Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7120_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

injure  someone.    The  act  of  making  an  extortionate  de­
mand  or  breaking  and  entering  into  someone’s  home 
does  not,  in  and  of  itself,  normally  cause  physical  injury.
Rather, risk of injury arises because the extortionist might
engage in violence after making his demand or because the
burglar might confront a resident in the home after break­
ing and entering.

We  are  convinced  that  the  indeterminacy  of  the  wide-
ranging  inquiry  required  by  the  residual  clause  both  de­
nies  fair  notice  to  defendants  and  invites  arbitrary  en­
forcement  by  judges.    Increasing  a  defendant’s  sentence
under the clause denies due process of law. 

A 
Two  features  of  the  residual  clause  conspire  to  make  it
unconstitutionally  vague.  In  the  first  place,  the  residual
clause leaves grave uncertainty about how to estimate the 
risk  posed  by  a  crime.    It  ties  the  judicial  assessment  of
risk to a judicially imagined “ordinary case” of a crime, not
to real-world facts or statutory elements.  How does one go 
about deciding what kind of conduct the “ordinary case” of
a  crime  involves?  “A  statistical  analysis  of  the  state  re­
porter?    A  survey?    Expert  evidence?    Google?  Gut  in­
stinct?”  United  States  v.  Mayer,  560  F. 3d  948,  952  (CA9
2009) (Kozinski, C. J., dissenting from denial of rehearing 
en banc).  To take an example, does the ordinary instance 
of  witness  tampering  involve  offering  a  witness  a  bribe? 
Or threatening a witness with violence?  Critically, pictur­
ing  the  criminal’s  behavior  is  not  enough;  as  we  have 
already  discussed,  assessing  “potential  risk”  seemingly 
requires  the  judge  to  imagine  how  the  idealized  ordinary 
case  of  the  crime  subsequently  plays  out.  James  illus­
trates  how  speculative  (and  how  detached  from  statutory 
elements)  this  enterprise  can  become.  Explaining  why 
attempted burglary poses a serious potential risk of physi­
cal  injury,  the  Court  said:  “An  armed  would-be  burglar