Opinion ID: 179811
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Walkaway Prison Escape

Text: Michigan defines prison escape, in pertinent part, as occurring when a person imprisoned by the state, breaks prison and escapes, breaks prison though an escape is not actually made, escapes, leaves the prison without being discharged by due process of law, attempts to break prison, or attempts to escape from prison. MICH. COMP. LAWS § 750.193(1). Defendant's prior plea-based conviction for prison escape was counted as a crime of violence, although he asked the district court to consider that it was essentially a walkaway escape from a community correction center. In fact, defendant explained during the plea colloquy that he had left the facility where he was assigned without permission. The government concedes, as it did even on remand, that this conviction for walkaway prison escape does not constitute a crime of violence in light of the decisions in Chambers v. United States, 555 U.S. 122, 129 S.Ct. 687, 690-92, 172 L.Ed.2d 484 (2009), and United States v. Ford, 560 F.3d 420, 423-25 (6th Cir.2009). We agree. [7] Before the decision in Chambers, this court had largely taken the view that all escape offensesfrom a failure to report at one end of the spectrum to a breakout at the otherconstitute crimes of violence. Ford, 560 F.3d at 423 (citing cases). The Court in Chambers held that one type of escape under the Illinois statutea failure-to-report escapewas not a violent felony under the ACCA. 129 S.Ct. at 691-92. This, we concluded in Ford, also established that a failure-to-report escape is not a crime of violence. 560 F.3d at 423. We did not stop there, however, and applied the same reasoning to conclude that a walkaway escape conviction under Kentucky law was not unambiguously a crime of violence. Id. at 425. To recap: the first question in this casethe Taylor questionis whether the definition of the state-law offense by itself establishes that it is a crime of violence. A conviction for second-degree escape does not show that Ford committed a crime of violence because the offense covers a variety of escapes, some of which (a failure to report and to return, at least) are not crimes of violence. The second questionthe Shepard questionis whether the government nonetheless can show that the state-law conviction was a crime of violence by bringing forward reliable documents from the underlying conviction that necessarily establish that the defendant committed a crime of violence. Here, the parties agree, reliable documents show that Ford committed a walkaway escape, which no doubt may create a greater risk of physical injury than a failure to report, but which remains different from a jailbreak and other crimes of violence both in kind and in its risk of physical injury to others. For these reasons and those elaborated above, a walkaway is not a crime of violence. Id. at 426. The parallel between the Kentucky walkaway escape and defendant's Michigan conviction for walkaway escape is self-evident. The Michigan statute covers a variety of escapes, including at least one which is not a crime of violence. We recognized in Ford that, in the aftermath of Chambers, a `walkaway' is a meaningfully distinct and meaningfully distinguishable category of escape as a matter of federal law. Id. at 424. We also concluded that a walkaway escape does not present the same risk of physical injury to others, or the same type of purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct, as do the listed crimes of violence. Id. at 424-25 (quoting Chambers, 129 S.Ct. at 692 (internal quotation marks omitted)). Defendant's walkaway escape conviction may not be counted as a crime of violence.