Opinion ID: 202903
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Taylor-Shepard-James Trilogy

Text: The Supreme Court has undertaken the difficult task of determining whether a prior conviction under state law constitutes a violent felony under the ACCA in a trilogy of cases beginning with Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990). In Taylor, the Supreme Court instructed sentencing courts to take a categorical approach, which generally looks only to the fact of conviction and the statutory definition of the prior offense. Id. at 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143. In order to impose an ACCA enhancement based on a defendant's prior conviction under state law for burglary under clause (ii), a sentencing court must refer to the statutory elements of the prior offense to ensure that the defendant was in fact convicted of generic burglary  that is, the unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime. Id. at 599, 110 S.Ct. 2143. Where the state law definition of burglary was broader than the generic offense, under a so-called nongeneric burglary statute, the categorical approach permits the court to examine the record of conviction to determine whether a jury was actually required to find all the elements of generic burglary. Id. at 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143. The Court explained, For example, in a State whose burglary statutes include entry of an automobile as well as a building, if the indictment or information and jury instructions show that the defendant was charged only with a burglary of a building, and that the jury necessarily had to find an entry of a building to convict, then the Government should be allowed to use the conviction for enhancement. Id. We have called this a two-tiered categorical approach. United States v. Miller, 478 F.3d 48, 50 (1st Cir.2007). In Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 25, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005), the Supreme Court addressed this categorical approach in the context of a prior guilty plea to an offense under a nongeneric burglary statute, holding that an inquiry 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. Id. at 26, 125 S.Ct. 1254. The Court, however, rejected the use of a police report as a basis for judicial fact-finding because permitting a sentencing judge considering an ACCA enhancement to make a disputed finding of fact about what the defendant and state judge must have understood as the factual basis of the prior plea raises Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment concerns. Id. at 25-26, 125 S.Ct. 1254. Recently, the Supreme Court again used the categorical approach to determine whether an offense qualifies as a violent felony under the ACCA's residual clause. In James v. United States, 550 U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 1586, 1594, 167 L.Ed.2d 532 (2007), the Court considered whether Florida's attempted burglary statute presented a sufficient potential risk of injury to qualify as a violent felony within the meaning of the ACCA's residual provision. In so doing, the Court stated that the specific offenses enumerated in Section 924(e)(2)(ii) provide one baseline from which to measure whether other similar conduct `otherwise' . . . presents a serious potential risk of physical injury. Id. at 1594. The Court found that the risk posed by attempted burglary under Florida law  like that posed by its closest clause (ii) analogue, completed burglary  arises from the possibility of a face-to-face confrontation between the burglar and a third party  whether an occupant, a police officer, or a bystander  who comes to investigate. That is, the risk arises not from the completion of the burglary, but from the possibility that an innocent person might appear while the crime is in progress. Id. at 1594-95 (citing United States v. Payne, 966 F.2d 4, 8 (1st Cir.1992)). Indeed, the Court reasoned, third-party encounters may occur much more frequently during attempted burglaries [than the completed sort] because it is precisely due to such encounters that many planned burglaries do not progress beyond the attempt stage. Id. at 1599. Thus, because attempted burglary under Florida law presented at least as much risk as completed burglary, the Court concluded that it qualified as a violent felony under the residual clause. Id. at 1598. The Supreme Court articulated the categorical approach as follows: [W]e consider whether the elements of the offense are of the type that would justify its inclusion within the residual provision, without inquiring into the specific conduct of th[e] particular offender. Id. at 1594 (emphasis in original). The Court clarified that the residual clause does not require that every conceivable factual offense covered by a statute must necessarily present a serious potential risk of injury before the offense can be deemed a violent felony. Id. at 1597 (citing Gonzales v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 815, 822, 166 L.Ed.2d 683 (2007)). Rather, the proper inquiry is whether the conduct encompassed by the elements of the offense, in the ordinary case, presents a serious potential risk of injury to another. . . . As long as an offense is of a type that, by its nature, presents a serious potential risk of injury to another, it satisfies the requirements of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii)'s residual provision. Id. (emphasis added). The Supreme Court recognized the difficulty of assessing risk for the full range of state-law crimes. See id. at 1598 n. 5 (acknowledging that the ACCA requires judges to make sometimes difficult evaluations of the risks posed by different offenses). For example, it refers to an escape crime. See id. at 1599 (Without hard statistics . . . how is a lower court to determine whether the risk posed by generic burglary is greater or less than the risk posed by an entirely unrelated unenumerated offense-say, escape from prison?); see generally United States v. Davis, 487 F.3d 282, 287 (5th Cir.2007) (recognizing that the enumerated offenses in clause (ii) merely provide a starting point in the inquiry of whether there is a serious risk for physical injury).