Opinion ID: 215490
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Separate Offenses

Text: The ACCA defines an armed career criminal as one who has three prior convictions for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, committed on occasions different from one another. . . . 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). Since the time of the district court's decision, this court has held that only Shepard -approved records may be consulted when determining if the felonies were committed on separate occasions. United States v. Sneed, 600 F.3d 1326 (11th Cir.2010). Thus, the precedent that the district court thought might be overruled  United States v. Richardson  has been. But that does not end our inquiry because the district court made alternative holdings that there were three separate offenses and one of those holdings was made using only Shepard -approved records. We now review de novo the district court's conclusion that there were three separate offenses. United States v. Lee, 208 F.3d 1306, 1307 (11th Cir.2000). As we have stated in other cases, the ACCA does not require separate indictments but it does require that the crimes be temporally distinct. United States v. Sweeting, 933 F.2d 962, 967 (11th Cir.1991). Thus the government is required to show that `the three previous convictions arose out of a separate and distinct criminal episode.' Sneed, 600 F.3d at 1329-30 (quoting United States v. Pope, 132 F.3d 684, 689 (11th Cir.1998)). We have further stated that [m]ere temporal proximity is ordinarily insufficient to merge multiple offenses into a single criminal episode. Distinctions in time and place are usually sufficient to separate criminal episodes from one another even when the gaps are small. Id. at 1330 (quoting Pope, 132 F.3d at 690). If some temporal break happens between two offenses, we consider them distinct. Id. The convictions that Proch argues are part of one criminal episode involve two burglary offenses committed on the same day at separate addresses on the same street and an escape committed on the same day. This court has addressed similar fact patterns with differing results that are instructive. In Pope, this court determined that the defendant's burglary of two offices 200 yards apart, committed in immediate succession, constituted separate offenses. The court reasoned that the defendant had successfully completed one burglary and had time to decide to commit the second one. 132 F.3d at 692. By contrast, in Sweeting, the court determined that the defendant had only one qualifying conviction when the defendant had committed one burglary and fled to another home to evade the police. 933 F.2d at 967. The court reasoned that this was a single episode, even though there were separate punishable acts. Id. Here, gleaning the facts from the Shepard -approved sources, we conclude that the facts are more similar to Pope than to Sweeting. Proch was convicted of burglarizing two businesses that are located on the same commercial boulevard but separated by a side street and parking lots. [1] While the indictment does not give us times for each of the burglaries, we note that logic dictates Proch would not flee across two parking lots and a side street to escape detection, as was the case in Sweeting. Rather, the locations of the victim businesses suggest two separate and distinct criminal episodes where Proch had the opportunity to desist but chose instead to commit another crime. Turning to the question of whether the escape constituted a separate crime from the burglaries, we note first that the charging document states that Proch escaped while in lawful custody of the county jail or while being transported to or from there. This information indicates that Proch had been apprehended and was either at the jail or being transported to it when he attempted to escape. Proch's arrest stopped the criminal episode of the burglary and the fact that he was either in transit or at the jail demonstrates that this charge does not stem from an effort to elude the police while completing the burglary. Rather, based on the limited facts in the indictment, we conclude that the burglaries were complete when Proch attempted to escape from police custody. Therefore, the escape constituted a separate offense from the burglaries.