Opinion ID: 2897964
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Aggravated Battery on a Pregnant Woman

Text: Braun concedes that he was convicted of aggravated battery on a pregnant woman under FLA. STAT. § 784.045(1)(b). Ordinarily, our first step is to examine 7 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 8 of 16 the statute of conviction and compare the elements of that crime to the “generic” (i.e., commonly understood) elements of the enumerated felonies. United States v. Howard, 742 F.3d 1334, 1345 (11th Cir. 2014); see also 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) (listing the enumerated felonies). This is referred to as the “categorical approach.” Howard, 742 F3d at 1345. However, the Government does not contend that this conviction contains the elements of one of the felonies enumerated in the ACCA (e.g., burglary). Thus, our first inquiry is whether the statute is divisible or indivisible. Id. The statute reads, “[a] person commits aggravated battery if the person who was the victim of the battery was pregnant at the time of the offense and the offender knew or should have known that the victim was pregnant.” Id. Under Florida law, the elements of this crime are (1) a battery, with (2) actual or constructive knowledge that the victim was pregnant. “The offense of battery occurs when a person: (1) [a]ctually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other; or (2) [i]ntentionally causes bodily harm to another person.” FLA. STAT. § 784.03(1)(a). Both Braun and the Government contend that this statute is divisible. We agree. Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at 2284 (A divisible statute is one that “comprises multiple, alternative versions of a crime.”). Therefore, there are three ways to commit aggravated battery on a pregnant woman under Florida law: (1) actually and intentionally touching, against her will, a 8 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 9 of 16 woman that you know or should know is pregnant; (2) actually and intentionally striking, against her will, a woman that you know or should know is pregnant; or (3) intentionally causing bodily harm to a woman that you know or should know is pregnant.
Because the statute is divisible, our next step is to apply the “modified categorical approach.” Howard, 742 F.3d at 1347. Under the modified categorical approach, we consult any Shepard documents that the Government submitted to determine which version of the crime Braun was convicted of. Id. The Government submitted the charging document, the plea agreement, the judgment of conviction, and the 2003 Presentence Report. The first three documents are Shepard documents. They establish that Braun was convicted of “actually and intentionally touch[ing] or strik[ing]” a pregnant woman against her will. From these documents, we are only permitted to conclude that Braun intentionally touched a pregnant woman against her will. See e.g., Curtis Johnson, 559 U.S. at 138, 130 S. Ct. at 1269–70 (“[N]othing in the record” permitted the court to conclude that the conviction “rested upon anything more than the least of these acts.”); Moncrieffe v. Holder, _ U.S. _, 133 S. Ct. 1678, 1684 (2013) (“[W]e must presume that the conviction rested upon nothing more than the least of the acts criminalized . . . .”) (quotations and alterations omitted). 9 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 10 of 16 In addition to the Shepard documents, the Government seeks to rely on the 2003 Presentence Report to establish that Braun was convicted of the more serious portion of the divisible statute: intentionally causing bodily harm to a pregnant woman. According to the 2003 Presentence Report, he “pushed the victim against the wall and began choking her.” Thus, the Government contends, the district court properly concluded that this conviction was a prior violent felony. We now turn to the issue of whether the district court properly relied on the 2003 Presentence Report in determining that the conviction for aggravated battery on a pregnant woman was a prior violent felony. We conclude that the district court erred in relying on the facts in the 2003 Presentence Report in determining that Braun’s conviction for aggravated battery on a pregnant woman was a violent felony. According to Shepard, the only documents that a sentencing court may rely on are “the charging document, . . . 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 . . . some comparable judicial record of this information.” Shepard, 544 U.S. at 26, 125 S. Ct. at 1263. This court has substantial precedent on the use of a Presentence Report in determining whether a prior conviction constitutes a violent felony under the ACCA. See, e.g., Turner v. Warden Coleman FCI, 709 F.3d 1328, 1336 (11th Cir. 2013); Rozier v. United States, 701 F.3d 681, 685–86 (11th Cir. 2012); United 10 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 11 of 16 States v. Bennett, 472 F.3d 825, 833–34 (11th Cir. 2006). These cases rely on the fact that the defendant admitted the facts in the Presentence Report. Cf. Shepard, 544 U.S. at 24, 125 S. Ct. at 1262 (plurality opinion) (“[A]ny fact other than a prior conviction sufficient to raise the limit of the possible federal sentence must be found by a jury, in the absence of any waiver of rights by the defendant.”) (citation omitted) (emphasis added). Braun contends that Descamps has undermined these cases to the point of abrogation. The Government responds by citing United States v. Ramirez-Flores, 743 F.3d 816, 823 (11th Cir. 2014), which was decided after Descamps, and, according to the Government, demonstrates that these cases remain good law. These Eleventh Circuit cases address whether a sentencing court properly relied on a Presentence Report prepared for the sentence at issue on appeal, where the Defendant did not object to its use (or the facts contained in it) in the district court. This issue generally arises in habeas proceedings or on direct appellate review where the defendant did not object to the sentencing court’s reliance on the facts in the Presentence Report, but later seeks to challenge the district court’s reliance on those facts. None of these cases address the situation raised here: whether facts admitted in a Presentence Report in one case may be relied on in a later unrelated case in finding a violent felony under the ACCA. It is one thing to consider an objection—raised for the first time on appeal—to facts that were never 11 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 12 of 16 objected to in the district court. It is another thing to say that, once a defendant failed to challenge facts in a Presentence Report, the Government no longer has to prove those facts in a manner consistent with the Sixth Amendment in a later proceeding, whether or not the two proceedings bear any relation to each other. Therefore, our holding is limited. Under Shepard and Descamps, a sentencing court may not rely on a Presentence Report from an unrelated proceeding in place of a Shepard document. It is not a charging document, a plea agreement or colloquy, or a comparable judicial record. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 26, 125 S. Ct. at 1263. And, the facts in the 2003 Presentence Report were properly objected to in this proceeding. To allow the use of the 2003 Presentence Report in the manner advocated by the Government would be inconsistent with the Court’s holding in Descamps that, “when a defendant pleads guilty to a crime, he waives his right to a jury determination of only that offense’s elements; whatever he says, or fails to say, about superfluous facts cannot license a later sentencing court to impose extra punishment.” See Descamps, 133 St. Ct. at 2288. Having determined that the district court’s reliance on the 2003 Presentence Report was error, we cannot conclude that Braun intentionally caused bodily harm to a pregnant woman. As Descamps makes clear, we may not consider the facts of the underlying conviction, no matter how violent the facts may be. 133 S. Ct. at 2288. Our only inquiry is what elements Braun was convicted of. As discussed 12 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 13 of 16 above, applying this method to the Shepard documents that the Government submitted in this case, we are only permitted to conclude that Braun “actually and intentionally touch[ed]” a pregnant woman against her will.
We now determine whether actually and intentionally touching a pregnant woman against her will constitutes a violent felony under the ACCA. The only issue before us is whether the conviction “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i). This clause is often referred to as the “elements clause.” We must consider whether actually and intentionally touching a pregnant woman against her will involves the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another. In Curtis Johnson, the Supreme Court considered whether Florida battery involved the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against another. 559 U.S. at 136–37, 130 S. Ct. at 1268–69. The Court held that, because the defendant could have been convicted of merely unwanted touching, this did not involve “physical force.” The Court reasoned that “the phrase ‘physical force’ means violent force.” Id. at 140, 1271. Thus, since the same Florida statute supplies the elements of battery in this case, our only inquiry is whether the fact that the unwanted touching occurred on a pregnant woman alters the analysis. We conclude that it does not. The Supreme Court has made 13 Case: 13-15013 Date Filed: 09/08/2015 Page: 14 of 16 clear that “physical force” under the ACCA requires violent contact beyond a mere touching. And, the Government has presented no persuasive reason why the fact that the touching occurred on a pregnant woman would render an otherwise nonviolent touching violent. We hold that Braun’s conviction for aggravated battery on a pregnant woman was not a violent felony. As discussed above, all we are permitted to conclude from the Shepard documents and the statutory language is that Braun committed an unwanted touching on a pregnant woman. Thus, the Government has failed to prove that Braun’s conviction for aggravated battery on a pregnant woman was a prior violent felony.