Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-06-03113/USCOURTS-caDC-06-03113-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Sealed Case

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 9, 2008 Decided December 2, 2008 

No. 06-3113 

IN RE: SEALED CASE

_____ 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 04cr00220) 

_____ 

Lisa B. Wright, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was

A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender. 

John V. Geise, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause 

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

U.S. Attorney, Roy W. McLeese III, Mary B. McCord, and 

Anthony Scarpelli, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. 

Before: ROGERS and TATEL, Circuit Judges, and 

RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

Dissenting opinion filed by Senior Circuit Judge

RANDOLPH. 

TATEL, Circuit Judge: This appeal, sealed due to 

appellant’s failed attempt to cooperate with the government, 

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concerns the application of the United States Sentencing 

Guidelines’ career offender provision. After appellant pled 

guilty to possession of cocaine base with intent to distribute, 

the district court sentenced him as a career offender based on 

its finding that he had two prior felony convictions for crimes 

of violence—robbery and armed robbery. Although the 

parties agree that we must remand to allow the district court 

to consider a non-Guidelines sentence, appellant argues that 

he does not qualify as a career offender because his two prior 

convictions should have been counted as one, and in any 

event the robbery conviction did not qualify as a crime of 

violence. We agree with the district court’s decision to count 

appellant’s prior convictions separately, but we find that the 

government failed to establish that appellant’s plea to 

robbery, as defined in the District of Columbia Code, 

necessarily admitted the elements of a crime of violence. 

I. 

Appellant pled guilty to a one-count information charging 

him with possessing five or more grams of cocaine base with 

intent to distribute in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), 

(b)(1)(B)(iii). The district court sentenced appellant as a 

career offender under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, a provision that 

imposes a substantially higher Guidelines range on those who 

commit certain offenses after being convicted of two prior 

drug crimes or crimes of violence. 

Although the record documenting appellant’s prior 

convictions is thin, several facts are undisputed. On October 

1, 1986, police officers arrested appellant for an armed 

robbery he committed on September 17, 1986. Three months 

later, while appellant remained in custody, the prosecutor 

filed a second complaint charging him with committing a 

robbery on August 6, 1986. Appellant pled guilty to both 

criminal complaints on February 6, 1987, and the same 

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Superior Court judge sentenced him in both cases on March 

20, 1987. 

In sentencing appellant on the federal drug charge, the 

district court found that the prior D.C. convictions were 

unrelated and thus properly counted as two convictions, and 

determined that they both qualified as crimes of violence. 

Accordingly, it concluded that appellant was a career offender 

and sentenced him to a 188-month term of imprisonment, 

within the 60- to 480-month statutory range provided by 

section 841(b)(1)(B)(iii). 

Appealing his sentence, appellant argues that the district 

court erred in finding both that his two prior convictions were 

unrelated and that one—the robbery conviction—qualified as 

a crime of violence. He also argues that the district court 

misapprehended its authority to sentence outside the 

Guidelines range under Kimbrough v. United States, 128 S. 

Ct. 558, 575 (2007) (holding that district judges may conclude 

that the Guidelines’ disparate treatment of cocaine and 

cocaine base warrants a non-Guidelines sentence), and 

imposed a sentence “greater than necessary” to achieve the 

goals of punishment in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)’s 

parsimony provision. Because the government concedes that 

remand for resentencing is appropriate in light of Kimbrough, 

we have no occasion to consider either that issue or the 

parsimony challenge. The only issue we need resolve is 

whether the district court properly adjudicated appellant a 

career offender under section 4B1.1. 

II. 

Section 4B1.1 of the November 1, 2005 Sentencing 

Guidelines enhances the offense level for “career offenders.” 

The Guidelines define a “career offender” as an individual 

who (1) is convicted of a felony crime of violence or 

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controlled substance offense, (2) was at least eighteen years 

old at the time of that offense, and (3) has “at least two prior 

felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a 

controlled substance offense.” § 4B1.1(a). The parties agree 

that these Guidelines govern appellant’s July 26, 2006 

sentencing, as well as his resentencing on remand from this 

appeal. See 18 U.S.C. § 3742(g)(1). They also agree that on 

remand the district judge may consider the current Guidelines, 

under which appellant would not be deemed a career offender, 

as a factor relevant to the imposition of sentence. They 

disagree about whether, under the 2005 Guidelines, 

appellant’s convictions may be counted separately and 

whether both may be counted as crimes of violence. We 

consider each issue in turn. 

Relatedness of Prior Convictions 

Under section 4B1.1, two prior felony convictions are 

treated as one if “related” within the meaning of U.S.S.G. § 

4A1.2(a)(2). See § 4B1.2(c)(2). Regardless of any factual 

similarities or differences between them, two convictions are 

“related” in this technical sense if they are for offenses that 

were not separated by an intervening arrest and “(A) occurred 

on the same occasion, (B) were part of a single common 

scheme or plan, or (C) were consolidated for trial or 

sentencing.” § 4A1.2 cmt. n.3 (2005). As it is undisputed 

that appellant’s crimes were neither separated by an 

intervening arrest nor committed on the same occasion or as 

part of a common scheme or plan, the question boils down to 

whether the sentences were for offenses that were 

consolidated for trial or sentencing. 

Our sister circuits disagree about whether formal 

consolidation, i.e., an actual consolidation order, is required, 

or whether offenses may still be found “functionally 

consolidated” without such an order. Compare, e.g., United 

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States v. Adams, 509 F.3d 929, 933 (8th Cir. 2007) (requiring 

a formal consolidation order), with United States v. Best, 250 

F.3d 1084, 1095 (7th Cir. 2001) (allowing functional 

consolidation when there is an indication that the trial court 

considered the cases sufficiently related to be treated as one). 

This circuit has yet to rule on the issue, which turns out to 

have little prospective importance given that the current 

Guidelines jettison the concept of consolidation. U.S.S.G. § 

4A1.2(a)(2) (2007). Nor need we answer the question for 

purposes of this case. Whether consolidation is assessed 

formally or functionally, the district court was correct in 

finding that appellant’s convictions were never consolidated. 

As the Superior Court entered no formal order of 

consolidation, appellant’s convictions were unquestionably 

never formally consolidated. Nor would appellant fare any 

better under a functional consolidation standard. Although 

appellant offers several reasons why he thinks he would 

prevail if we adopted such a standard, none is persuasive. 

Appellant first argues that the district court erred by 

applying a formal test. To be sure, were we to adopt a 

functional consolidation standard, it would have been error 

for the district court to have applied a formal test. But we see 

no evidence that it did. At the first sentencing hearing, the 

district court noted an out-of-circuit precedent that it took to 

apply a formal consolidation test and adjourned the 

sentencing to consider this authority. Sent’g Tr. at 16-17 

(Feb. 24, 2006). In doing so, the district court cautioned that 

it was unlikely to adopt a formal consolidation test because it 

thought “the reality of what happens, the substance of what 

happens,” should govern consolidation findings. Id. at 17. At 

the beginning of the second hearing, the district court said it 

needed no further argument to determine whether appellant 

was a career offender, stating, “The Court finds that 

[appellant] is a career offender because he has been convicted 

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in the past, and the evidence of that is sufficient. He has been 

convicted in the past twice of committing crimes of violence. 

And the evidence is sufficient, in this Court’s view, to show 

that.” Sent’g Tr. at 3 (July 26, 2006). Pressed by defense 

counsel, the court elaborated: “[The convictions] are 

completely unrelated, in my view, I so find. I made that—I 

made—I made that finding as a matter of law based upon, 

frankly, what is undisputed by you or anybody else.” Id. at 4. 

Appellant insists that the district court’s “matter of law” 

comment signals that it adopted a formal test after all, but we 

read the remark differently. The lengthy dialogue 

surrounding the statement makes clear that the district court 

based its finding on the facts the defendant himself set forth in 

his papers and in court—the dates of appellant’s offenses, 

separated by over a month—not the simple absence of a 

formal order. See id. at 9-10 (agreement between the court 

and defense counsel on the relevant dates). This exchange, 

combined with the district court’s finding that the convictions 

were “completely unrelated,” id. at 4, and its previous 

rejection of a formal test, demonstrates that the district court 

used a functional standard. 

Appellant next argues that even if it used a functional 

test, the district court failed to make a finding that the 

offenses were not functionally consolidated. We disagree. 

Though terse, the district court’s statement that the 

convictions were “completely unrelated” amounts to a factual 

finding. In arguing otherwise, appellant ignores the fact that 

his trial counsel, following a lengthy dialogue on precisely 

this point, essentially admitted that the court had satisfactorily 

explained the basis for its finding. Id. at 10. 

Appellant claims that he would prevail under a functional 

consolidation standard for a third reason: even if the district 

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court found that the offenses were not functionally 

consolidated, it clearly erred in doing so. Reviewing the 

district court’s finding deferentially, we see no grounds for 

disturbing it. See Buford v. United States, 532 U.S. 59, 66 

(2001) (holding that functional consolidation findings are 

subject to deferential review on appeal without deciding 

whether functional consolidation is the proper standard). 

Given the undisputed fact that the two convictions were for 

offenses involving different victims on different dates and the 

absence of any affirmative evidence that the Superior Court 

treated the two convictions as one, we are not “left with the 

definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been 

committed,” United States v. Seiler, 348 F.3d 265, 268 (D.C. 

Cir. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Crime of Violence 

This brings us to the second question: whether 

appellant’s robbery conviction qualifies as a crime of 

violence. Section 4B1.2 defines a crime of violence as, 

among other things, any felony offense under federal or state 

law that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or 

threatened use of physical force against the person of 

another.” § 4B1.2(a)(1). As this language mirrors the 

definition of a “violent felony” under the Armed Career 

Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i), we apply 

the ACCA standard to determine whether an offense qualifies 

as a crime of violence under section 4B1.2. See, e.g., United 

States v. Andrews, 479 F.3d 894, 897 (D.C. Cir. 2007) 

(applying ACCA cases directly to section 4B1.2 “crime of 

violence” inquiry). 

Under the ACCA standard, we examine not the 

defendant’s actual conduct, but rather the elements of the 

offense of conviction. See James v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 

1586, 1594 (2007). Ordinarily a straightforward inquiry, this 

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question becomes more difficult where, as here, a single 

statutory provision “covers both violent and non-violent 

crimes.” Andrews, 479 F.3d at 897. The District of Columbia 

robbery statute in effect at the time of appellant’s offense 

provided that: 

Whoever by force or violence, whether against 

resistance or by sudden or stealthy seizure or 

snatching, or by putting in fear, shall take from 

the person or immediate actual possession of 

another anything of value, is guilty of robbery, 

and any person convicted thereof shall suffer 

imprisonment for not less than 2 years nor 

more than 15 years. 

D.C. Code § 22-2901 (1987). As we explained in United 

States v. Mathis, by defining “force or violence” to include 

the minimal level of force necessary to obtain property “by 

sudden or stealthy seizure or snatching,” the statute covers 

offenses that fail to qualify as crimes of violence under 

section 4B1.2. 963 F.2d 399, 408-09 (D.C. Cir. 1992). 

Despite the fact that the D.C. statute covers both violent 

and nonviolent crimes, we still look to the nearest possible 

analogues to the elements of the offense of conviction, rather 

than to the defendant’s conduct. Specifically, when the 

conviction results from a trial, we look to the statutory 

definition as well as “the indictment or information and jury 

instruction” to see if “the jury necessarily had to find” the 

elements that would qualify the offense as a crime of 

violence. Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602 (1990) 

(emphasis added). Where, as here, the conviction results from 

a guilty plea, the Supreme Court’s decision in Shepard v. 

United States requires that we look to the “statutory 

definition, charging document, written plea agreement, 

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transcript of the plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding 

by the trial judge to which the defendant assented,” 544 U.S. 

13, 16 (2005); see also id. at 20 (specifying that relevant 

factual findings are those to which the defendant assents 

“upon entering the plea”), in order to determine whether the 

defendant “necessarily admitted” the qualifying elements, id.

at 26 (emphasis added). We may look to no other materials, 

even if they might shed light on what the defendant probably

did or probably admitted to, or what the jury probably found. 

See, e.g., id. at 26 (holding that courts considering whether a 

defendant necessarily admitted to a qualifying offense can 

look only to the charging document, the plea agreement or 

colloquy, or comparable judicial records of the factual basis 

of the plea). 

Applying these principles, we held in Mathis that in order 

for a conviction under the D.C. robbery statute to qualify as a 

violent felony under ACCA, the court had to determine that, 

in cases where the defendant went to trial, “the jury 

necessarily found” (that is, was “required to find” in order to 

convict) that the defendant had used sufficient force to qualify 

the offense as an ACCA predicate. 963 F.2d at 409 (emphasis 

added). There we made clear that the inquiry was not into 

what the defendant probably did or what the jury probably 

found: 

If the record of the previous conviction is 

ambiguous—i.e., if it is possible, on the basis 

of the indictment or jury instructions, to 

conclude that the element of force was 

satisfied solely by a jury finding that the 

defendant had lifted money out of a purse—

then the conviction may not be used as a 

[violent felony under ACCA]. 

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Id. at 410. We employ the same approach in cases involving 

guilty pleas. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 19 (“Taylor’s 

reasoning controls the identification of generic [i.e., ACCAqualifying] convictions following pleas, as well as convictions 

on verdicts, in States with nongeneric offenses.”). 

We review de novo the district court’s determination that 

appellant’s robbery conviction qualified as a crime of 

violence. United States v. Hill, 131 F.3d 1056, 1062 n.5 

(D.C. Cir. 1997). Because the government failed to produce 

the transcript of appellant’s Superior Court plea colloquy, the 

district court had no record of what facts were necessary to 

appellant’s plea. For this reason, it examined an arrest 

warrant affidavit alleging that appellant committed the 

robbery at gunpoint; a detention order in the armed robbery 

case describing the robbery offense as an armed robbery as 

well; the judgment recording appellant’s robbery plea; and the 

criminal information charging appellant with robbery. The 

district court found that each of these documents demonstrates 

that appellant was convicted of a crime of violence. Sent’g 

Tr. at 119 (July 26, 2006). 

The parties agree that under Shepard the district court 

should have examined neither the warrant affidavit nor the 

detention order. Because the judgment records only that 

appellant pled guilty to robbery, it sheds no light on whether 

he pled guilty to a crime of violence. The dispute on appeal 

thus centers on the probative force of the criminal 

information, which states: 

On or about August 9, 1986, within the District 

of Columbia, [appellant], by force and 

violence, against resistance and by putting in 

fear, stole and took from the person and from 

the immediate actual possession of Caroline 

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Kaplan, property of value belonging to 

Caroline Kaplan, consisting of money. 

Appellant’s App. 109. 

While no one doubts that under the D.C. Code the “force 

and violence” language could have been satisfied by a 

minimal level of force that would not qualify the offense as a 

crime of violence, the parties disagree over the significance of 

the “against resistance and by putting in fear” language. 

Appellant contends that the disputed language represents 

mere surplusage—an articulation of the government’s “theory 

of the case,” Appellant’s Opening Br. 35—and imposed no 

limit on the offense to which appellant could have pled guilty. 

Specifically, appellant argues that if he had allocuted only to 

nonviolent robbery by snatching while insisting he never put 

the victim in fear or overcame her resistance, the court could 

have accepted the plea without requiring the government to 

produce a new information. The government fails to dispute 

this claim in its brief. Instead, it argues that we have no 

reason to believe anything of this sort actually happened. 

The government is right that the record nowhere shows 

that appellant pled guilty only to robbery by snatching and not 

by violence. But by disputing only the likelihood—and not 

the possibility—that appellant pled guilty to a non-qualifying 

offense, the government essentially concedes the critical 

point. That is, since the government’s brief nowhere disputes 

the possibility that appellant pled to a non-qualifying offense, 

it necessarily admits that “the record of the previous 

conviction is ambiguous” within the meaning of Mathis, 963 

F.2d at 410. After all, under Shepard the question is not what 

appellant probably pled to, but what he necessarily pled to. 

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That being the case, we cannot treat appellant’s 

conviction as one for a crime of violence. Perhaps the 

transcript of the plea colloquy would have shed light on the 

matter. Had appellant admitted to robbery at gunpoint, the 

trial court would have been precluded from accepting his plea 

based on a finding that appellant committed the robbery 

merely by stealth, and thus the element of violent compulsion 

would have been necessary to his conviction. On the other 

hand, had appellant insisted that he merely snatched the 

property, it would have been clear that the finding of violence 

was unnecessary to his guilty plea. But the government had 

the burden of proving that the elements of a crime of violence 

were necessary components of his conviction, and it failed to 

produce the transcript. “It is the responsibility of the 

government to produce such documents as are necessary to 

establish that a prior offense can be properly designated a 

‘crime of violence.’” United States v. Richardson, 161 F.3d 

728, 738 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks and 

brackets omitted). 

At oral argument, the government initially suggested that 

had appellant attempted to plead only to snatching, the 

Superior Court would have had to reject the plea. According 

to this reasoning, the information’s “against resistance and by 

putting in fear” language limits the type of “force and 

violence” charged, so that if appellant had denied that he put 

the victim in fear or overcame her resistance, the Superior 

Court would have been unable to accept the plea. On this 

interpretation, the information would amount to a “generically 

limited charging document.” Shepard, 544 U.S. at 21. That 

is, it would be limited to the “generic” (i.e., qualifying) 

version of robbery and could not support a plea to the 

nonqualifying version. 

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But this argument appears nowhere in the government’s 

brief. In fact, the government’s brief seems to take the 

contrary position: it admits that appellant could have pled 

guilty to robbery by snatching, maintaining only that it is 

extremely unlikely that he in fact did so. The government’s 

brief merely says that appellant “speculates that he might 

have pled guilty to something different than indicated in the 

language of the charging document, but offers no proof, and 

offered none at sentencing, that anything of that nature 

occurred,” Appellee’s Br. 37, and that there is “no support in 

the record” for the possibility that he did so, id. at 38. To be 

sure, at oral argument government counsel initially claimed 

that the district court would have been unable to accept a plea 

to nonviolent robbery. Oral Arg. at 18:47. Later, however, he 

admitted that this argument is absent from the government’s 

brief, seeming to retreat from this contention and maintaining 

only that a preponderance of the evidence demonstrated that 

appellant pled guilty to violent robbery. Id. at 19:50. 

Indeed, without wading into a question of District of 

Columbia criminal procedure never briefed or argued, we 

note that the government may have been right to effectively 

concede that appellant was able to enter such a plea. This is 

not a case where the information included no language that 

could refer to nonviolent conduct—it charged appellant with 

robbery by “force and violence,” which under the D.C. Code 

includes minimal force that does not qualify an offense as a 

crime of violence. The information may thus permit the 

defendant to plead guilty to nonviolent robbery, so it may not 

be “generically limited.” Shepard, 544 U.S. at 21. Given this 

uncertainty, the absence of briefing on the issue, and the 

government’s failure to contest the point, we have no 

occasion to rule on this hypothetical argument. 

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The dissent reaches the contrary conclusion only by 

assuming that the charging document is in fact “generically 

limited.” Of course if it were generically limited, we would 

look no further. But whether it was is exactly the question 

before us. And to answer that question, we must decide not 

whether appellant in fact pled guilty to nonviolent robbery, 

but whether he could have under the information. This is not 

a question of fact foreclosed by Shepard, but rather a question 

of law. Under Shepard, a charging document is only 

“generically limited” if it in fact limits the type of offense to 

which a defendant can plead guilty. Contrary to the dissent, 

the government nowhere argues that this charging document 

imposes such a limit, as counsel conceded at oral argument. 

Oral Arg. at 19:50. 

Nothing in United States v. Hill, 131 F.3d at 1064-65, on 

which the government relies, requires a different result. 

There we held that when a defendant pleads guilty to a lesser 

included offense of a robbery indictment bearing essentially 

the same language as that present here, the court must look 

beyond the indictment to other documents indicating what 

offense the defendant pled to. Id. Although remarking in 

passing that the indictment’s “against resistance and by 

putting in fear” language “suggest[ed]” that the robbery was 

committed violently, we had no occasion to rule definitively 

on the matter because the defendant pled guilty to a lesser 

included offense, not to the indictment. Id. at 1063. 

To the extent Hill could be read to authorize a factual 

inquiry into what the defendant probably admitted, Shepard 

has superseded it. Hill authorizes examination of presentence 

reports adopted by the court and other judicial findings to 

determine the basis of a defendant’s plea. 131 F.3d at 1065. 

Though not establishing what the defendant necessarily

admitted, such documents would amount to reliable evidence 

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of the defendant’s conduct. But Shepard indicates that the 

sentencing court’s findings of fact, if not adopted by the 

defendant, must be disregarded. 544 U.S. at 16 (holding that 

a court determining whether a prior crime counts as an ACCA 

predicate “is generally limited to examining the statutory 

definition, charging document, written plea agreement, 

transcript of plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding by 

the trial judge to which the defendant assented” (emphasis 

added)). Indeed, the very documents at issue in Shepard were 

free from inconsistencies, and the Court, though never 

questioning the government’s claim that those documents 

showed that the plea in that case could “only plausibly have 

rested” on qualifying conduct, nonetheless forbade reference 

to those apparently reliable documents. 544 U.S. at 21-22. 

Of course if the question were what the defendant probably 

admitted to, we would have no reason to disregard any 

evidence that could reliably shed light on that issue. The 

Court’s rejection of otherwise reliable evidence demonstrates 

what Shepard explicitly says: regardless of what Hill may 

have suggested, we look to what the defendant “necessarily 

admitted,” not just probably admitted. 544 U.S. at 26. 

Because the government failed to demonstrate on this 

record that appellant pled guilty to a violent robbery, the 

district court erred in ruling that appellant’s robbery 

conviction qualified as a crime of violence within the 

meaning of section 4B1.2. We vacate the sentence and 

remand for resentencing in light of Kimbrough and the 

government’s failure to demonstrate that appellant has two 

prior convictions for crimes of violence. 

So ordered. 

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RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge, dissenting: I am not sure

whether hard cases really do make bad law. I am certain that

bad law comes from easy cases made hard. The majority’s

opinion has turned this into such a case. 

The issue is whether this defendant pled guilty to a crime of

violence under D.C. law, and so should be sentenced as a career

offender under federal law. The record is sparse but there are

three things we know with certainty. We know the defendant

was convicted of violating D.C. Code Ann. § 22-2901 (1973),

the robbery statute, for stealing money from a woman.

Appellant’s App. 109. We also know that there are two ways to

violate § 22-2901, only one of which qualifies as a crime of

violence. A person may commit the offense of robbery “by

sudden or stealthy seizure or snatching” – not a crime of

violence because it does not involve the use of, or threatened

“use of physical force against” another person. United States v.

Mathis, 963 F.2d 399, 405, 408 (D.C. Cir. 1992). Or he may

violate § 22-2901 if the robbery is “against resistance . . . or by

putting in fear” – a crime of violence under the federal

definition. Id. at 408–409. The third thing we know with

certainty is that this defendant pled guilty to an information

charging him with committing a robbery “by force and violence,

against resistance and by putting in fear.” Appellant’s App. 109.

He pled guilty, in other words, to an information charging a

violent crime. I am not, as the majority states, “assuming” that

the charging document so narrowed the statutory offense. My

conclusion rests on legal analysis and precedent: the dependent

clause in both the statute and the information – “against

resistance and by putting in fear” – modifies “force and

violence.” Mathis, 963 F.2d at 408. The information therefore

unmistakably narrows the offense to a crime of violence, which

was precisely the government’s argument to us. See Gov’t Br.

at 34–36; Oral Arg. at 24:20 (“What was before the trial court

and before this court are the charging document that clearly

charges a crime of violence and the judgment and commitment

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2

order that indicates that’s the document on which the defendant

was sentenced. So other than sheer speculation there’s nothing

to undercut that.”); but see Maj. Op. at 14. 

My colleagues’ opposite conclusion thus rests on nothing

more than conjecture. It is possible, they say, that the defendant

changed his tune when he stood before the judge. Maybe he

confessed only to snatching and maybe the judge took the plea

anyway even though the information charged only the violent

crime of robbery. Is it proper to speculate about what could

have occurred during the plea proceedings? My colleagues say

yes. The Supreme Court says no. Shepard v. United States, 544

U.S. 13, 21 (2005), holds that the “details of a generically

limited charging document would do in any sort of case.” By

“generically limited” the Court meant limited to the violent

offense contained in the statute. By “would do in any sort of

case” the Court meant that in a plea case, an information

charging only the violent offense is enough to show that the

defendant committed a crime of violence. A plurality of the

Court reiterated the point: “without a charging document that

narrows the charge to generic limits, the only certainty of a

generic finding lies in” the supplemental plea records. Id. at 25

(plurality opinion). But with a charging document that narrows

the charge to a crime of violence, a sentencing court’s limited

inquiry is at an end. See id. at 21 (majority opinion).

The majority nevertheless imagines the defendant having

a last minute change of heart and pleading to something that

was not charged. Taken to its logical conclusion, the majority’s

position generates a new rule: no charging document, however

precise, can suffice to show that the defendant pled guilty to a

crime of violence when the underlying statute covers violent

and non-violent crimes. Shepard rejects such a rule.

I therefore dissent.

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