UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT 

No. 08-4031

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Plaintiff - Appellee, 

 v. 

COYT BRYANT, 

 Defendant - Appellant. 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern 

District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. Malcolm J. Howard, 

Senior District Judge. (4:06-cr-00035-H-1) 

Submitted: July 8, 2009 Decided: July 20, 2009 

Before TRAXLER, Chief Judge, and MOTZ and AGEE, Circuit Judges. 

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. 

Richard Croutharmel, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. 

George E. B. Holding, United States Attorney, Anne M. Hayes, 

Jennifer P. May-Parker, Assistant United States Attorneys, 

Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. 
PER CURIAM: 

 Coyt Bryant appeals his conviction on a guilty plea 

and sentence on a charge of possession of a firearm by a 

convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g), 924 

(2006). The district court enhanced Bryant’s sentence, after 

determining that he qualified as an Armed Career Criminal, and 

sentenced him to 195 months’ imprisonment and a five-year term 

of supervised release. On appeal, Bryant challenges only the 

district court’s reliance on a prior New York state conviction 

for second degree attempted burglary, asserting that the 

conviction does not qualify as a predicate offense under the 

Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) because he received a 

sentence of exactly one year. We affirm. 

 Under § 924(e), a “violent felony” is defined as a 

crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year 

that is one of several specified offenses, or a crime that 

“otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential 

risk of physical injury to another.” 18 U.S.C. 

§ 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) (2006). In determining whether a crime is a 

violent felony within the meaning of § 924(e), the offense 

properly is considered generically in terms of how the offense 

is defined under the law, rather than in terms of how an 

individual offender might have committed it on a given occasion. 

Begay v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 1581, 1584 (2008). 

2 
3 

Declining, as in United States v. Jones, 195 F.3d 205 (4th Cir. 

1999), to apply an “individualized analysis,” we held in United 

States v. Harp, 406 F.3d 242 (4th Cir. 2005), that, “to 

determine whether a conviction is for a crime punishable by a 

prison term exceeding one year, Jones dictates that we consider 

the maximum aggravated sentence that could be imposed for that 

crime upon a defendant with the worst possible criminal 

history.” Harp, 406 F.3d at 246 (emphasis omitted). 

 Bryant does not dispute that the maximum sentence that 

could be imposed upon any defendant under the law in New York 

for a conviction for second degree attempted burglary could 

exceed one year.* Accordingly, we find no error by the district 

court in applying the § 924(e)(1) enhancement, and we affirm 

Bryant’s conviction and sentence. We dispense with oral 

argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately 

presented in the materials before the court and argument would 

not aid the decisional process. 

AFFIRMED

 *

 A court may take judicial notice of statutory penalties. 

See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 442 F.3d 1259, 1261 (10th 

Cir. 2006) (“statutes are considered legislative facts” of which 

the authority of courts to take judicial notice is 

“unquestionable”).