[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

 

No. 17-15495

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 4:15-cr-00131-WTM-GRS-1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Plaintiff - Appellee,

 versus

LEON CARTER, 

 Defendant - Appellant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Georgia

________________________

(August 3, 2021)

Before BLACK and MARCUS, Circuit Judges, and RESTANI,

* Judge.

* The Honorable Jane A. Restani, Judge for the United States Court of International Trade, sitting 

by designation. 

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MARCUS, Circuit Judge: 

Leon Carter pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm after having previously 

been convicted of a felony in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The sentencing 

court concluded that one of Carter’s previous convictions -- aggravated assault 

with a deadly weapon, O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(a)(2) -- qualified as a “violent felony” 

within the meaning of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause, 18 

U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i). Together with two previous drug-related convictions, 

this made Carter an armed career criminal subject to the Armed Career Criminal 

Act’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence for § 922(g)(1) violations. So, the 

district judge sentenced him to fifteen years. 

But Carter was convicted of a version of Georgia aggravated assault that can 

be accomplished with a mens rea of recklessness -- aggravated assault with a 

deadly weapon under O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(a)(2) based on a simple assault under 

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-20(a)(2). And as the Supreme Court recently clarified in Borden 

v. United States, the Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause does not 

include offenses that criminalize reckless conduct; it covers only offenses that 

require a mens rea of knowledge or intent. 141 S. Ct. 1817, 1825 (2021). Indeed, 

we have expressly held that a Georgia aggravated assault of the sort Carter pleaded 

guilty to is not a violent felony under the elements clause. United States v. Moss, 

920 F.3d 752, 759 (11th Cir. 2019), opinion reinstated, 2021 WL 3087754, at *1 

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(11th Cir. July 22, 2021) (en banc). Therefore, Carter’s aggravated assault 

conviction cannot support his classification as an armed career criminal. We 

vacate Carter’s sentence and remand for resentencing. 

I.

We begin with the relevant background. On September 15, 1992, Kenneth 

Gibbons was driving down Augusta Avenue in Savannah, Georgia, when Leon 

Carter fired shots at him with a .22 caliber revolver. Carter fled to his home on a 

bicycle and was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated assault

under O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21 in Chatham County Superior Court in Savannah and 

received a three-year prison sentence. Carter was also caught participating in the 

sale of cocaine to undercover Savannah police personnel in 1996 and again in 

2008; he pleaded guilty to sale of a controlled substance and to conspiracy to 

distribute a controlled substance, respectively. See O.C.G.A. § 16-13-30(b). 

Years later, on December 11, 2013, Carter sold a Harrington & Richardson 

(“H&R”) Model 732 .32 caliber revolver loaded with five rounds of ammunition to 

a Savannah individual for $100. Carter later sold the same individual an unloaded 

Springfield Armory, Model XD40, .40 caliber pistol for $300, and then an 

unloaded Norinco Model SKS, 7.62x39 caliber rifle for $400. 

It turned out that Carter’s gun buyer was working as a confidential informant 

for the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department, which in turn was 

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working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation on a joint investigation into the illegal possession 

and distribution of firearms. Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who has 

previously been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison to 

possess a firearm or ammunition. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). So the United States

sought, and a grand jury sitting in the Southern District of Georgia returned, an 

indictment charging Carter with two counts of violating § 922(g)(1) based on the 

H&R and Springfield sales. He pleaded guilty to the count based on the H&R sale. 

The United States Probation Office prepared a presentence investigation 

report (“PSI”), which relied on Carter’s aggravated assault conviction as well as 

his prior Georgia convictions for sale of a controlled substance and conspiracy to 

distribute a controlled substance to conclude that Carter qualified as an armed 

career criminal under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). That provision, known as the Armed 

Career Criminal Act (the “ACCA”), imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum 

sentence for § 922(g) violations committed by individuals whose criminal records 

include at least three prior convictions for crimes that qualify as violent felonies or 

serious drug offenses. Therefore, Carter’s Sentencing Guidelines range was the 

ACCA minimum: 180 months. Absent the ACCA minimum, Carter’s Guidelines 

range would have been 135 to 168 months. 

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The district court agreed that Carter was an armed career criminal subject to 

the ACCA. Nevertheless, the court sentenced Carter to only 96 months in prison --

well below the ACCA’s statutory mandatory minimum and well below the bottom 

of the otherwise applicable Guidelines range. The court explained that the 

downward variance was based on the factors found in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), which 

include the seriousness of the offense. The government knew about Carter’s first 

illegal gun sale in December 2013, and it was apparent then that he was acting 

alone rather than participating in an illegal gun ring. In other words, by the end of 

2013, the government had all the information it needed to arrest and prosecute 

Carter. But the government had waited until 2015 to indict him, and Carter had 

made two additional gun sales during the intervening period. These additional 

sales increased Carter’s Guidelines range, but, the district court reasoned, there 

was no reason the government could not have “stopped” Carter before he had made 

the additional sales. To the district court, this sequence of events made Carter’s 

offense less serious than the Guidelines range indicated. 

Neither party objected to the sentence. But both appealed: Carter to argue 

that he should not have been classified as an armed career criminal because his 

previous convictions were not valid ACCA predicates and the government to argue 

that the district court had erred by imposing a sentence below the ACCA’s fifteenyear mandatory minimum. United States v. Carter, 704 F. App’x 808, 809 (11th 

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Cir. 2017). Reviewing both issues only for plain error, a panel of this Court held 

that Carter could not establish plain error because he had not cited any Supreme 

Court or Eleventh Circuit cases holding that Georgia aggravated assault, sale of a 

controlled substance, or conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance did not 

qualify as an ACCA predicate offense. Id. The panel further held that the district 

court’s dramatic downward variance from the ACCA mandatory minimum 

sentence posed “systemic problems to the fairness and integrity of . . . judicial 

proceedings” because it allowed for the imposition of disparate sentences on 

similarly situated defendants. Id. at 810. Thus, the panel vacated Carter’s sentence 

and remanded to the district court for resentencing. Id.

On remand, Carter objected to the revised PSI’s classification of his Georgia 

aggravated assault conviction as an ACCA predicate offense. But the district court 

ruled against him, agreeing with the government that this conviction qualified as a 

violent felony under the ACCA’s elements clause. Thus, the district court 

sentenced Carter to fifteen years in prison, the ACCA mandatory minimum, with 

credit for time served. Carter appealed the district court’s conclusion that his 

Georgia aggravated assault conviction was for a violent felony. 

We stayed Carter’s appeal pending our en banc Court’s consideration of 

Moss, which was itself stayed pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Borden. 

After the Supreme Court decided Borden, the en banc Court reinstated the panel 

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opinion in Moss, which held that Georgia aggravated assault with a deadly 

weapon, when premised on the version of simple assault outlined in O.C.G.A. §

16-5-20(a)(2), is not a violent felony under the ACCA’s elements clause. United 

States v. Moss, No. 17-10473, 2021 WL 3087754, at *1 (11th Cir. July 22, 2021)

(en banc). 

II.

This appeal presents a single issue: whether Carter’s conviction for 

aggravated assault with a deadly weapon under O.C.G.A. §§ 16-5-21(a)(2) and 16-

5-20(a)(2) qualifies as a “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act.1

 

Borden and Moss yield the conclusion that it does not. Therefore, the district court 

was incorrect to classify Carter as an armed career criminal and to conclude that 

the ACCA’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum controlled his sentence. 

We recently set forth a controlling analysis of Georgia aggravated assault in 

Moss. Even so, now that Borden has confirmed the reasoning in Moss, we explain 

in some detail the ACCA analysis as it pertains to Carter’s case. The ACCA 

defines a “violent felony” as:

[A]ny crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year 

. . . that --

1 We review the question of whether a prior conviction qualifies as a violent felony de novo. 

United States v. Deshazior, 882 F.3d 1352, 1354 (11th Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 1255 

(2019).

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(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of 

physical force against the person of another; or

(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or 

otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk 

of physical injury to another;

18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). We often refer to subsection (i) as the “elements 

clause”; to the portion of subsection (ii) that refers to burglary, arson, extortion, 

and explosives as the “enumerated offenses clause”; and to the remainder of 

subsection (ii) as the “residual clause.” The Supreme Court has held that the 

residual clause is unconstitutionally vague, Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 

597 (2015), and the enumerated offenses clause does not include aggravated 

assault. So Carter’s aggravated assault conviction must qualify, if at all, under the 

elements clause. 

To determine whether a prior conviction was a “violent felony” under the 

ACCA’s elements clause, we apply the “categorical approach.” United States v. 

Oliver, 962 F.3d 1311, 1316 (11th Cir. 2020); see also Descamps v. United States, 

570 U.S. 254, 257 (2013). Under the categorical approach, we generally examine 

“only ‘the elements of the statute of conviction, not the specific conduct of a 

particular offender.’” Oliver, 962 F.3d at 1316 (citation omitted). Thus, we 

assume that the conviction rested on the “‘least of the acts criminalized’ by the 

statute,” because to determine upon which criminalized acts the conviction rested 

would violate the categorical approach’s command not to analyze the facts 

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underlying the conviction. Id. (citing Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U.S. 184, 190–91

(2013)). Next, we determine whether the “least of the acts criminalized” has an 

element requiring “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force 

against the person of another.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). If it does, 

“the offense categorically qualifies as a violent felony under the ACCA’s elements 

clause.” Id. “If not, that is the end of [the court’s] inquiry and the prior conviction 

does not count as a violent felony under the elements clause.” Id. (internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

There is a twist, however, for statutes that are divisible -- that is, those that 

list multiple, alternative elements, and so effectively create “several different

crimes.” Descamps, 570 U.S. at 263. In order to determine which specific crime a 

defendant was convicted of committing, a court confronted with a divisible statute 

may consult Shepard documents, a “limited class of documents, including the 

indictment, jury instructions, or plea agreement and colloquy.” Oliver, 962 F.3d at 

1317 (citing Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 26 (2005)). 

When Carter was convicted in 1992, Georgia’s aggravated assault statute 

read: 

A person commits the offense of aggravated assault when he assaults: 

(1) With intent to murder, to rape, or to rob; [or]

(2) With a deadly weapon or with any object, device, or

instrument which, when used offensively against a person, is 

likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury.

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O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(a) (1992). Thus, two elements comprise a Georgia aggravated 

assault: “(a) a simple assault as defined under O.C.G.A. §§ 16-5-20(a)(1) or (2), 

and (b) that the assault was aggravated by either (1) an intention to murder, rape or 

rob, or (2) the use of a deadly weapon.” Moss, 920 F.3d at 757. In turn, in 1992, 

Georgia’s simple assault statute provided: 

(a) A person commits the offense of simple assault when he or she 

either:

(1) Attempts to commit a violent injury to the person of another; 

or

(2) Commits an act which places another in reasonable 

apprehension of immediately receiving a violent injury.

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-20(a) (1992). 

We have held that Georgia’s aggravated assault statute is divisible as to both 

the aggravator element, United States v. Morales-Alonso, 878 F.3d 1311, 1316 

(11th Cir. 2018), and as to the type of simple assault committed, Moss, 920 F.3d at 

757–58. Therefore, we look to Shepard documents to determine which version of 

aggravated assault served as the basis for Carter’s guilty plea. These show that 

Carter was convicted of committing the version of aggravated assault found in 

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(a)(2), simple assault committed with a deadly weapon: the 

indictment charged Carter with “unlawfully mak[ing] an assault upon the person of 

Kenneth Gibbons, with a .22 Long caliber revolver, a deadly weapon, by shooting 

at Kenneth Gibbons.” But they do not reveal which version of simple assault was 

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the basis for Carter’s conviction -- attempting to commit a violent injury under 

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-20(a)(1) or placing another in reasonable apprehension of 

receiving a violent injury under § 16-5-20(a)(2). Therefore, “we assume that he 

was convicted under the ‘least of the acts criminalized’ by the statute—here, § 16-

5-20(a)(2),” placing another in apprehension of receiving a violent injury. Id. at 

758 (citation omitted). 

Stated more precisely, then, the question before us is whether a Georgia 

aggravated assault conviction for committing an act with a deadly weapon which 

places another in reasonable apprehension of immediately receiving a violent 

injury “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical 

force against the person of another.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). In Borden, the 

Supreme Court held that the phrase “use . . . against the person of another” in the 

ACCA’s elements clause “sets out a mens rea requirement—of purposeful or 

knowing conduct.” Borden, 141 S. Ct. at 1828, 1829 n.6 (plurality opinion). The 

elements clause “demands that the perpetrator direct his action at, or target, another 

individual.” Id. at 1825. A crime that can be committed with a mens rea of mere

recklessness therefore cannot qualify as a crime of violence under the elements 

clause -- “[r]eckless conduct is not aimed in [the] prescribed manner.” Id.; see also

id. at 1833 (“‘[A]gainst the person of another,’ when modifying the ‘use of 

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physical force,’ introduces that action’s conscious object. So it excludes conduct, 

like recklessness, that is not directed or targeted at another.”) (citation omitted). 

We held in Moss that when based on a simple assault under O.C.G.A. § 16-

5-20(a)(2), an aggravated assault under O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(a)(2) can be 

accomplished with a mens rea of recklessness. 920 F.3d at 758 (citing Patterson v. 

State, 789 S.E.2d 175, 176–78 (Ga. 2016)). As the Georgia Supreme Court 

explained in Patterson, “the crime of simple assault as set forth in O.C.G.A § 16-5-

20(a)(2), does not require proof of specific intent. The State need only prove that 

the defendant intended to do the act that placed another in reasonable apprehension 

of immediate violent injury.” 789 S.E.2d at 177 (citation omitted and cleaned up); 

see also Moss, 920 F.3d at 757 (“Georgia law defines recklessness as nothing more 

than the conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk . . . [reckless 

conduct] cannot be said to require intent.”). Nor does the deadly weapon 

aggravator element of a § 16-5-21(a)(2) aggravated assault conviction import a 

mens rea requirement greater than recklessness. Moss, 920 F.3d at 759 (citing 

Patterson, 789 S.E.2d at 176–78); see also Patterson v. State, 770 S.E.2d 62, 66 & 

n.5 (Ga. Ct. App. 2015) (rejecting the proposition that the deadly weapon or device 

likely to result or resulting in death aggravator in § 16-5-21(a)(2) requires an intent 

to injure and holding that this aggravator “does not change the type of intent 

necessary to prove . . . an O.C.G.A. § 16-5-20(a)(2) simple assault aggravated by 

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O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(b)(2); rather, the crime only requires placing the victim in 

reasonable apprehension of harm by intentionally using the aggravating object”)

(citation omitted), aff’d, 789 S.E.2d 175 (Ga. 2016). 

As we held in Moss, “[b]ecause Georgia’s aggravated assault statute, 

O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21(a)(2) . . . can be satisfied by a [mens rea] of recklessness when 

based on simple assault under § 16-5-20(a)(2), it cannot qualify as a crime of 

violence under the elements clause of the ACCA.” See Moss, 920 F.3d at 759. 

Borden affirmed this reasoning. See Moss, No. 17-10473, 2021 WL 3087754, at 

*1 (noting that Borden resolved all the issues for which the Eleventh Circuit 

granted rehearing en banc in Moss). Therefore, Carter did not have three ACCA 

predicate offenses, and the district court erred when it classified him as an armed 

career criminal subject to the ACCA’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum.2

Accordingly, we VACATE the district court’s sentence and REMAND for 

resentencing. 

2 Our conclusion in Carter’s previous appeal that the district court did not plainly err in

classifying him as an armed career criminal during his initial sentencing, Carter, 704 F. App’x at

809, is no obstacle to our holding today. The law-of-the-case doctrine does not apply when 

“controlling authority has been rendered that is contrary to the previous decision.” Klay v. All 

Defendants, 389 F.3d 1191, 1198 (11th Cir. 2004). The Court’s decision in Moss is controlling 

authority that is contrary to our previous decision. 

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