United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued September 17, 2021 

Decided May 31, 2022 

Before

DIANE S. SYKES, Chief Judge

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge

THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge

No. 19-3341

SINISA MURATOVIC, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the 

United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 16 C 6427 

Sharon Johnson Coleman, 

Judge.

O R D E R

In 2011 Sinisa Muratovic pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act 

robbery, 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a); attempted Hobbs Act robbery, id. §§ 1951(a) and 2; and 

possessing a firearm in furtherance of those offenses, id. § 924(c)(1)(A). We affirmed his 

convictions and sentence on direct appeal. Muratovic now challenges his sentence 

under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, arguing that after the Supreme Court’s decisions in Johnson v. 

United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), and United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019), the 

Hobbs Act violations do not qualify as “crimes of violence” under § 924(c). But his 

unconditional guilty plea waived his right to challenge the judgment on this ground. 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 19-3341 Page 2 

Grzegorczyk v. United States, 997 F.3d 743, 746 (7th Cir. 2021); United States v. Wheeler, 

857 F.3d 742, 744–45 (7th Cir. 2017). We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of 

his § 2255 petition. 

Muratovic’s convictions stem from a course of events in 2008 in which he and his 

coconspirators planned the armed robbery of a truck that they believed would be 

carrying a large amount of drug money. They acquired firearms for that purpose and 

met to conduct the robbery but were arrested before they carried out the crime. 

Muratovic was charged with conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery and attempted 

Hobbs Act robbery. He was also charged under § 924(c) with carrying and possessing a 

firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, with the indictment identifying the 

conspiracy and attempt charges as the crimes of violence supporting the § 924(c) count. 

Muratovic pleaded guilty to all three charges without a plea agreement and was 

sentenced in December 2011. He challenged his convictions on several grounds on 

direct appeal, but we affirmed the judgment across the board. United States v. Muratovic, 

719 F.3d 809 (7th Cir. 2013). 

Two years later the Supreme Court decided Johnson, which invalidated the 

“residual clause” definition of “violent felony” in the Armed Career Criminal Act as 

unconstitutionally vague. 576 U.S. at 597. The Supreme Court subsequently extended 

Johnson’s logic to § 924(c), holding that the residual clause in the definition of “crime of 

violence” is similarly unconstitutional. Davis, 139 S. Ct. at 2325–27. Accordingly, to 

qualify as a “crime of violence” under § 924(c), a crime must satisfy the “elements 

clause” of the definition; that is, it must “ha[ve] as an element the use, attempted use, or 

threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.” 

§ 924(c)(3)(A). Muratovic argued in his § 2255 petition that after Johnson and Davis, his

Hobbs Act convictions no longer qualify as crimes of violence. 

The district judge dismissed Muratovic’s § 2255 petition, holding that he waived 

this claim by unconditionally pleading guilty and also procedurally defaulted it by 

failing to raise it on direct appeal. We agree that he waived his claim and so do not 

reach the issue of default or the merits of his argument. We have held that an 

unconditional guilty plea waives any contention that an indictment fails to state an 

offense. Wheeler, 857 F.3d at 745. In the context of § 924(c), we have thus held that an 

unconditional plea waives a claim that a conviction does not qualify as a “crime of 

violence” under § 924(c). Grzegorczyk, 997 F.3d at 746; Wheeler, 857 F.3d at 745. 

Muratovic unconditionally pleaded guilty to the § 924(c) count; he did not preserve his 

right to challenge the validity of the charge. 
No. 19-3341 Page 3 

Nonetheless, Muratovic argues that he may challenge the validity of his statute 

of conviction under Class v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 798, 803 (2018), which holds that a 

guilty plea does not waive a defendant’s challenge to the constitutionality of his statute 

of conviction. We rejected this argument in Grzegorczyk, explaining that the issue of 

whether an offense is a “crime of violence” under § 924(c) is statutory rather than 

constitutional. 997 F.3d at 748. This case is controlled by Grzegorczyk and Wheeler. 

Muratovic’s challenge to the legal sufficiency of his § 924(c) conviction is waived by his 

unconditional guilty plea. 

AFFIRMED