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6 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

may be spotted by a police officer, a private security guard,
or  a  participant  in  a  neighborhood  watch  program.    Or  a 
homeowner  . .  .  may  give  chase,  and  a  violent  encounter 
may  ensue.”    550  U. S.,  at  211.    The  dissent,  by  contrast,
asserted  that  any  confrontation  that  occurs  during  an 
attempted  burglary  “is  likely  to  consist  of  nothing  more
than  the  occupant’s  yelling  ‘Who’s  there?’  from  his  win­
dow, and the burglar’s running away.”  Id., at 226 (opinion 
of  SCALIA,  J.).    The  residual  clause  offers  no  reliable  way 
to choose between these competing accounts of what “ordi­
nary” attempted burglary involves. 

At the same time, the residual clause leaves uncertainty
about  how  much  risk  it  takes  for  a  crime  to  qualify  as  a 
violent felony.  It is one thing to apply an imprecise “seri­
ous potential risk” standard to real-world facts; it is quite
another  to  apply  it  to  a  judge-imagined  abstraction.  By
asking whether the crime “otherwise involves conduct that 
presents  a  serious  potential  risk,”  moreover,  the  residual 
clause forces courts to interpret “serious potential risk” in 
light  of  the  four  enumerated  crimes—burglary,  arson, 
extortion,  and  crimes  involving  the  use  of  explosives. 
These offenses are “far from clear in respect to the degree
of  risk  each  poses.”  Begay,  553  U. S.,  at  143.    Does  the 
ordinary burglar invade an occupied home by night or an
unoccupied  home  by  day?    Does  the  typical  extortionist
threaten his victim in person with the use of force, or does 
he  threaten  his  victim  by  mail  with  the  revelation  of  em­
barrassing  personal  information?    By  combining  indeter­
minacy  about  how  to  measure  the  risk  posed  by  a  crime 
with  indeterminacy  about  how  much  risk  it  takes  for  the 
crime  to  qualify  as  a  violent  felony,  the  residual  clause 
produces more unpredictability and arbitrariness than the 
Due Process Clause tolerates. 

This Court has acknowledged that the failure of “persis­
tent  efforts  . . .  to  establish  a  standard”  can  provide  evi­
dence  of  vagueness.  United  States  v.  L.  Cohen  Grocery