Opinion ID: 3162598
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defendant’s Robbery Conviction

Text: Under Tennessee law, robbery is defined as “the intentional or knowing theft of property from the person of another by violence or putting the person in fear.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 39–13– 401(a). In Mitchell, this Court held that a Tennessee conviction for robbery qualifies as a violent felony under the ACCA’s use-of-force clause. 743 F.3d at 1059. We first concluded that the statute satisfied the use-of-force clause. We explained that “violence,” as determined by the Tennessee Supreme Court, means “physical force unlawfully exercised so as to injure, damage or abuse.” Mitchell, 743 F.3d at 1059 (quoting State v. Fitz, 19 S.W.3d 213, 214 (Tenn. 2000) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). Therefore, the statute’s element of violence “satisfie[d] § 924(e)(2)(B)(i)’s requirement of the ‘use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force.’” Id. We also determined that the element of “fear” satisfied § 924(e)(2)(B)(i). We recognized that the Tennessee Supreme Court has held that the “fear constituting an element of robbery is a fear of bodily injury and of present personal peril from violence offered or impending.” Id. (quoting State v. Taylor, 771 S.W.2d 387, 398 (Tenn. 1989) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). In applying the definition of violence as determined by the Tennessee Supreme Court in Fitz, we explained that “the commission of a robbery through fear, which in Tennessee reduces to the fear of bodily injury from physical force offered or impending, directly corresponds to § 924(e)(2)(B)(i)’s ‘use . . . or threatened use of force.’” Id. Therefore, “robbery in violation of . . . Tenn. Code Ann. § 39–13–401 is categorically a ‘violent felony’ under § 924(e)(2)(B)(i) of the ACCA.” Id. at 1060. Finally, we determined that under the categorical approach, robbery as defined by the Tennessee statute qualified as a violent felony under the residual clause as well. Id. at 1060-63 (holding that a conviction under Tenn. No. 15-5136 United States v. Priddy Page 12 Code Ann. § 39–13–401 “categorically qualif[ies] as [a] ‘violent felon[y]’ under the residual clause of the ACCA”). More recently, this Court held in United States v. Kemmerling, 612 F. App’x 373, 376 (6th Cir. 2015) that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Johnson “did not affect the ‘use of physical force clause’” and affirmed a defendant’s ACCA-enhanced sentence because his prior Tennessee robbery conviction qualified as a violent felony under the use-of-force clause. See also United States v. Bailey, No. 14-6524, 2015 WL 4257103, at  (6th Cir. July 15, 2015) (holding that, even after Johnson, the defendant’s Tennessee conviction for robbery is categorically a violent felony under the ACCA’s use-of-force clause). Defendant argues that Mitchell’s decision turned upon the ACCA’s residual clause definition of violent felony and therefore its precedential value is now less clear. However, it is clear that the Supreme Court’s holding in Johnson does not disrupt the holding in Mitchell. The Mitchell court found that under the categorical approach, a Tennessee robbery conviction is a violent felony under both the use-of-force clause and the residual clause. The conviction need only qualify as a violent felony under one of the clauses. Therefore, even in light of the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the residual clause, this Court’s determination remains unchanged that under the categorical approach, robbery in Tennessee is a predicate offense under the use-offorce clause.