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Timestamp: 2019-04-25 15:48:50+00:00

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2 2 SHEPARD v. UNITED STATES ted burglary is generally limited to examining the statutory definition, charging document, written plea agreement, transcript of plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding by the trial judge to which the defendant assented. I Petitioner Reginald Shepard was indicted under 18 U. S. C. 922(g)(1), barring felons from possessing a firearm, and pleaded guilty. At sentencing the Government claimed that Shepard s prior convictions raised his sentencing range from between 30 and 37 months (under the United States Sentencing Guidelines) to the 15-year minimum required by 924(e), pointing to four prior convictions entered upon Shepard s pleas of guilty under one of Massachusetts s two burglary statutes. 1 Whereas the Government said that each conviction represented a predicate ACCA offense of generic burglary, the District Court ruled that Taylor barred counting any of the prior convictions as predicates for the mandatory minimum. 125 F. Supp. 2d 562, 569 (Mass. 2000). In Taylor we read the listing of burglary as a predicate violent felony (in the ACCA) to refer to what we called generic burglary, an unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime. 495 U. S., at 599. Because statutes in some States (like Massachusetts) define burglary more broadly, as by extending it to entries into boats and cars, we had to consider how a later court sentencing under the ACCA might tell whether a prior burglary conviction was for the generic offense. 2 We held that the ACCA generally 1 The Government initially cited a fifth prior burglary conviction, but after failing to obtain adequate documentation about this conviction the Government focused on the other four. 2 Although Taylor involved prior burglaries, as this case does, our holding in Taylor covered other predicate ACCA offenses. 495 U. S., at 600.
6 6 SHEPARD v. UNITED STATES facts. Ibid. Our job, then, is to find the right analogs for applying the Taylor rule to pleaded cases. The Taylor Court drew a pragmatic conclusion about the best way to identify generic convictions in jury cases, while respecting Congress s adoption of a categorical criterion that avoids subsequent evidentiary enquiries into the factual basis for the earlier conviction. The Court held that generic burglary could be identified only by referring to charging documents filed in the court of conviction, or to recorded judicial acts of that court limiting convictions to the generic category, as in giving instruction to the jury. The Court did not, however, purport to limit adequate judicial record evidence strictly to charges and instructions, id., at 602 (discussing the use of these documents as an example ), since a conviction might follow trial to a judge alone or a plea of guilty. In cases tried without a jury, the closest analogs to jury instructions would be a bench-trial judge s formal rulings of law and findings of fact, and in pleaded cases they would be the statement of factual basis for the charge, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 11(a)(3), shown by a transcript of plea colloquy or by written plea agreement presented to the court, or by a record of comparable findings of fact adopted by the defendant upon entering the plea. 3 With such material in a pleaded case, a later court could generally tell whether the plea had necessarily rested on the fact identifying the burglary as generic, Taylor, supra, at 602, just as the details of instructions could support that conclusion in the jury case, or the details of a generically limited charging document 3 Several Courts of Appeals have taken a similar view, approving the use of some or all of these documents. United States v. Bonat, 106 F. 3d 1472, (CA9 1997); United States v. Maness, 23 F. 3d 1006, (CA6 1994); United States v. Smith, 10 F. 3d 724, (CA ) (per curiam) (construing United States Sentencing Commission, Guidelines Manual 4B1.2 (Nov. 1990)).
10 10 SHEPARD v. UNITED STATES Opinion of SOUTER, J. III Developments in the law since Taylor, and since the First Circuit s decision in Harris, provide a further reason to adhere to the demanding requirement that any sentence under the ACCA rest on a showing that a prior conviction necessarily involved (and a prior plea necessarily admitted) facts equating to generic burglary. The Taylor Court, indeed, was prescient in its discussion of problems that would follow from allowing a broader evidentiary enquiry. If the sentencing court were to conclude, from its own review of the record, that the defendant [who was convicted under a nongeneric burglary statute] actually committed a generic burglary, could the defendant challenge this conclusion as abridging his right to a jury trial? Taylor, supra, at 601. The Court thus anticipated the very rule later imposed for the sake of preserving the Sixth Amendment right, that any fact other than a prior conviction sufficient to raise the limit of the possible federal sentence must be found by a jury, in the absence of any waiver of rights by the defendant. Jones v. United States, 526 U. S. 227, 243, n. 6 (1999); see also Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000). The Government dismisses the relevance of the Jones- Apprendi implementation of the jury right here by describing the determination necessary to apply the ACCA as involv[ing] only an assessment of what the state court itself already has been required to find in order to find case each prior conviction grew out of a guilty plea. See post, at 9 ( Taylor itself set no rule for guilty pleas ). But Taylor has no suggestion that its reasoning would not apply in plea cases, and its discussion of the practical difficulties specifically referred to prior guilty pleas. 495 U. S., at 601. Moreover, as we have noted, see supra, at 5, and as the dissent nowhere disputes, the ACCA provides no support for such a distinction. We decline to create a distinction that Congress evidently had no desire to draw, that Taylor did not envision, and that we would be hard pressed to explain.
12 12 SHEPARD v. UNITED STATES generic character of a prior plea, just as Taylor constrained judicial findings about the generic implication of a jury s verdict. 5 IV We hold that enquiry under the ACCA to determine whether a plea of guilty to burglary defined by a nongeneric statute necessarily admitted elements of the generic offense is limited to the terms of the charging document, the terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between judge and defendant in which the factual basis for the plea was confirmed by the defendant, or to some comparable judicial record of this information. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings. It is so ordered. THE CHIEF JUSTICE took no part in the decision of this case. 5 The dissent charges that our decision may portend the extension of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466 (2000), to proof of prior convictions, a move which (if it should occur) surely will do no favors for future defendants in Shepard s shoes. Post, at 11. According to the dissent, the Government, bearing the burden of proving the defendant s prior burglaries to the jury, would then have the right to introduce evidence of those burglaries at trial, and so threaten severe prejudice to the defendant. It is up to the future to show whether the dissent is good prophesy, but the dissent s apprehensiveness can be resolved right now, for if the dissent turns out to be right that Apprendi will reach further, any defendant who feels that the risk of prejudice is too high can waive the right to have a jury decide questions about his prior convictions.
Post-Descamps World. Paresh Patel, Federal Public Defender, D.Md.
Post-Descamps World Paresh Patel, Federal Public Defender, D.Md. Descamps v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (June 20, 2013) Clarified when and how to use the modified categorical framework Overview 1.
NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION. No. 114,107 IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS. STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee, ROBERT JOE BARNES, Appellant.
STATE OF LOUISIANA VERSUS DERRICK GUMMS NO. 17-KA-222 FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEAL STATE OF LOUISIANA ON APPEAL FROM THE TWENTY-FOURTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT PARISH OF JEFFERSON, STATE OF LOUISIANA NO.

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