Opinion ID: 2654647
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Daytime and Nighttime Breaking and Entering

Text: Because the district court based its judgment on Fish's prior convictions for B&E Daytime Felony under an unidentified statute and for breaking and entering a building in the nighttime with the intent to commit a felony, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 266, § 16, we begin our analysis by considering the applicability of section 16 to these offenses. The government's brief on appeal argues that even though the records of the former conviction state only that Fish was convicted of a B&E Daytime, one could conclude from them that Fish had been convicted under a statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 266, § 17, which requires as an element that a person lawfully in the structure broken into have been put in fear. Before oral argument, however, the government submitted a Rule 28(j) letter in which it withdrew that interpretation of the records of conviction. Then, at oral argument, the government said it had trouble making sense of the records of conviction as they related to the statute, ultimately conceding that we should analyze the least culpable conduct that qualifies as daytime B&E, see Aguiar v. Gonzales, 438 F.3d 86, 88 (1st Cir. 2006). Because that conduct overlaps in all material respects with nighttime B&E, we analyze the two offenses together. -11- Both daytime and nighttime B&E may be committed by breaking into a building, ship, vessel or vehicle. Id. at § 16; see also id. at § 18 ( . . . building, ship or motor vehicle or vessel . . . ). Presumably because the breaking need not involve the use of force, e.g., Commonwealth v. Burke, 392 Mass. 688, 68890 (1984), but instead may involve simply walking through an unlocked door, see Commonwealth v. Tilley, 355 Mass. 507, 508 (1969), the government does not argue that either of Fish’s B&E convictions qualifies as a crime of violence under section 16(a), which is limited to felonies having as an element, the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force. We therefore limit our analysis to section 16(b), which applies to all felonies that, by their nature, involve[] a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used. Though the applicability of section 16(b) to the two Massachusetts B&E offenses is a question of first impression in this circuit, our analysis does not take place on a blank slate. In United States v. Brown, 631 F.3d 573 (1st Cir. 2011), we analyzed the nighttime B&E statute and held that, even as narrowed under the modified approach to include only night-time burglary of a building, nighttime B&E did not qualify as a crime of violence under the residual clause of the career offender provision of the -12- sentencing guidelines, U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2.2 A year later, we held in United States v. Farrell, 672 F.3d 27, 37 (1st Cir. 2012), that in light of Brown, a district court had committed plain error by holding that Massachusetts' section 18, the daytime B&E statute, was a violent felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). We based our holding in Brown almost entirely on the breadth of the building element under Massachusetts law. Acknowledging that the term includes not just stores and office buildings but an array of structures--detached garages and storage facilities, for example--that may invite theft of property but would only rarely expose individuals to violence, we found the threat of violence in so broadly defined a universe to be fairly speculative. 631 F.3d at 79. Then, in Farrell, when we considered the building element alongside the possibility of ship and vessel break-ins, we found that the Brown rationale applie[d] with even more force. 672 F.3d at 35. We noted that happening upon a person is far less likely to take place while breaking and entering a vessel than it is while burglarizing a building. Id. at 37. 2 The guidelines provision covers any offense that is burglary of a dwelling, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another. Id. -13- The government concedes the correctness of Brown and Farrell, but asks us to limit those holdings on the ground that, unlike section 16(b), neither ACCA nor the guidelines provision takes account of the risk of the use of force against property. This is a fair point. The problem, though, is that the Massachusetts offense plainly does not require any conduct that involves or substantially risks the use of force against property. Rather, it reaches such non-forceful acts as walking through an unlocked door without permission. See Tilley, 355 Mass. at 508 (In this Commonwealth the opening of a closed but unlocked door or window is a breaking. (internal quotation marks omitted)). And since we are limited to our common sense--the government has given us nothing else on which to rely--we must view it as entirely plausible that the offense frequently involves such conduct (which is presumably why police frequently remind property owners to lock doors and windows). This conclusion likewise dooms the government's final argument, that we should write off as not the ordinary case any application of the Massachusetts statutes to conduct that does not pose the relevant risks. Without an empirical foundation for its proposed application of the ordinary case approach, the government directs our attention to the Supreme Court’s suggestion in Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1, 10 (2004), that generic burglary is the prototypical section 16(b) offense. At oral argument, the -14- government pressed the analogy to Leocal, implying that Leocal's discussion had turned on the risk of violence to property. But that opinion, though it discussed section 16(b) in great depth, did no such thing. Rather, the Supreme Court suggested that burglary of a building is a section 16 offense because it involves a substantial risk that the burglar will use force against a victim, not because it raises any concern about harm to property. Id. And since we already held in Brown and Farrell that the breaking and entering statutes at issue here are broader than generic burglary and do not present a requisite risk of the type with which Leocal was in fact concerned--that is, the risk of harm to persons--we fail to see how Leocal supports the government’s position. Having twice determined that the Massachusetts breaking and entering statutes, applying as they do to nonviolent entries of rarely-occupied structures through unlocked doors or windows, do not necessarily involve conduct that would pose a risk of physical injury or of the use of force, we now hold that Fish's prior convictions for daytime B&E and nighttime B&E are not categorically crimes of violence under section 16(b).