Source: http://il.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.20170125_0000047.CIL.htm/qx
Timestamp: 2018-01-23 14:15:45
Document Index: 393898688

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 1951', '§ 924', '§ 2255', '§ 1951', '§ 1952', '§ 924', '§ 3559', '§ 3559', '§ 924', '§ 2255', '§ 16', '§ 4', '§ 924', '§ 3559', '§ 3559', '§ 3559', '§ 3559', '§ 3559', '§ 3559', '§ 924', '§ 1951', '§ 924', '§ 1952', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 1952', '§ 16', '§ 924', '§ 1952', '§ 1952', '§16', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 1951', '§ 924', '§ 1951', '§ 1951', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 1951', '§ 924', '§ 1952', '§ 924', '§ 1952']

This matter is before the Court on the Amended Motion Under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 To Vacate, Set Aside, Or Correct Sentence (Doc. 3) filed by Stacy M. Haynes (the “Petitioner”). The motion has been fully briefed and is ready for decision. For the reasons discussed below, the motion is GRANTED in Part and DISMISSED in Part. Mr. Haynes will be resentenced.
Rule 15(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows a party to amend its pleading once as a matter of course within either twenty-one days after serving it, or if the pleading is one to which a responsive pleading is required, twenty-one days after service of a responsive pleading or twenty-one days after service of a motion under Rule 12(b), (e), or (f), whichever is earlier. The first successive § 2255 motion (Doc. 1) was “served” upon Respondent on June 9, 2016 at the latest, which is when the Clerk added a specific Assistant United States Attorney to this action despite adding the United States of America as a party on June 6, 2016 when the action was opened and docketed. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 5; CDIL-LR 5.3. The Amended Motion (Doc. 3) was not filed within twenty-one days of June 9, 2016, but rather more than three months later on September 30, 2016.
Despite that, Rule 15(a)(2) also provides that in all other cases, a party may amend its pleading only with the opposing party's written consent or leave of court. The docket does not reveal that the Government consented to the amendment and leave of court was not sought. However, the rule provides further that the Court is to freely give leave to amend a pleading when justice so requires. Given this permissive standard and the unique significance of the habeas application discussed above, the Court finds it would be manifestly unfair to disallow the Amended Motion at this point in time, especially when the Court arguably acquiesced to the Amended Motion by entering an order directing the Government to respond to it. In the future though, proper leave of court should be sought. With that out of the way, the Court now turns to the issue of whether these two additional claims are indeed unauthorized and thus not capable of being heard by this Court.
Petitioner's second supplemental claim-that his robbery convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 1951 do not qualify as crimes of violence under post-Johnson 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)-was also not included in the first successive § 2255 motion (Doc. 1) given to the Seventh Circuit for authorization. However, it is clearly predicated upon Johnson and thus the Court believes it is based upon a new rule of constitutional law and well within the scope of the claims the Seventh Circuit authorized this Court to reach. The Court will hear it.
Petitioner, Stacy M. Haynes, was convicted of several crimes after committing several armed robberies in the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois in the mid-nineties. Specifically, Petitioner was convicted of three counts of Hobbs Act robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951, three counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1952, and six counts of using and carrying a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). The Government timely filed a notice of intent to seek a mandatory life sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(1) on each of the Hobbs Act robbery counts and the interstate travel in aid of racketeering counts. This Court found that Petitioner had the requisite number of prior serious violent felonies because he had twice been convicted of residential burglary in Illinois on two prior separate occasions. So it sentenced him accordingly after a jury convicted him. The following table will help keep straight what count corresponded to what offense and what sentence.
§ 3559 Applies
Years passed and then in 2015 the Supreme Court held in Johnson v. United States, 135 S.Ct. 2551, that the residual clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) was void for vagueness and later held in Welch v. United States, 136 S.Ct. 1257 (U.S. 2016), that Johnson applies retroactively to cases on collateral review. Johnson announced a new rule of constitutional law and Welch explicitly made it retroactive to cases on collateral review. Johnson's rule was not announced until June 2015 and thus was previously unavailable to Petitioner for use in his initial § 2255 motion filed several years ago. Since Johnson was decided, the Seventh Circuit has held that the “residual clause” of 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) is unconstitutionally vague, United States v. Vivas-Ceja, 808 F.3d 719, 723 (7th Cir. 2015), the pre-August 1, 2016 Amendment “residual clause” of the United States Sentencing Guidelines § 4B1.2(a)(2) was unconstitutionally vague, United States v. Hurlburt, 835 F.3d 715, 721 (7th Cir. Aug. 29, 2016), and that 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)'s “residual clause” is also unconstitutionally vague. United States v. Cardena, 842 F.3d 959, 996 (7th Cir. 2016).
Recognizing the handwriting on the wall, Petitioner now moves to vacate his mandatory life sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(1) because that statute's definition of the term “serious violent felony” utilizes language almost identical to language that has been held to be unconstitutionally vague. See 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(2)(F)(ii). The Court found that Petitioner qualified for the enhanced sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3559 because he had Illinois residential burglary convictions that qualified as “serious violent felonies” but residential burglary is not one of the enumerated offenses in 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(2)(F)(i). Thus, they only qualified as “serious violent felonies” under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(2)(F)(ii)'s “residual clause”. The Government concedes that if 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c)(2)(F)(ii)'s “residual clause” is found to be unconstitutional then Petitioner's residential burglaries could not qualify as serious violent felonies. It offers no meaningful opposition to Petitioner's claim as it recognizes both that the language at issue is almost identical to the language in the clauses that have been found unconstitutionally vague and that the Court is bound to follow circuit precedent.[2]
B. Use and Carry of a Firearm 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) Offenses in relation to the Convictions for Violating 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951 and 1952: Counts 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, and 13.
Petitioner's next claim is that his § 924(c) convictions for Counts 4, 6, and 11, which related to his interstate travel in support of racketeering convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 1952, must be overturned as well because of Johnson and subsequent cases applying Johnson's holding.
Section 924(c) states in relevant part that “any person who, during and in relation to any crime of violence… uses or carries a firearm, or who, in furtherance of any such crime, possesses a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime of violence” be subjected to some very severe penalties. “Crime of violence” was defined as an offense that is a felony and-
18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3). Cardena held that 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)'s residual clause is unconstitutionally vague under the principles set forth in Johnson. 842 F.3d at 996 (“we hold that the residual clause in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B) is also unconstitutionally vague.”). Thus, a crime of violence under § 924(c) can only be a felony that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.
Petitioner argues that the definition of “crime of violence” utilized in 18 U.S.C. § 1952 in his trial is the definition provided for in § 16(b) as it existed before Johnson and Vivas-Ceja were decided and thus includes the phrase “any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.” Petitioner argues further that the presence of this residual clause renders it broader than the post-Johnson, post-Cardena version of § 924(c)(3) and renders the two statutes incapable of matching up under the familiar categorical approach originally espoused in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 600 (1990) and later elucidated in Mathis v. United States, 136 S.Ct. 2243 (2016). In other words, viewing the definition of crime of violence as an element of the § 1952 offense, that element is broader than the definition of the 924(c) offense because the § 1952 offense encompassed the pre-Vivas-Ceja version of §16(b). Therefore, the two statutes do not match up under the categorical approach as explained by the Supreme Court in Mathis.
The Government responds that Mathis is not properly applicable to this case. This is so because in Mathis, the court was concerned with whether a sentencing judge had properly determined whether the defendant had qualifying convictions for an enhanced sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Whereas here, in contrast, a jury found that Petitioner had engaged in a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), the underlying offense being a Hobbs Act robbery that has the use of physical force against a person or property as an element. Moreover, each of Counts 1, 3, 5, 8, and 10 contained language that accused Petitioner of displaying a firearm while committing the offense.
So now, the discussion segues into Counts 3, 5, and 10 and the statutory definition of the term “robbery.” Petitioner also claims that his § 924(c) violations in relation to his three Hobbs Act robbery convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 1951, Counts 2, 9, and 13, must be overturned because of the voiding of the residual clause and the fact that a Hobbs Act robbery can be accomplished without the use of physical force. Rather than discuss them separately, the discussion will now focus on all six § 924(c) counts because in the Court's opinion, they all ultimately hinge to varying degree on the definition of “robbery” in 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(1).
Moreover, the parties agree that when applying the categorical approach a court presumes “the conviction rested on the least serious acts that could satisfy the statute, ” United States v. Armour, 840 F.3d 904, 908 (7th Cir. 2016), and that the “least serious act” would be fear of injury to property. Rather than recapitulate the Petitioner's argument further, the Court will quote him directly:
(Doc. 3 at 19 (emphasis added)). The Petitioner's argument has merit. The Government responds by citing cases for the proposition that the Hobbs Act “fear of injury” is equivalent to the threatened use of physical force. See United States v Duncan, 833 F.3d 751, 755 (7th Cir. 2016); Armour, 840 F.3d at 907. The Court finds these cases and their holdings are either not applicable, or not persuasive, as the case may be, for the following two reasons.
Second, the Court disagrees with the Government that the term “fear of injury” that appears in the definition of Hobbs Act “robbery” is the equivalent of the threatened use of physical force as a matter of statutory interpretation. This Court reads the statute to mean that a robbery is effectuated when either force, violence or fear of injury to the person or property of another are utilized to take a possession. 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(1). The statute would not include these three terms “force”, “violence”, “fear of injury” disjunctively as alternate means of violating the statute if they all meant the same thing. The Court will spare the reader from another table however, the reader should understand that the language of the statute provides several distinct definitional combinations that explain the different ways in which one can violate this statute. For example, one could use immediate actual force, or future threatened force, or future fear of injury, or immediate fear of injury, all to effectuate an unlawful taking. In short, the statute utilizes these three terms to bring within its purview a broader range of conduct than it could have done otherwise if the terms all meant the same thing. The Court believes this reading of the statute better comports with the familiar canon of statutory interpretation that a court should not interpret a statute in such a way that renders any part of it superfluous or otherwise ineffective. See Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 174 (2001).
Very recently, this Court concluded that a crime of violence used in a § 924(c) conviction was sound under Mathis (and the cases that preceded Mathis) because the underlying crime was ultimately one where the jury was compelled to find that the defendant had engaged in the use of violent force. See DeSilva v. United States, No. 4:16-CV-4134, 2016 WL 6495393 (C.D. Ill. Nov. 2, 2016). DeSilva is distinguishable from this case because there, the nature of the ultimate crime was such that there had to have been an element of physical force in order for the jury to find DeSilva guilty of the 924(c) offense. See Id. at *6 (underlying offense was attempted Illinois aggravated battery with a firearm which obviously fit as the use or carrying of a firearm while committing a crime of violence). Here, the jury could have found that the Hobbs Act robbery occurred without finding that physical force was utilized and therefore, these § 924(c) convictions predicated on the Hobbs Act robberies directly under § 1951 cannot stand, nor can the § 924(c) convictions predicated on the Hobbs Act robberies indirectly as § 1952 underlying offenses.
Next, the Government relies on the harmless error doctrine as to the § 924(c) convictions predicated on the § 1952 offenses and argues that Petitioner cannot establish that he was harmed by the inclusion of the residual clause in the instruction to the jury essentially because the facts demonstrate that he used actual threatened force to effectuate the robberies. (Doc. 7 at 20). Petitioner replies that because the crime of violence definition is indivisible, there is no alternative instruction under which ...