Opinion ID: 8410531
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Categorical and Modified Categorical Approaches

Text: The Supreme Court has set forth the methodology for determining' whether a state conviction qualifies as a predicate offense for a federal sentence enhancement. There are two possible methods: the categorical approach and the modified categorical approach. See Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. 254, 133 S.Ct. 2276, 2281, 186 L.Ed.2d 438 (2013). The categorical approach is confined to an examination of the legal elements of the state criminal statute to determine whether they are identical to or narrower than the relevant federal statute. See id. If so, a conviction under the state statute categorically qualifies as a predicate offense. See id. However, if the state statute criminalizes any conduct that would not fall within the scope of either the force clause or the residual clause, a conviction under the state statute is not categorically a crime of violence and cannot serve as a predicate offense. See id. Under the categorical approach we must confine our inquiry to the legal elements of the state statute without at all considering the facts of the underlying crime. The Supreme Court has set forth two reasons for this. First, the text of the Career Offender Guideline, like that of the ACCA, explicitly refers to convictions rather than conduct. See Mathis v. United States, — U.S. -, 136 S.Ct. 2243, 2252, 195 L.Ed.2d 604 (2016). The Career Offender Guideline directs the sentencing court to consider whether the offender “has at least two prior felony convictions of ... a crime of violence,” U.S.S.G. § 4Bl.l(a), which indicates that “the sentencer should ask only about whether the defendant had been convicted of crimes falling within certain categories, and not about what the defendant had actually done,” Mathis, 136 S.Ct. at 2252 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Second, by focusing upon the legal elements, rather than the facts of the offense, the sentencing court “avoids unfairness to defendants.” Id. at 2253. “Statements of ‘non-elemental fact’ in the records of prior convictions [such as the precise manner in which the crime was committed] are prone to error precisely because their proof is unnecessary.” Id. (citation omitted). Defendants therefore may have little incentive to ensure the correctness of those details of earlier convictions that could later trigger the unforeseen career offender enhancement. Occasionally, however, a state statute will criminalize multiple acts in the alternative. Wheie this occurs, courts may employ what is known as the modified categorical approach. But the Supreme Court has emphasized that the modified categorical approach is available only where the state statute is “divisible” into separate crimes. Descamps, 133 S.Ct. at 2281-82; see also Flores v. Holder, 779 F.3d 159, 165-66 (2d Cir. 2015). A statute is divisible if it “list[s] elements in the alternative, and thereby define[s] multiple crimes” but is not divisible if it instead lists “various factual means of committing a single element.” Mathis, 136 S.Ct. at 2249 (emphases added). When a statute is divisible, a court employing the modified categorical approach can then peer into the record to see which of the multiple crimes was implicated. But the court may discern this only from “a limited class of documents (for example, the indictment, jury instructions, or plea agreement and colloquy) to determine what crime, with what elements, a defendant was convicted of.” Id. Once that determination is made, the modified categorical approach is at an end and the court must apply the categorical approach to the legal elements of the appropriate criminal offense. Id. New York’s first-degree robbery statute is divisible and therefore subject to the modified categorical approach. New York defines robbery as “forcibly stea[ling] property.” N.Y. Penal Law §§ 160.00-.15. There are four categories of first-degree robbery, depending on whether: the perpetrator “(1) [clauses serious physical injury to any person who is not a participant in the crime; or (2) [i]s armed with a deadly weapon; or (3) [u]ses or threatens the immediate use of a dangerous instrument; or (4) [displays what appears to be a ... firearm.” § 160.15; see also Flores, 779 F.3d at 166 (analyzing the divisibility of New York’s first-degree sexual abuse statute). In the typical case under the modified categorical approach we would examine certain documents in the record to ascertain which of the four crimes Jones committed. In this instance, however, we are stymied and unable to employ the modified categorical approach because no one has produced the record. Where this occurs, however, we are not at a complete loss. We instead look to “the least of [the] acts” proscribed by the statute to see if it qualifies as a predicate offense for the career offender enhancement. See Johnson I, 559 U.S. at 137, 130 S.Ct. 1265. If .so, Jones’s first-degree robbery conviction can serve as a predicate offense for the enhancement regardless of which first-degree robbery subpart provided the basis for his conviction. See id. Jones identifies the act of “forcibly stealing property” while “armed with a deadly weapon” as being the “least of the acts” in the statute, and we agree. See N.Y. Penal Law § 160.15(2). The question we must answer, therefore, is whether a defendant who perpetrates such an act commits a crime of violence within the meaning of the residual clause of the Career Offender Guideline. In the opinion we issued and then withdrew, prior to Beckles, we addressed only the force clause. We did- not concern ourselves with whether Jones’ first-degree robbery conviction qualified as a crime of violence under the Career Offender Guideline’s residual clause because, consistent with the government’s concession on that point, we had previously held that the residual clause was unconstitutional in light of Johnson II. See United States v. Welch, 641 Fed.Appx. 37, 42-43 (2d Cir. 2016) (summary order). Now that the Supreme Court has held in Beckles that the Guidelines, regardless of whatever other defects they may have, cannot be void for vagueness, 137 S.Ct. at 890, we are free to assess whether New York first-degree robbery categorically qualifies as a crime of violence under the residual clause.