Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7120_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

8 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

Indiana’s vehicular flight crime is a violent felony.”  Id., at 
___ (majority opinion) (slip op., at 8).  But common sense is 
a much less useful criterion than it sounds—as Sykes itself 
illustrates.  The  Indiana  statute  involved  in  that  case 
covered everything from provoking a high-speed car chase 
to merely failing to stop immediately after seeing a police
officer’s signal.  See id., at ___ (KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip
op., at 3–4).  How does common sense help a federal court 
discern  where  the  “ordinary  case”  of  vehicular  flight  in 
Indiana lies along this spectrum?  Common sense has not 
even produced a consistent conception of the degree of risk 
posed  by  each  of  the  four  enumerated  crimes;  there  is  no
reason to expect it to fare any better with respect to thou­
sands  of  unenumerated  crimes.  All  in  all,  James,  Cham-
bers,  and  Sykes  failed  to  establish  any  generally  appli­
cable  test  that  prevents  the  risk  comparison  required  by 
the  residual  clause  from  devolving  into  guesswork  and 
intuition. 

The  remaining  case,  Begay,  which  preceded  Chambers 
and Sykes, took an entirely different approach.  The Court 
held that in order to qualify as a violent felony under the 
residual  clause,  a  crime  must  resemble  the  enumerated 
offenses  “in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree  of  risk  posed.”    553 
U. S.,  at  143.    The  Court  deemed  drunk  driving  insuffi­
ciently  similar  to  the  listed  crimes,  because  it  typically
does  not  involve  “purposeful,  violent,  and  aggressive  con­
duct.”  Id., at 144–145 (internal quotation marks omitted). 
Alas,  Begay  did  not  succeed  in  bringing  clarity  to  the
meaning of the residual clause.  It did not (and could not) 
eliminate the need to imagine the kind of conduct typically
involved  in  a  crime.  In  addition,  the  enumerated  crimes 
are not much more similar to one another in kind than in 
degree  of  risk  posed,  and  the  concept  of  “aggressive  con­
duct”  is  far  from  clear.  Sykes  criticized  the  “purposeful,
violent,  and  aggressive”  test  as  an  “addition  to  the  statu­
tory text,” explained that “levels of risk” would normally be