Opinion ID: 4532137
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Florida Robbery

Text: Under Florida law, “robbery” is defined as follows: [T]he taking of money or other property which may be the subject of larceny from the person or custody of another, with intent to either permanently or temporarily deprive the person or the owner of the money or other property, when in the course of the taking there is the use of force, violence, assault, or putting in fear. Fla. Stat. § 812.13(1). There is no question that a conviction under § 812.13(1) is a violent felony under the ACCA’s elements clause. We reached this conclusion more than a decade ago. See United States v. Dowd, 451 F.3d 1244, 1255 (11th Cir. 2006), cert. denied, 549 U.S. 941 (2006); see also United States v. Lockley, 632 F.3d 1238, 1245 (11th Cir. 2011) (holding Florida robbery is a crime of violence under the elements clause in the Sentencing Guidelines), cert. denied, 565 U.S. 885 (2011). The Supreme 7 Case: 14-15733 Date Filed: 05/06/2020 Page: 8 of 19 Court reached the same conclusion last year. See Stokeling, 139 S. Ct. at 555. And in United States v. Fritts, we clarified that Dowd’s and Lockley’s holdings extended to pre-1997 convictions, when the Florida district courts were still divided about the level of force needed to commit robbery. See Fritts, 841 F.3d 937, 942–43 (11th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 2264 (2017). The question before us is whether, as Welch asserts, our decision in his direct appeal carved out a narrow exception for pre-1997 Florida robbery convictions obtained in Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal (“DCA”). Welch notes that in our discussion of the elements clause, we observed that, at the time Welch was convicted, the Fourth DCA had not resolved whether mere snatching of an item was sufficient to support a robbery conviction and that an earlier Florida Supreme Court decision had held that “‘any degree of force’ would convert larceny into a robbery.” Welch Direct Appeal, 683 F.3d at 1311 (discussing McCloud v. State, 335 So. 2d 257, 258–59 (Fla. 1976)). We therefore “assume[d] for purposes of analysis that Welch pleaded guilty to robbery at a time when mere snatching sufficed.” Id. at 1311–12. And so, Welch contends, we are required to use that assumption whenever we review robbery convictions that were obtained in the Fourth DCA. Welch’s argument fails. We did not create any such exception in Welch’s direct appeal. The discussion that Welch relies on was not necessary to our ultimate holding. We observed that if pre-1997 Florida robbery qualified as a violent felony 8 Case: 14-15733 Date Filed: 05/06/2020 Page: 9 of 19 under either the elements clause or the residual clause, it qualified as a violent felony, nonetheless. And we ultimately concluded that “[w]e need not decide whether snatching is sufficiently violent under the elements clause . . . because it suffices under the residual clause.” Id. at 1313. Accordingly, our discussion of robbery under the elements clause in Welch’s direct appeal was dicta, and it is not binding. See United States v. Kaley, 579 F.3d 1246, 1253 n.10 (11th Cir. 2009) (“[D]icta is defined as those portions of an opinion that are not necessary to deciding the case then before us.” (citations and quotation marks omitted)); see also Edwards v. Prime, Inc., 602 F.3d 1276, 1298 (11th Cir. 2010) (“[D]icta is not binding on anyone for any purpose.” (citations omitted)). Welch retorts that the underlying assumption from the discussion of the elements clause in his direct appeal (that “mere snatching” would have been enough to sustain a robbery conviction at the time he pled guilty) is binding, and not dicta. He asserts that that assumption was integral to our holding in his direct appeal that a robbery conviction was a “violent felony” because we assumed that snatching would implicate the residual clause. But our decision in Fritts resolved that issue, and such an assumption is no longer permissible under our binding precedent. There, we held that the Florida Supreme Court, in its 1997 decision Robinson v. State, 692 So. 2d 883 (Fla. 1997), “made clear that the § 812.13 robbery statute has never included a theft or taking by 9 Case: 14-15733 Date Filed: 05/06/2020 Page: 10 of 19 mere snatching,” and has always required force sufficient to overcome a victim’s resistance. Fritts, 841 F.3d at 942–43 (emphasis in original). We further stated that “[w]hen the Florida Supreme Court in Robinson interprets the robbery statute, it tells us what that statute always meant.” Id. at 943 (citation omitted). We thus concluded that Florida robbery has always required force sufficient to satisfy the ACCA’s elements clause. See id. We are bound by that decision. See United States v. Steele, 147 F.3d 1316, 1317–18 (11th Cir. 1998) (en banc) (“Under our prior precedent rule, a panel cannot overrule a prior one’s holding even though convinced it is wrong.” (citations omitted)). Fritts thus forecloses Welch’s argument. Welch separately argues that we are bound by our decision in his direct appeal as the law of the case. Under the law-of-the-case doctrine, this Court is generally bound by a prior appellate decision of the same case and is precluded from “revisiting issues that were decided explicitly or by necessary implication in [the] prior appeal.” Thomas v. United States, 572 F.3d 1300, 1303 (11th Cir. 2009) (citation and quotation marks omitted). But the law-of-the-case doctrine does not prevent us from considering issues that could have been, but ultimately were not, resolved in the earlier appeal. See id. at 1304. And the doctrine does not bar reconsideration of an issue if there has been an intervening change in controlling precedent. See id. at 1303–04. 10 Case: 14-15733 Date Filed: 05/06/2020 Page: 11 of 19 The law-of-the-case doctrine does not control our decision here. As we have explained, in our decision in Welch’s direct appeal, we did not decide, either explicitly or implicitly, whether pre-1997 Florida robberies in the Fourth DCA qualify as violent felonies under the ACCA’s elements clause.1 Finally, Welch argues that we should find in his favor “to avoid expanding the inter-circuit conflict that already exists.” He is referring to a decision from the Ninth Circuit, United States v. Geozos, where that court concluded that a defendant could violate § 812.13 “without using violent force.” Geozos, 870 F.3d 890, 900 (9th Cir. 2017). This argument fails. Circuit splits are an inevitable consequence of our system of appellate review, and we are not obligated—or permitted—to follow what we believe to be an incorrect decision from one of our sister circuits simply to avoid a “conflict.” Welch’s argument to the contrary is particularly unconvincing in a situation where our precedent controls our result and a circuit split already exists.2 1 Welch similarly argues that the Government conceded at his original sentencing that Florida’s robbery statute does not require the use of violent force. At the time the Government made the supposed concession, the Government’s attorney was contrasting § 812.13 with Florida’s “Robbery by Sudden Snatching” statute, Fla. Stat. § 812.131, which explicitly details the amount of force needed to commit the offense. The “concession” is better read as an acknowledgement that the text of § 812.13 does not specify the force needed to violate the statute. 2 We also note that the Ninth Circuit has since recognized that its decision in Geozos may no longer be good law following the Supreme Court’s decision in Stokeling. See Ward v. United States, 936 F.3d 914, 919 (9th Cir. 2019) (“Our prior distinction between ‘substantial’ and ‘minimal’ force in the ACCA robbery context in such cases as Molinar and Geozos cannot be reconciled with the Supreme Court’s clear holding in Stokeling.”). 11 Case: 14-15733 Date Filed: 05/06/2020 Page: 12 of 19 The district court thus did not err in concluding that Welch’s 1996 robbery convictions were violent felonies that could be used to justify a sentencing enhancement under the ACCA.