NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
CHAUNCEY L. WILLIAMS,

Petitioner

- Appellant,

v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent

- Appellee. No. 17

- 35279
D.C. Nos. 3:16

- cv - 05559

- BHS

3:11

- cr - 05505

- BHS

- 1

MEMORANDUM *

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington Benjamin H. Settle, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted December 10, 2019

Seattle, Washington Before: McKEOWN and CHRISTEN, Circuit Judges, and HARPOOL, ** District Judge. Chauncey Williams appeals the district court’s denial of his habeas petition
under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 , in which he sought to v acate his 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii) conviction for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36

- 3.

** The Honorable M. Douglas Harpool, United States District Judge for the Western District of Missouri, sitting by designation. 

# FILED

DEC 24 2019

MOLLY C. DWYER , CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS2

of violence. The parties are familiar with the facts, so we need not repeat them here. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2253 , and we deny the petition.
We review de novo the denial of a § 2255 motion. United States v. C h acon
Palom a res , 208 F.3d 1157, 1158 (9th Cir. 2000). The burden is on Williams to establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, that his “sentence was imposed in
violation of the Constitution or laws of the U nited States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a). Williams argues his conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924 (c) is unconstitutional
after J ohnson v. United States , 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015) , which invalidated the
residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutio nally vague
. Even assuming, without deciding, that Williams can overcome the procedural
hurdles i mplicated by United States v. Blackstone , 903 F.3d 1020, 102 6

- 28 (9 th Cir. 2018) , Williams’s petition fails on its merits. The question is whether Williams ’ s armed postal robbery conviction under
18 U.S.C. § 2114(a) was categorized as a crime of violence under the residual
clause or the elements clause of § 924(c)(3). To assist in this inquiry , we apply a modified categorical approach. “The modified categorical approach allows courts to look beyond the statutory text to a limited set of documents to determine the
elements of the . . . offense of which the defendant was convicted when so me alternative elements of the . . . crime would match the federal, generic crime, and
other alternative elements would not.” Rendon v. Holder , 764 F.3d 1077, 1083 (9th3

Cir. 2014). We may apply the modified categorical approach only where a statute
has a divisible structure

. Mathis v. United States , 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2249 (2016). A statute is divisible when it contains “multiple, alternative elements of functionally separate crimes,” as opposed to alternative means of committing the same crime

. Rendon , 764 F.3d at 1 08 4

- 8 5

. The divisibility of a statute can generally be
determined on its face. Mathis , 136 S. Ct. at 2256

. T he parties agree § 2114(a) is divisible into a standard offense and an aggravated offense under Mathis

. We conclude the aggravated offense of § 2114(a) is further divisible into three specific aggravated offenses: wounding a person having custody of United States mail , money , or other property of the United States; placing that person’s life in jeopar dy by use of a dangerous weapon; and committing the crime after a prior § 2114(a) conviction

. 18 U.S.C. § 2114(a)

. Because the statute is divisible , we turn to the Shepard documents to
determine the specific offense of Williams ’ s conviction. See generally United States v. Shelby , 939 F.3d 975, 980 (9th Cir. 2019). The j ury instruction s make
clear Williams was convicted under the “ life in jeopardy ” subclause because “while committing the robbery, [Williams] jeopardized the life of the person described in the indictment by using a dangerous weapon.”
W e next consider whether that subclause qualifies as a crime of violence4

under the elements clause of § 924(c)(3)

. Under the elements clause, a “crime of
violence” is defin ed as a felony that “ has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another .” 18
U.S.C. § 924(c)(3) (A). Physical force, as it appears in the similarly

- worded elements clause of the
A rmed Care er Criminal Act , m eans “ violent physical force

— ‘ that is, force capable of causing physical pain or injury to another person. ’ ” United States v. Gutierrez , 876 F.3d 1254, 1256 (9th Cir. 2017) (quoting Curtis Johnson v. United States , 559 U.S. 133, 140 (2010 )). The force required for common law robbery meets this
definition. Stokeling v. United States , 139 S. Ct. 544 , 551 (2019). At common law, “[i]f an act physically overcame a victim’s resistance, ‘however slight’ that resistance might be, it necessarily co nstituted violence,” and hence amounted to robbery. Id . at 550 (citation omitted).
A rmed postal robbery as committed under t he life in jeopardy subclause is a
crime of violence. The subclause expressly requires t he use of a dangerous weapon that “puts [the victim’s] life in jeopardy.” § 2114(a). We have recognized that “[p]utting life in jeopardy . . . requires a holdup involvi ng the use of a dangerous weapon actually so used during the robbery that the life of the person being robbed is placed in an objective state of danger.” United States v. Coulter , 474 F.2d 1004, 1005 (9th Cir. 1973) (internal quotation omitted). Using a fi rearm or other deadly5

weapon to place a victim’s life in danger during a robbery involves a threatened use of physical force within the meaning of Curtis Johnson

. Because Williams’s conviction under § 2114(a) constitutes a crime of
violence under the eleme nts clause of § 924(c)(3), both Johnson and United States

v. Davis , 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019) , are inapplicable to Williams’s conviction and do

not provide a remedy.
PETITION DENIED

.