Opinion ID: 4558500
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Heading: On or about the day of , 20 , the

Text: defendant was armed with (object or weapon). 2. (Object or weapon) was a dangerous weapon as defined in Instruction No. . 3. The defendant was armed with the specific intent to use (object or weapon) against another person. 4. While armed with the (object or weapon) the defendant moved from one place to another. Iowa Crim. Jury Instructions § 800.15. The Iowa Supreme Court has advised that “trial courts should generally adhere to the uniform instructions.” State v. Mitchell, 568 N.W.2d 493, 501 (Iowa 1997); see also State v. Ambrose, 861 N.W.2d 550, 559 (Iowa 2015) (noting the Court is “slow to disapprove of the uniform jury instructions”). And both Bennett and the United States rely on the Iowa Criminal Jury Instructions to establish the elements of going armed with intent. See Brief of Appellant at 19; Brief of Appellee/Cross-Appellant at 19. The statute and applicable jury instructions lead us to conclude that a defendant could be convicted of going armed with intent based on movement not - 12 - constituting a “substantial step” toward the use of physical force. The Iowa Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Harris, 891 N.W.2d 182 (Iowa 2017) (applying pre-2017 amendment version of statute), reinforces this conclusion. In Harris, after a verbal altercation with his eventual victim inside a bar, the defendant exited the bar and leaned on the wall outside, smoking a cigarette. Id. at 187. When his victim came outside several minutes later, the defendant stabbed him with a knife. Id. The Court held that the defendant’s exit from the bar, while carrying the knife, was enough to satisfy the movement element of going armed with intent—even though this movement was away from the victim, and without any express finding that the defendant left the bar with intent to ambush his victim. Id. Harris thus demonstrates that the movement element of going armed with intent need not be a substantial step towards the use of physical force against the person of another.5 In United States v. Gomez-Hernandez, 300 F.3d 974, 980 (8th Cir. 2002), this Court stated that going armed with intent “will in many (if not all) cases constitute an attempted use of physical force against the victim.” Applying the modified categorical approach, we determined that the Gomez-Hernandez defendant committed a crime of violence because he actually used physical force against the victim. Id. at 980–81. After we decided Gomez-Hernandez, the Supreme Court made clear in Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. 254 (2013), that we may not apply the modified categorical approach to an indivisible criminal statute. Id. at 260; see also Mathis, 136 S. Ct. at 2253. Thus, we are confronted today with the question implicitly left unanswered in Gomez-Hernandez—i.e., whether going armed with intent constitutes the attempted use of physical force in all cases. Under the categorical approach, the gap between “many” and “all” is determinative. We 5 Under the government’s “attempted use theory,” the Harris defendant was guilty of an ACCA violent felony the moment he stepped out of the bar, because he had satisfied the movement element and movement is necessarily a substantial step towards commission of the crime. - 13 - find there is a “realistic probability” that going armed with intent encompasses conduct not involving the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force. Martin, 904 F.3d at 596. Thus, going armed with intent under Iowa Code §708.8 (1997) is not a violent felony under ACCA. Because we hold going armed with intent is not an ACCA-qualifying violent felony, we need not reach Bennett’s alternative argument that his conviction for willful injury is also not an ACCA predicate felony. The district court correctly declined to sentence Bennett as an armed career criminal.