Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1459_n7ip.pdf
Page Number: 29

12 

UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

Davis  and  adopt  in  its  place  the  conduct-based  approach 
that the Davis dissent described.  Overruling Davis would 
revive  §924(c)’s  residual  clause,  once  again  allowing  the 
statute to capture the vast majority of §924(c) convictions
that elude an elements clause straightjacketed by the cate-
gorical approach. 

With a revived residual clause, resolving this case is easy.
Taylor’s counsel acknowledged that Congress “enacted the 
residual clause to capture cases just like” Taylor’s.  Tr. of 
Oral  Arg.  48–49.  His  confessed  conduct—an  attempted 
armed  robbery  during  which  the  victim  was  shot  and 
killed—“by  its  nature,  involve[d]  a  substantial  risk  that 
physical force” would be used.  §924(c)(3)(B).  Thus, Taylor
committed  a  predicate  offense  that  supported  his  §924(c) 
conviction.  Taylor’s  appeal  should  therefore  fail,  and  he 
should  serve  the  10  years  in  prison  he  received  for  the
§924(c) conviction.

This same logic would have saved the other convictions
described above.  Equipped with a revived residual clause 
focused  on  the  defendant’s  actual  conduct,  those  federal 
courts would not have had to vacate the §924(c) convictions
of  kidnapers  who  threatened  families,  terrorists  who 
bombed sporting events, or murderers who shot their vic-
tims.  In other words, those courts could have applied the 
statute  that  Congress  enacted  rather  than  the  one  this
Court effectively rewrote and then nullified. 

IV 
The  costs  of  our  decisions  imposing  the  categorical  ap-
proach on §924(c) and other statutes have been immense. 
Apart  from  the  unnatural  results  it  produces  in  §924(c) 
cases, the categorical approach has led to equally baffling
ones in the ACCA context and elsewhere.  See, e.g., Burris, 
912 F. 3d, at 407 (Thapar, J., concurring) (“A casual reader 
. . . might struggle to understand why we are even debating