying 

indictment or information and the text of the guilty plea to 

determine whether the defendant was charged with and admitted 

conduct which falls without question within the ambit of Taylor's 

generic definition." Barney, 955 F.2d at 639 (emphasis added). 

Although Barney appears to mandate that the government 

produce the text of a guilty plea in every case, our subsequent 

cases have not consistently required the government to do so. 

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Compare United States v. Strahl, 958 F.2d 980, 984 (lOth Cir. 

1992) (emphasizing the review of a charging document without 

reference to a guilty plea text to determine if a previous guilty 

plea to second degree burglary constituted a predicate offense for 

ACCA purposes) with United States v. St. Martin, No. 92-8001, 1992 

WL 367903 (lOth Cir. Dec. 4, 1992) (unpublished) (requiring the 

government to introduce the text of a guilty plea on remand in 

order to support an enhancement under the ACCA). Today, we make 

explicit that the government is not required to produce the text 

of a guilty plea to support an enhancement under the ACCA if the 

charging document coupled with another document sufficiently 

enables the sentencing court to determine whether the defendant's 

prior conviction constitutes a violent felony. See United States 

v. O'Neal, 937 F.2d 1369, 1373 (9th Cir. 1990) (overlooking 

absence of guilty plea text where the government introduced the 

charging paper and judgment of conviction); see also Lujan, 9 F.3d 

at 892 (overlooking government's failure to produce jury 

instructions under Taylor where the charging document and verdict 

"necessarily show that the jury found the requisite elements of 

burglary"). This holding is consistent with the Supreme Court's 

principal concern in Taylor that the sentencing court have 

sufficient information before it to ensure that the defendant's 

conviction encompasses all the requisite facts to render the 

offense a "violent felony." See Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602; see also 

United States v. Parker, 5 F.3d 1322, 1327 (9th Cir. 1993) (" [T]he 

Court's main concern in Taylor was ensuring that the jury actually 

found all the requisite facts to render the offense a 'violent 

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felony.'"). Thus, the issue we must resolve in the instant case 

is whether the government produced sufficient evidence for the 

district court to conclude that Defendant's 1966 burglary 

conviction fell within the ambit of Taylor's definition and thus 

constituted a violent felony for ACCA enhancement purposes. 

To support Defendant's enhancement, the government introduced 

the charging information and the "judgment and sentence upon plea 

of guilty" to Defendant's 1966 burglary conviction. No written 

plea agreement or transcript of the plea hearing was offered. The 

charging information alleged that Defendant: 

unlawfully, wrongfully, wilfully, feloniously and 

burglariously in the night time, [broke] and enter[ed] 

into a certain building . . . owned by and in possession 

of STANDARD MOTOR SUPPLY in which building personal 

property of value was kept and contained, by breaking 

open the outer skylight of the said building, and 

entering the said building without the consent of said 

owner, with the wilful and felonious intent to steal 

said property. 

Aplee. App. Tab B. The resulting judgment indicated that "having 

been duly informed of the nature of the charge", Defendant pleaded 

guilty to "second degree burglary." The government argues that 

the information alleged all the elements of a generic burglary as 

defined in Taylor and that Defendant's plea of guilty constituted 

an admission of the facts alleged in the information. 

Consequently, the government contends that Defendant's 1966 

burglary conviction properly counts toward enhancement. 

Defendant contends, however, that his guilty plea constituted 

an admission that he committed second degree burglary under 

Oklahoma law, not that he committed the specific acts described in 

the information. Thus, Defendant maintains that he did not admit 

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he entered a building as alleged in the information by pleading 

guilty to second degree burglary. We disagree. 

Defendant's argument fails because he admitted all the 

well-pleaded facts in the indictment by pleading guilty. The 

Supreme Court in United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563 (1989) 

described the nature of a guilty plea as an act which 

"comprehend[s] all of the factual and legal elements necessary to 

sustain a binding, final judgment of guilt and a lawful sentence." 

Id. at 569 (emphasis added). The Court further stated: 

A guilty plea "is more than a confession which admits 

that the accused did various acts." It is an "admission 

that he committed the crime charged against him." ~ 

entering a plea of guilty. the accused is not simply 

stating that he did the discrete acts described in the 

indictment; he is admitting guilt of a substantive 

crime. 

Id. at 570 (emphasis added) (citations omitted); see also United 

States v. Kaplansky, 42 F.3d 320, 325 (6th Cir. 1994) (en bane) 

("[B]y pleading guilty to the state law offense, Kaplansky has 

admitted to all the well-pleaded facts in the indictment."); 

United States v. Kelsey, 15 F.3d 152, 153 (lOth Cir. 1994) ("A 

plea of guilty is the equivalent of admitting all material facts 

alleged in the charge."); United States v. Mathews, 833 F.2d 161, 

164 (9th Cir. 1987) (plea of guilty "conclusively proves the 

factual allegations contained in the indictment"). 

In the instant case, Defendant's burglary information 

included all of the elements of a Taylor burglary because it 

alleged that Defendant unlawfully entered into a building with the 

intent to commit a crime. See Taylor, 495 U.S. at 599. Moreover, 

the corresponding judgment indicates that Defendant pleaded guilty 

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to second degree burglary "having been duly informed of the nature 

of the charge." By pleading guilty, Defendant admitted that "[he] 

did the discrete acts described in the indictment." Broce, 488 

U.S. at 569; see also Kaplansky, 42 F.3d at 320 (by pleading 

guilty, a defendant admits "to all the well-pleaded facts in the 

indictment"). Because the record indicates Defendant pleaded 

guilty to a charge supported by an information which satisfied the 

Taylor definition, we hold the government established by a 

preponderance of the evidence that Defendant's 1966 burglary 

conviction was a violent felony for enhancement under the ACCA. 

Therefore, we AFFIRM the sentence imposed by the district court. 

AFFIRMED. 

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