United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 12-4009

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Calvin Bankhead

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant

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 Appeal from United States District Court 

for the District of Minnesota - St. Paul

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 Submitted: October 25, 2013

 Filed: February 12, 2014

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Before LOKEN, GRUENDER, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.

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GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

Following his guilty plea to the charge of being a felon in possession of a

firearm, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), Calvin Bankhead received a 180-month

mandatory minimum sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”). For

the reasons set forth below, we reverse and remand for resentencing. 
The written plea agreement, executed by Bankhead and the Government,

specified a statutory maximum term of 120 months’ imprisonment. However, the

probation office prepared a presentence investigation report (“PSR”) uncovering for

the first time Bankhead’s 1990 juvenile adjudication for armed robbery under Illinois

law. The Illinois armed robbery statute provided in relevant part: “A person commits

armed robbery when he or she violates Section 18-1 [establishing elements of

unarmed robbery] while he or she carries on or about his or her person, or is

otherwise armed with a dangerous weapon.” Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, § 18-2 (SmithHurd 1990). According to the PSR, thisjuvenile adjudication was a predicate offense

under the ACCA that, in combination with two other predicate offenses committed

by Bankhead, compelled a mandatory minimum term of 180 months’ imprisonment. 

18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1).

At sentencing, the district court offered to allow Bankhead to withdraw his

guilty plea because, at the time of his plea, he had not been informed of the correct

maximum sentence—now life—nor had he been informed of the fifteen-year

mandatory minimum sentence. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(1). Bankhead instead

asserted he should be sentenced according to the original plea agreement, which did

not consider the juvenile adjudication or the ACCA for purposes of calculating the

statutory maximum or mandatory minimum sentence. The district court, however,

stated that the original plea agreement was “not on the table” given that the PSR had

revealed facts about the juvenile adjudication that the court was “not going to turn

away from.” Bankhead nonetheless declined to withdraw his guilty plea.

Accordingly, the district court conducted an evidentiary hearing to determine whether

Bankhead’s juvenile adjudication satisfied the ACCA requirement that an act of

juvenile delinquency involve “the use or carrying of a firearm, knife, or destructive

device” in order to trigger the ACCA’s sentencing provisions. 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(e)(2)(B). Based on Illinois charging documents, the district court applied the

modified categorical approach to find that Bankhead, as a juvenile, had carried a .38-

caliber revolver during the commission of the armed robbery. The district court

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therefore imposed the ACCA mandatory minimum sentence of 180 months’

imprisonment. 

Bankhead’s original brief challenged this sentence on two grounds. First,

Bankhead argued the district court erroneously relied on sparse and unclear

documentary records in determining that the juvenile adjudication triggered the

fifteen-year mandatoryminimum sentence. Second, Bankhead contended Rule 11 of

the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure was violated because he was not advised at

the time of his plea that the ACCA maximum or mandatory minimum sentence would

apply. Shortly thereafter, the United States Supreme Court held that sentencing

courts cannot employ the modified categorical approach when the proposed predicate

offense “has a single, indivisible set of elements.” Descamps v. United States, 570

U.S. ---, 133 S. Ct. 2276, 2282 (2013). Both Bankhead and the Government have

agreed in subsequent supplemental briefing that, under Descamps, Bankhead’s

juvenile armed robbery adjudication does not qualify as an ACCA predicate offense. 

Because we agree that Descamps applies in this case, we reverse Bankhead’s sentence

and remand for resentencing. 

A defendant who violates § 922(g) is subject to a mandatory minimum term of

180 months’ imprisonment if he has “three previous convictions . . . for a violent

felony.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). A “previous conviction” “includes a finding that a

person has committed an act of juvenile delinquency involving a violent felony.” Id.

§ 924(e)(2)(C). For an act of juvenile delinquency to “involv[e] a violent felony,” the

ACCA requires that it entail “the use or carrying of a firearm, knife, or destructive

device.” Id. § 924(e)(2)(B). Bankhead was adjudicated delinquent of an Illinois

statute criminalizing robbery committed by a person who “carries on or about his or

her person, or is otherwise armed with a dangerous weapon.” Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38,

§ 18-2. In this case, the district court applied the modified categorical approach by

consulting the Illinois charging documents to determine that a .38-caliber revolver,

which satisfies the ACCA requirement, was carried by Bankhead during the robbery.

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“[T]he modified categorical approach permits sentencing courts to consult a limited

class of documents, such as indictments and jury instructions, to determine which

alternative formed the basis ofthe defendant’s prior conviction.” Descamps v. United

States, 133 S. Ct. at 2281; see also United States v. Tucker, --- F.3d ---, 2014 WL

304740, at *1, slip op. at 3 (8th Cir. Jan. 29, 2014) (en banc). Such documents are

known as Shepard documents. United States v. Williams, 627 F.3d 324, 328 (8th Cir.

2010) (citing Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 15 (2005)).

In Descamps, however, the Supreme Court clarified that “sentencing courts

may not apply the modified categorical approach when the crime of which the

defendant was convicted has a single, indivisible set of elements.” 133 S. Ct. at 2282;

see also Tucker, 2014 WL 304740, at *3, slip op. at 8 (overruling circuit precedent

“to the extent that it authorizes applying the modified categorical approach to

anything other than explicitly divisible portions of statutes”). In other words, the

modified categorical approach may be used only “when a prior conviction is for

violating a so-called ‘divisible statute’” which “sets out one or more elements of the

offense in the alternative.” 133 S. Ct. at 2281. According to the Supreme Court,

consultation of Shepard documents is warranted only when the statute of conviction

embraces several alternative bases for conviction, not all of which qualify as an

ACCA predicate, and the sentencing court must determine “which statutory phrase

was the basis for conviction.” Id. at 2285-86 (quoting Johnson v. United States, 559

U.S. 133, 144 (2010)).

Here, the Illinois statute of conviction is indivisible regarding the type of

dangerous weapon carried. The hallmark of divisibility is the enumeration of

alternative bases for conviction separated by the disjunctive “or.” Here, unlike the

ACCA, the statute does not enumerate a list of different weapons sufficient to sustain

a conviction. Rather, the statute only requires that the robbery was committed with

a “dangerous weapon”—an indivisible term. As the Supreme Court did in Descamps,

we conclude that “[t]he modified approach thus has no role to play in this case” given

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that “[t]he dispute here does not concern any list of alternative elements” as to the

type of dangerous weapon carried. Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at 2285.

Because the dangerous-weapon element of the Illinois statute is textually

indivisible, we next conduct a categorical elements-based inquiry. See Descamps,

133 S. Ct. at 2293. We must determine whether Bankhead’s adjudication under the

indivisible dangerous-weapon element necessarily means that he was adjudicated for

use or carrying of a firearm, knife, or destructive device such that the adjudication

constitutes an ACCA predicate offense. We hold it does not.

The dangerous-weapon element in the Illinois statute is broader than the

ACCA’s firearm, knife, or destructive device requirement. While the dangerousweapon element of the Illinois statute can be satisfied by the carrying of a firearm,

knife, or destructive device, the dangerous-weapon element can also be satisfied by

other objects that would not satisfy the ACCA requirement. See Illinois v. Hill, 362

N.E.2d 470, 471 (Ill. App. Ct. 1977) (holding that an “instrumentality used to threaten

a victim of a robbery [that] is capable of being used in a manner to cause harm or

injury thereby compels a finding that the instrumentality is a dangerous weapon”);

Illinois v. Ratliff, 317 N.E.2d 63, 64 (Ill. App. Ct. 1974) (observing that “a brick, a

ball bat, or anything else which could be utilized in a manner dangerous to the

physical well-being of the individual threatened” could be a dangerous weapon). As

in Descamps, this case concerns “a simple discrepancy” between the ACCA (i.e., the

narrower “firearm, knife, or destructive device” requirement) and the state statute of

conviction (i.e., the broader dangerous-weapon element). 133 S. Ct. at 2285. Our

inquiry, then, ends with the categorical observation that Bankhead’s crime of

conviction does not correspond to the narrower ACCA requirement. For this reason,

the Illinois statute cannot form the basis of “an act of juvenile delinquency involving

a violent felony” for purposes of imposing the ACCA mandatory minimum sentence. 

18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(C).

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For these reasons, we reverse and remand for resentencing.1

LOKEN, Circuit Judge, concurring.

As I am bound by the en banc court’s interpretation of Descamps v. United

States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (2013), in United States v. Tucker, 2014 WL 304740 (8th Cir.

Jan. 29, 2014), I concur in the judgment.

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Because our holding under Descamps renders moot Bankhead’s original 1

grounds for appeal, we decline to address them.

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