Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca6-15-05657/USCOURTS-ca6-15-05657-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Kendall Joy
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION

File Name: 16a0434n.06

No. 15-5657

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

KENDALL JOY,

Defendant-Appellant.

)

)

)

)

)

)

)

)

)

)

)

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED 

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR 

THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF 

TENNESSEE

BEFORE: SILER, GIBBONS, and COOK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. Kendall Joy, following his conditional guilty plea, appeals the denial of 

his motion to suppress. In a supplemental brief, Joy challenges his sentencing under the Armed 

Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). We affirm.

On December 27, 2012, officers with the Millington Police Department received a report 

of an aggravated assault at an apartment complex. The first officer to arrive found three 

employees of a repossession company who were there to repossess a vehicle. One of the 

repossession employees reported that, while he was hooking the vehicle to his tow truck, Joy and 

his girlfriend came out of the apartment building and argued with them. Joy told his girlfriend to 

get a gun, and she went inside the apartment and returned with a large semiautomatic pistol. Joy 

pointed the firearm at the tow truck driver’s head and threatened to kill the driver if he did not 

 Case: 15-5657 Document: 41-2 Filed: 07/29/2016 Page: 1
No. 15-5657, United States v. Joy

- 2 -

release the vehicle from the tow truck. When the vehicle was released, Joy retreated to the 

apartment, and his girlfriend drove off in the vehicle. 

After speaking with the repossession employees and a neighbor, the officers knocked and 

announced their presence at both the front and back doors of the apartment; they received no 

response. The apartment complex’s maintenance supervisor unlocked the apartment’s back door 

for the officers, who entered and found Joy in the living room. The officers placed Joy under 

arrest, handcuffed him, and patted him down but did not find any firearms on him. The officers 

conducted a sweep of the apartment, looking inside bedrooms and opening closets, and saw 

firearms in plain view. Three young children were located in a bedroom and were asked if there 

were firearms in the apartment; they responded that there were. The officers then obtained a 

warrant to search the apartment. Upon executing the warrant, the officers found and seized five 

firearms, magazines, and ammunition.

A federal grand jury subsequently returned an indictment charging Joy with five counts 

of possession of a firearm by a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). Joy filed a motion to 

suppress. After an evidentiary hearing and supplemental briefing, a magistrate judge 

recommended that Joy’s motion to suppress be denied. In light of Joy’s objections to the 

magistrate judge’s report and recommendation, the district court conducted another evidentiary 

hearing. The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation and 

denied Joy’s motion to suppress. 

On the third day of trial, Joy pleaded guilty to all five counts of the indictment, reserving 

his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. Joy’s presentence report classified him 

as an armed career criminal based on the following Tennessee convictions: (1) a 1988

conviction for first-degree burglary, (2) two 1994 convictions for aggravated assault, and (3) a 

2007 conviction for unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell. Joy 

 Case: 15-5657 Document: 41-2 Filed: 07/29/2016 Page: 2
No. 15-5657, United States v. Joy

- 3 -

challenged the use of his aggravated assault convictions as predicate offenses under the ACCA. 

At sentencing, the district court overruled Joy’s objection and determined that he qualified as an 

armed career criminal. Varying downward from a guidelines range of 262 to 327 months, the 

district court sentenced Joy to 200 months of imprisonment.

This timely appeal followed. Counsel briefed the denial of Joy’s motion to suppress. In 

light of Joy’s pro se filings, this court ordered counsel to file supplemental briefs addressing 

whether the district court erred in sentencing Joy under the ACCA and whether he waived 

appellate review of this issue in his plea agreement. 

In denying Joy’s motion to suppress, the district court held that the officers’ “entry into 

[Joy’s] apartment, the warrantless arrest, and the overbroad protective sweep violated the Fourth 

Amendment” but that the government had “shown that the police would have inevitably obtained 

[a] search warrant and discovered [Joy’s] firearms, despite the constitutional violations.” (RE 

64, Page ID # 359). On appeal, Joy challenges (1) the warrantless entry, asserting that there 

were no exigent circumstances, and (2) the protective sweep, asserting that there were no 

articulable facts to support a reasonable belief that the apartment harbored another individual 

posing a danger to those on the scene. But Joy fails to address the district court’s reason for 

denying his motion to suppress—that “the search pursuant to warrant was in fact a genuinely 

independent source” of the firearms at issue. Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 542 (1988). 

By failing to address the district court’s holding, Joy has waived appellate review of the denial of 

his motion to suppress. See United States v. Thornton, 609 F.3d 373, 380 (6th Cir. 2010). Joy 

filed a pro se motion to “remand to [the] district court to establish ineffective assistance of 

counsel on the record,” mentioning counsel’s failure to raise the independent-source issue in his

appellate brief. A 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion asserting ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims 

may be brought by Joy in the district court. See United States v. Kincaide, 145 F.3d 771, 785 

 Case: 15-5657 Document: 41-2 Filed: 07/29/2016 Page: 3
No. 15-5657, United States v. Joy

- 4 -

(6th Cir. 1998) (“Ineffective assistance of counsel claims are best brought by a defendant in a 

post-conviction proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 so that the parties can develop an adequate 

record on the issue.” (quoting United States v. Seymour, 38 F.3d 261, 263 (6th Cir. 1994))). 

Joy also challenges his sentencing under the ACCA. In his plea agreement, Joy 

“waive[d] his right to appeal the sentence imposed by the Court and the manner in which the 

sentence is determined.” (RE 124, Page ID # 460). While “we have held that appeal waivers do 

not bar defendants from appealing a sentence above the statutory maximum for the underlying 

offense,” we have not “settle[d] whether a district court’s error in determining a defendant to be 

an armed career criminal results in a supramaximal sentence, thereby barring an appeal waiver.” 

United States v. Amos, 604 F. App’x 418, 422 (6th Cir. 2015) (citing United States v. Caruthers, 

458 F.3d 459, 471-72 (6th Cir. 2006)), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 114 (2015). We need not address 

that issue here because the district court properly sentenced Joy as an armed career criminal.

The ACCA requires a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence for a defendant convicted 

under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) who has three previous convictions for a violent felony or a serious 

drug offense. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). Joy objects to the use of his 1994 Tennessee convictions 

for aggravated assault as predicate offenses under the ACCA. This court has held that the 

version of Tennessee’s aggravated assault statute in effect at the time of Joy’s convictions is not 

categorically a violent felony under the ACCA because the statute encompasses reckless as well 

as intentional conduct. United States v. McMurray, 653 F.3d 367, 377 (6th Cir. 2011). Because 

Tennessee’s aggravated assault statute is divisible, we may consider the state court documents 

identified in Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 26 (2005), to determine which subsection of 

the statute Joy was convicted of violating. See Braden v. United States, 817 F.3d 926, 933 (6th 

Cir. 2016); United States v. Cooper, 739 F.3d 873, 880 n.2 (6th Cir. 2014). Citing Descamps v. 

United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276, 2283 (2013), Joy argues that the district court erred in applying 

 Case: 15-5657 Document: 41-2 Filed: 07/29/2016 Page: 4
No. 15-5657, United States v. Joy

- 5 -

the modified categorical approach; however, Descamps involved an indivisible statute. See 

Cooper, 739 F.3d at 880 n.2. Although Joy entered a best-interest plea under North Carolina v. 

Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970), his convictions can be predicate offenses for purposes of the ACCA 

if “the Shepard documents demonstrate with certainty that [he] pleaded guilty to a narrowed 

charge that would qualify as a ‘violent felony.’” McMurray, 653 F.3d at 381. The state court 

indictments charged that Joy “did unlawfully and intentionally by use of a deadly weapon, towit: a pistol, cause [the victims] to reasonably fear imminent bodily injury.” Joy’s aggravated 

assault convictions therefore constitute violent felonies under the ACCA’s use-of-force clause. 

See Braden, 817 F.3d at 933.

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.

 Case: 15-5657 Document: 41-2 Filed: 07/29/2016 Page: 5