Opinion ID: 2974135
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Burglaries as Violent Felonies Under the ACCA

Text: A person convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm under § 922(g)(1) generally is subject to a maximum prison term of ten years. 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2). If that person has three or more prior convictions for “serious drug offense[s]” or “violent felon[ies]” (in any combination), however, the ACCA makes him subject to a sentence enhancement that imposes a mandatory minimum prison term of fifteen years. Id. § 924(e)(1). A crime qualifies as a “violent felony” for purposes of the enhancement if it is punishable by more than one year in prison and either “(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another” or “(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” Id. § 924(e)(2)(B) (emphasis added). The district court applied § 924(e) to Caruthers on the basis of four prior felony convictions in Tennessee: two for third-degree burglary, one for second-degree burglary, and one for a serious drug offense. Caruthers argues that § 924(e)’s definition of “violent felony” encompasses neither second- nor third-degree burglary as they existed in Tennessee at the time of his convictions, leaving him with fewer than three qualifying predicate offenses and making the application of the ACCA enhancement erroneous. In Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), the Supreme Court delineated the meaning of “burglary” in § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). The Court explained that Congress adopted a “generic” definition of burglary: “any crime, regardless of its exact definition or label, having the basic elements of unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime.” Id. at 599. Generally, a court is to determine whether a defendant was convicted of generic burglary by “look[ing] only to the fact of conviction and the statutory definition of the prior offense.” Id. at 602. If the statutory definition of burglary is nongeneric, however, the inquiry shifts to whether the defendant “actually committed a generic burglary.” Id. at 599-600. Where, as here, the burglary conviction flows from a guilty plea, this inquiry “is limited to the terms of the charging document, the terms of 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 to some comparable judicial record of this information.” Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 125 S. Ct. 1254, 1263 (2005). b. Application to the Pre-November-1989 Tennessee Burglary Statute Caruthers argues that the burglary statute under which he was convicted did not require unlawful entry, one of the Taylor generic-burglary elements. Such an argument would appear to have no merit with respect to Tennessee’s current burglary statute, which includes the element of acting “without the effective consent of the property owner.” TENN. CODE ANN. § 39-14-402(a). No. 05-5307 United States v. Caruthers Page 13 However, Caruthers was convicted of offenses occurring before the current statute went into effect on November 1, 1989.7 The second-degree burglary statute then in effect provided in relevant part: Burglary in the second degree is the breaking and entering into a dwelling house or any other house, building, room or rooms therein used and occupied by any person or persons as a dwelling place or lodging either permanently or temporarily and whether as owner, renter, tenant, lessee or paying guest, by day, with the intent to commit a felony. TENN. CODE ANN. § 39-3-403(a) (1982). Third-degree burglary was defined as “the breaking and entering into a business house, outhouse, or any other house of another, other than dwelling house, with the intent to commit a felony.” Id. § 39-3-404(a)(1). We first address whether Tennessee’s pre-November-1989 burglary statute is generic.8 Caruthers is correct that a burglary statute that fails to include unlawful entry as a distinct element is not generic. See United States v. Maness, 23 F.3d 1006, 1008-09 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 906 (1994). Caruthers is incorrect, however, in asserting that the statute did not require an unlawful entry. The Tennessee courts have held otherwise. See Goins v. State, 237 S.W.2d 8, 11 (Tenn. 1951) (“It cannot be doubted that where the owner of a building invites another to enter for a lawful purpose, making the keys available for a peaceable entry, and a felony is committed, it is no burglary.”); Page v. State, 98 S.W.2d 98, 98-99 (Tenn. 1936) (holding that the defendant committed burglary by unlawfully breaking and entering a room with intent to commit a felony, even though he was lawfully on the premises); State v. Puryear, No. 88-190-III, 1989 WL 28312, at  (Tenn. Crim. App. Aug. 14, 1989); State v. Funzie, No. 28, 1986 WL 3540, at  (Tenn. Crim. App. Mar. 19, 1986). Even the case on which Caruthers relies required an unlawful entry; it just happened to involve an unlawful entry into a payphone’s coin receptacle. Fox v. State, 383 S.W.2d 25, 27 (Tenn. 1964), cert. denied, 380 U.S. 933 (1965). Thus, the pre-November-1989 burglary statute is generic along the unlawful-entry dimension. Yet a burglary statute may also be nongeneric if it “includ[es] places, such as automobiles and vending machines, other than buildings.” Taylor, 495 U.S. at 599. The Tennessee burglary statute was indeed nongeneric along the “building or structure” dimension, as it permitted thirddegree burglary convictions for unlawful entry into coin receptacles and the like. Fox, 383 S.W.2d 7 Caruthers was convicted of second-degree burglary committed in 1984 and of third-degree burglaries committed in 1983 and on September 1, 1989. 8 We have not squarely addressed this issue. Unfortunately, the two times we came close to answering the question, we reached different conclusions. First, in United States v. Anderson, 923 F.2d 450 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 980 and 500 U.S. 936 (1991), we held that Tennessee’s definition of burglary is “generic” but did not specify the version of the statute to which we were referring. Id. at 454. It is likely but not certain that the pre-November-1989 burglary statute (i.e., the version under which Caruthers was convicted) was at issue in Anderson. In the second case, we clearly identified the version of the statute we examined, and it was identical to the definition under which Caruthers was convicted. Compare United States v. Bureau, 52 F.3d 584, 592 (6th Cir. 1995) (“In 1975, burglary in the third degree was defined under Tennessee law as: ‘the breaking and entering into a business house, outhouse, or any other house of another, other than a dwelling house, with the intent to commit a felony.’” (quoting TENN. CODE ANN. § 39-904)), with TENN. CODE ANN. § 39-3-404(a)(1) (1982) (“Burglary in the third degree is the breaking and entering into a business house, outhouse, or any other house of another, other than dwelling house, with the intent to commit a felony.”). We observed that the statute was “broader than the generic definition in Taylor in that it omits the requirement of ‘unlawful’ entry and includes places other than a building.” Id. at 593 n.6. This statement was dictum, however, as the question actually addressed was whether the defendant’s attempted burglary conviction could serve as a predicate “violent felony” under the ACCA’s “otherwise” clause. Id. at 591 (answering in the affirmative). Finally, we note that the Eighth Circuit held the statute in effect in 1966 to be generic, United States v. Moore, 108 F.3d 878, 880 (8th Cir. 1997), but it did so without any helpful analysis. No. 05-5307 United States v. Caruthers Page 14 at 27; TENN. CODE ANN. § 39-3-404(b)(1) (1982) (encompassing “any vault, safe, or other secure place”). Thus, we turn to whether Caruthers “actually committed a generic burglary,” Taylor, 495 U.S. at 600, according to “the terms of the charging document, the terms of 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 to some comparable judicial record of this information,” Shepard, 125 S. Ct. at 1263.9 The record contains the indictments of only two of Caruthers’s three burglary convictions,10 but the absence of the third does not affect our analysis because the ACCA requires only three qualifying convictions and Caruthers does not dispute that his prior drug conviction qualifies. These indictments alleged that Caruthers unlawfully broke and entered a “business house” and a “dwelling house,” respectively, J.A. at 282, 288, which means that he was actually convicted of burglarizing buildings, even though the statute permitted convictions for burglary of non-buildings. In light of this conclusion, Caruthers was actually convicted of offenses including “the basic elements of unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime,” i.e., generic burglaries. Taylor, 495 U.S. at 599; see also Maness, 23 F.3d at 1009-10. Therefore, the district court properly applied the ACCA sentencing enhancement.