Opinion ID: 1233533
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Chambers and our Prior Decision

Text: In Luster, 305 F.3d at 201, the defendant had been convicted of simply absent[ing] himself from [his] place of confinement without the use of force or violence. Despite the absence of any use of force or violence in effecting his departure from custody, we concluded that the defendant's crime of conviction present[ed] a serious risk of physical injury to another. Id. at 202. We reasoned that any crime involving a refusal to submit to lawful state detention was a continuing crime involving a continuing effort on the part of the defendant to evade police and avoid capture. Id. We concluded that `every escape scenario is a powder keg, which may or may not explode into violence and result in physical injury to someone at any given time, but which always has the serious potential to do so.' Id. (quoting United States v. Gosling, 39 F.3d 1140, 1142 (10th Cir.1994)). Based on Luster, our original decision in this case held that the crime of escape, even escape effected without force or violence, by its very nature `presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.' Hopkins, 264 Fed.Appx. at 176 (3d Cir.2008) (quoting Luster, 305 F.3d at 202). In Chambers, the Supreme Court analyzed an Illinois statute to determine whether the petitioner, who had been convicted of failing to report to a penal institution as required by his sentence, had committed a violent felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act (the ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 690. While the Court was not called upon to construe the career offender provision of the Sentencing Guidelines, the definition of a violent felony under the ACCA is sufficiently similar to the definition of a crime of violence under the Sentencing Guidelines [1] that authority interpreting one is generally applied to the other, as demonstrated by the Supreme Court's remand order in this case. Hopkins, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 995, 173 L.Ed.2d 285 (2009); see also United States v. Seay, 553 F.3d 732, 738 (4th Cir.2009); United States v. Herrick, 545 F.3d 53, 58 (1st Cir.2008). The Illinois statute involved in Chambers encompassed seven different criminal activities including escape from a penal institution and failing to report for periodic imprisonment. Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 691 (citing 720 Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 720, § 5/31-6(a)). The Court noted that the statute criminalized distinct kinds of behaviors involving varying degrees of social risks and carrying different punishments. It determined that, when ascertaining the offense of conviction in such a case, it is appropriate to treat the statute as creating a number of categories of offenses and to group together those offenses involving similar forms of behavior and similar degrees of seriousness. Based on the fact that the statute treated an escape from custody as a more serious offense than failure to report for imprisonment and the Court's perception that the latter involved less risk of physical harm than the former, failure to report was held to constitute an offense distinct from the offense of escape from a penal institution. Using the information in the state court record, the Court found that Chambers had pled guilty to knowingly failing to report to the county jail. The Court then determined that the crime of failing to report was unlike the crimes of violence specifically designated as such in the concluding sentence of the definition: Conceptually speaking, the crime amounts to a form of inaction, a far cry from the purposeful, `violent,' and `aggressive' conduct potentially at issue when an offender uses explosives against property, commits arson, burgles a dwelling or residence, or engages in certain forms of extortion. Cf. id., 553 U.S. at ___, 128 S.Ct., at 1586. While an offender who fails to report must of course be doing something at the relevant time, there is no reason to believe that the something poses a serious potential risk of physical injury. Cf. James, 550 U.S., at 203-204, 127 S.Ct. 1586, 167 L.Ed.2d 532. To the contrary, an individual who fails to report would seem unlikely, not likely, to call attention to his whereabouts by simultaneously engaging in additional violent and unlawful conduct. Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 692. In response to the question whether an offender who has failed to report is significantly more likely than others to attack, or physically to resist, an apprehender, the Court provided a negative response based in part upon a study of the Sentencing Commission which strongly support[ed] the intuitive belief that failure to report does not involve a serious potential risk of physical injury. Id. [2] Chambers ' holding that the crime of failure to report does not by its nature present a serious potential risk of physical injury to another is in conflict with our previous view that any crime involving a refusal to submit to lawful state detention does present such a risk. Accordingly, accepting the lessons taught by Chambers, we will undertake to determine anew what Hopkins' crime of conviction was and whether that crime, by its nature, presents a serious potential element of risk of injury to another.