Court Opinion

ID: 9408121
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-11 17:01:37.492212+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:41.912779
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 19-10156    Document: 57-1      Date Filed: 07/11/2023   Page: 1 of 11

                                                    [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 19-10156
                           ____________________

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                       Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
        versus
        LEDELL L. ELLIS,

                                                    Defendant-Appellant.

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Middle District of Georgia
                   D.C. Docket No. 7:16-cr-00003-HL-TQL-1
                           ____________________
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        2                           Opinion of the Court                  19-10156

        Before JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges, and STEELE, * District
        Judge.
        PER CURIAM:
               This appeal requires us to determine whether a conviction
        of being a party-to-the-crime of aggravated assault pursuant to
        Georgia statute O.C.G.A. § 16-2-20 qualiﬁes as a crime of violence
        under United States Sentencing Guidelines Manual (U.S.S.G.) §
        4B1.2. Following the analysis of our recent decision in United States
        v. Dupree, 57 F.4th 1269 (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc), we conclude that
                                                                           1
        such a conviction does not constitute a crime of violence.
                                                 I.
                After the police found Ledell Ellis with a ﬁrearm during a
        traﬃc stop, Ellis pled guilty to a single count of possession of a ﬁre-
        arm by a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and
        924(a)(2). Using the 2016 Sentencing Guidelines, the Presentence
        Investigation Report (PSR) found that U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(3) applied
        to Ellis and established a base oﬀense level of 22 because Ellis had
        a prior conviction for a crime of violence. The PSR identiﬁed the
        prior crime of violence conviction as a 2011 conviction in Glynn

        * The Honorable John E. Steele, United States District Judge for the Middle
        District of Florida, sitting by designation.
        1
         Given our holding, we do not address Ellis’s other arguments. We also deny
        Ellis’s motion to strike, which has been carried with the case.
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        19-10156                Opinion of the Court                          3

        County, Georgia in which Ellis pled guilty to being a party-to-the-
        crime of aggravated assault.
               At the sentencing hearing, Ellis did not dispute that Georgia
        aggravated assault constituted a crime of violence. Ellis did object
        to a base oﬀense level of 22, arguing that his prior Georgia convic-
        tion could not qualify as a “crime of violence” as deﬁned in U.S.S.G.
        § 4B1.2. Ellis argued that Georgia’s party to a crime statute—
        O.C.G.A. § 16-2-20—criminalizes conduct that falls outside of
        U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2’s deﬁnition of a crime of violence. Speciﬁcally, Ellis
        argued that a defendant can be convicted under Georgia’s party-to-
        a-crime statute for “advis[ing], encourag[ing], or counsel[ing]” an-
        other to commit aggravated assault, and this conduct falls outside
        the deﬁnition of a crime of violence. Ellis further argued that
        O.C.G.A. § 16-2-20 was a divisible statute, see Mathis v. United States,
        579 U.S. 500, 505 (2016), but that the state court indictment and plea
        suggested that his codefendant in the case was the one who shot
        the victim and did not show how Ellis was a “party to” the aggra-
        vated assault.
               The district court overruled Ellis’s objections and calculated
        the advisory guidelines range using a base oﬀense level of 22. With-
        out the characterization of the prior conviction as a crime of vio-
        lence, the base oﬀense level would have been lower. Ellis was sen-
        tenced at the high end of the resulting Sentencing Guideline range–
        – 71 months’ imprisonment followed by a term of three years’ su-
        pervised release.
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        4                       Opinion of the Court                   19-10156

                Ellis raised two issues in his direct appeal of the sentence.
        First, Ellis argued (for the ﬁrst time) that Georgia aggravated as-
        sault is not a crime of violence under § 4B1.2 of the Sentencing
        Guidelines. Second, Ellis argued that his Georgia aggravated as-
        sault conviction did not qualify as a crime of violence because it
        was for being a party-to-the-crime. We discussed these issues in an
        unpublished opinion. See United States v. Ellis, 736 F. App’x 855 (11th
        Cir. 2018) (Ellis I).
                In Ellis I, we noted that a base oﬀense level of 22 required a
        defendant to have sustained a prior felony conviction for a crime of
        violence or a controlled substance oﬀense. See 736 F. App’x at 857;
        U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(3). We turned to § 4B1.2 of the Sentencing
        Guidelines for the deﬁnition of “crime of violence.” Id. We then
        turned to Application Note 1 of the commentary to § 4B1.2, which
        stated that a crime of violence or a controlled substance oﬀense
        “include[s] the oﬀenses of aiding and abetting, conspiring, and at-
        tempting to commit such oﬀenses.” Id. at 857–58 (citing U.S.S.G. §
        4B1.2 cmt. n.1). We stated that “[t]his list of inchoate oﬀenses in
        the commentary ‘is not exhaustive’ and ‘is not necessarily limited
        to aiding and abetting, conspiring, and attempting.’” Id. at 858
        (quoting United States v. Lange, 862 F.3d 1290, 1294–96 (11th Cir.
        2017)). After discussing the categorical approach and the modiﬁed
        categorical approach, we determined that, under our prior prece-
        dent, a conviction under the Georgia aggravated assault statute did
        qualify as a crime of violence under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a). Id. at 858
        (citing United States v. Morales-Alonso, 878 F.3d 1311 (11th Cir. 2018)).
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        19-10156               Opinion of the Court                         5

              We noted, however, that the documents discussed at Ellis’s
        sentencing hearing had not been introduced into evidence, as per-
        mitted by Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13 (2005). Therefore, we
               conclude[d] the better course is to remand this case
               to the district court: (1) to allow the parties to put
               these and any other relevant Shepard documents into
               evidence; and then (2) for the district court, as the
               Court did in Morales-Alonso, to apply the modified cat-
               egorical approach to look to the Shepard documents
               and determine under which portion of the divisible
               aggravated assault statute Ellis was convicted.
        Ellis I, 736 F. App’x at 860. We also remanded the party-to-a-crime
        issue to the district court:
               In light of our decision to remand Ellis’s case to the
               district court to examine the Shepard documents and
               determine which subsection of O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21 El-
               lis pled guilty to violating, we also remand the party-
               to-a-crime issue in this appeal. On remand, the district
               court shall permit the parties to brief this issue and
               shall consider the Shepard documents and any argu-
               ments the parties make in determining whether Ellis’s
               Georgia conviction for party to the crime of aggra-
               vated assault qualifies as a crime of violence under
               U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2.
        Id. at 861.
               On remand, the parties stipulated to the introduction of
        three Shepard documents and ﬁled pre-sentencing briefs. Ellis as-
        serted three arguments: (1) the Shepard documents were
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                  19-10156

        insuﬃcient to show he was convicted of the version of Georgia
        aggravated assault with a generic “deadly weapon” aggravator; (2)
        Georgia party-to-a-crime was broader than generic aiding and abet-
        ting; and (3) Application Note 1 to U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2 was non-binding
        because it was a plainly erroneous interpretation of the Guideline
        provision it purported to explain. The government opposed each
        argument. The district court rejected all three arguments, found
        that the Georgia conviction for party-to-a-crime of aggravated as-
        sault qualiﬁed as a crime of violence, and imposed the same sen-
        tence as originally imposed.
               This is Ellis’s appeal of that sentence.
                                           II.
               “We review de novo the interpretation and application of the
        Sentencing Guidelines.” United States v. Dupree, 57 F.4th 1269, 1272
        (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc) (quoting United States v. Cingari, 952 F.3d
        1301, 1305 (11th Cir. 2020)). We also review de novo whether an
        oﬀense is a “crime of violence” within the meaning of the Sentenc-
        ing Guidelines. United States v. Harrison, 56 F.4th 1325, 1330 (11th
        Cir. 2023).
                                           III.
               At all relevant times, § 2K2.1(a)(3) provided that a base of-
        fense level of 22 applied “if (A) the oﬀense involved a (i) semiauto-
        matic ﬁrearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity maga-
        zine; or (ii) ﬁrearm that is described in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a); and (B)
        the defendant committed any part of the instant oﬀense subse-
        quent to sustaining one felony conviction of either a crime of
USCA11 Case: 19-10156     Document: 57-1      Date Filed: 07/11/2023     Page: 7 of 11

        19-10156              Opinion of the Court                         7

        violence or a controlled substance oﬀense.” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(3)
        (2016). The meaning of both “crime of violence” and “controlled
        substance oﬀense” is set forth in U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2:
              (a) The term “crime of violence” means any offense
              under federal or state law, punishable by imprison-
              ment for a term exceeding one year, that--
              (1) has as an element the use, attempted use, or
              threatened use of physical force against the person of
              another, or
              (2) is murder, voluntary manslaughter, kidnapping,
              aggravated assault, a forcible sex offense, robbery, ar-
              son, extortion, or the use or unlawful possession of a
              firearm described in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a) or explosive
              material as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 841(c).
              (b) The term “controlled substance offense” means an
              offense under federal or state law, punishable by im-
              prisonment for a term exceeding one year, that pro-
              hibits the manufacture, import, export, distribution,
              or dispensing of a controlled substance (or a counter-
              feit substance) or the possession of a controlled sub-
              stance (or a counterfeit substance) with intent to
              manufacture, import, export, distribute, or dispense.
        U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a). Application Note 1 provides that “For purposes
        of this guideline — “‘crime of violence’” and “‘controlled sub-
        stance oﬀense’” include the oﬀenses of aiding and abetting, con-
        spiring, and attempting to commit such oﬀenses.” U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2
        cmt. n.1.
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        8                      Opinion of the Court                  19-10156

               As noted earlier, at the sentencing hearing on remand Ellis
        argued that Application Note 1 to U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2 was non-binding
        because it was a plainly erroneous interpretation of the Guideline
        it purported to explain. The parties recognized that we had re-
        jected this argument in the unpublished decision of United States v.
        Hagans, 746 F. App’x 952 (11th Cir. 2018). The Hagans decision was
        based on our published decision in United States v. Smith, 54 F.3d 690
        (11th Cir. 1995), in which we held that Application Note 1 “consti-
        tutes ‘a binding interpretation’ of the term ‘controlled substance
        oﬀense.’” Id. at 691 (quoting United States v. Stinson, 508 U.S. 36, 47
        (1993)).
                After oral arguments in this case, we decided as a full court
        in Dupree that an inchoate oﬀense such as conspiracy did not qualify
        as a “controlled substance oﬀense” for purposes of U.S.S.G. §
        4B1.2(b). Dupree, 57 F.4th at 1280. To reach this decision, we held
        that, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S. Ct.
        2400 (2019), the commentary in Application Note 1 to § 4B1.2
        could not expand the interpretation of an unambiguous Sentenc-
        ing Guideline. Dupree, 57 F.4th at 1275–77. We found that § 4B1.2
        unambiguously excluded inchoate oﬀenses, so the commentary’s
        interpretation of the Guideline was not binding. Id. at 1277–79.
        We concluded that “the text of § 4B1.2(b) unambiguously excludes
        inchoate crimes,” and therefore “we have no need to consider,
        much less defer to, the commentary in Application Note 1.”
        Dupree, 57 F.4th at 1279. We speciﬁcally overruled our prior prece-
        dent to the contrary, including Smith. Id. at 1279 n.9, 1280.
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        19-10156                 Opinion of the Court                             9

               As we stated in Dupree, there is a diﬀerence between the def-
        inition of “controlled substance oﬀense” and a “crime of violence”
        in § 4B1.2. Dupree, 57 F.4th at 1278. The deﬁnition of “crime of
        violence” includes inchoate oﬀenses involving an attempt. Id.
        Therefore, in the context of “crime[s] of violence,” Application
        Note 1 is simply redundant when it references “attempting to com-
                             2
        mit such oﬀenses.” On the other hand, the Guideline deﬁnition of
        “crime of violence” does not include aiding and abetting or con-
        spiracy, which are only found in Application Note 1.
               Georgia’s party-to-a-crime law is not limited to conduct
        which constitutes an attempt, but also includes aiding and abetting
        and conspiracy. Under Georgia law, “Every person concerned in
        the commission of a crime is a party thereto and may be charged
        with and convicted of commission of the crime.” O.C.G.A. § 16-2-
        20(a).
               A person is concerned in the commission of a crime
               only if he:
               (1) Directly commits the crime;
               (2) Intentionally causes some other person to commit
               the crime under such circumstances that the other
               person is not guilty of any crime either in fact or be-
               cause of legal incapacity;

        2
          Under Georgia law “[a] person commits the oﬀense of criminal attempt
        when, with intent to commit a speciﬁc crime, he performs any act which con-
        stitutes a substantial step toward the commission of that crime.” O.C.G.A. §
        16-4-1.
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 19-10156

               (3) Intentionally aids or abets in the commission of
               the crime; or
               (4) Intentionally advises, encourages, hires, counsels,
               or procures another to commit the crime.
        O.C.G.A. § 16-2-20(b). “O.C.G.A. § 16–2–20 expands criminal lia-
        bility from a defendant’s own criminal acts (and their proximate
        consequences) to the criminal acts of his accomplices and agents
        (and their proximate consequences).” Cash v. State, 778 S.E.2d 785,
        788 (Ga. 2015) (citation omitted). See also Williams v. State, 869
        S.E.2d 389, 393 (Ga. 2022) (“Conviction as a party to the crime re-
        quires evidence of common intent and may be inferred from pres-
        ence, companionship, and conduct before, during, and after the of-
        fense.”) (quoting Hood v. State, 847 S.E.2d 172, 177 (Ga. 2020)).
               We have not overlooked United States v. Coats, 8 F.4th 1228
        (11th Cir. 2021), which held that a Georgia conviction for party to
        a crime of burglary constitutes a “violent felony” as deﬁned in the
        Armed Career Criminal Act. Coats predates our Dupree decision
        and involved the application of a statutory provision of the ACCA,
        not commentary to a Sentencing Guidelines provision. Although
        our interpretation of an ACCA provision can provide guidance
        with respect to the interpretation of a similarly-worded Guideline
        provision, see United States v. Taylor, 489 F.3d 1112, 1113 (11th Cir.
        2007), here there is daylight between our interpretation of the
        ACCA and the Guidelines. Cf. United States v. Hall, 714 F.3d 1270,
        1273-74 (11th Cir. 2013) (holding prior conviction for possession of
        sawed-oﬀ shotgun qualiﬁed as a “crime of violence” under Guide-
        lines even though it is not a “violent felony” under the ACCA). For
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        19-10156                  Opinion of the Court                             11

        example, 18 U.S.C. § 2 expressly provides that anyone who “aids
        [or] abets” the commission of a federal oﬀense is “punishable as a
        principal.” But § 4B1.2(a), in deﬁning a “crime of violence,” does
        not mention aiding and abetting. After Dupree the Guidelines’
        “crime of violence” deﬁnition controls, and we cannot consider the
        contrary commentary. Ellis’s Georgia conviction for party to the
        crime of aggravated assault therefore cannot qualify as a “crime of
        violence” to support an enhanced sentence.
               Based on Dupree, we hold that the deﬁnition of “crime of
        violence” in § 4B1.2(a) does not include a conviction for being a
        party-to-a-crime under O.C.G.A. § 16-2-20(b). Here, Ellis’s only
        conviction for a crime of violence was such a conviction, and there-
        fore he did not satisfy the requirement under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(3).
        We vacate Ellis’s sentence and remand for resentencing consistent
        with this opinion.3
               VACATED AND REMANDED.

        3 We acknowledge that the Sentencing Commission has submitted amend-
        ments to Congress that would expressly include inchoate offenses—such as
        aiding and abetting, attempt, and conspiracy—in the definitions of “crime of
        violence” and “controlled substance offense” in § 4B1.2. Sentencing Guide-
        lines for United States Courts, 88 Fed. Reg. 28,254, 28,275 (May 3, 2023). Ab-
        sent action from Congress, these amendments will take effect on November
        1, 2023. But because they are not currently in effect, they do not impact our
        analysis today.