Court Opinion

ID: 9401266
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-12 17:00:48.842563+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:51.611545
License: Public Domain

PRECEDENTIAL

         UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
              FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
                 ________________

                        No. 21-2044
                     ________________

             UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

                              v.

                      ABID STEVENS,
                               Appellant
                     ________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court
           for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
                (D.C. No. 2:19-cr-00350-002)
          District Judge: Honorable Jan E. DuBois
                                         _

     Argued on November 16, 2022 and January 18, 2023

    Before: AMBRO, KRAUSE and BIBAS, Circuit Judges

                (Opinion filed: June 12, 2023)


 Honorable Thomas L. Ambro assumed senior status on
February 6, 2023.
Daniel J. Auerbach               (ARGUED)
Auerbach
241 S 6th Street, #1902b
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Robert M. Gamburg
Suite 1203
1500 John F. Kennedy Boulevard
Two Penn Center Plaza
Philadelphia, PA 19102

             Counsel for Appellant

Bernadette A. McKeon             (ARGUED)
Robert E. Eckert, Jr.
Robert A. Zauzmer
Office of United States Attorney
615 Chestnut Street, Suite 1250
Philadelphia, PA 19106

             Counsel for Appellee

                    ________________

                        OPINION
                    ________________

                            2
KRAUSE, Circuit Judge.

        Supreme Court precedent is now clear that when
Congress expressly and unambiguously defines a common-law
term in a way that deviates from its historical meaning, such
“contrary direction” precludes our consideration of both
legislative history and the “cluster of ideas” typically
associated with that term at common law. Carter v. United
States, 530 U.S. 255, 264–65 (2000) (citation omitted). But
this was not always pellucid, and when we described the
elements of Hobbs Act robbery in United States v. Nedley over
sixty-five years ago, we relied heavily on both legislative
history and common law to import two additional elements into
the statutory definition of “robbery” in 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(1):
a “specific intent to steal and to permanently deprive the owner
or possessor of his property” and a requirement that there be
not merely the “taking” but also a “carrying away” of that
property. 255 F.2d 350, 351, 356–57 (3d Cir. 1958).

        Relying on Nedley, Appellant Abid Stevens argues that
his conviction for Hobbs Act robbery must be vacated because
the District Court failed to charge the jury on those elements
and the Government failed to prove them. But those elements
are absent from the Hobbs Act’s unambiguous statutory
definition of “robbery,” and we acknowledge today that Nedley
has been abrogated by intervening Supreme Court precedent,
so we will affirm Stevens’s Hobbs Act robbery conviction. In
addition, because Stevens’s robbery conviction qualifies as a
“crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) regardless of
whether it was predicated on the Government’s aiding and
abetting or its alternative Pinkerton conspiracy theory, we will
also affirm his conviction for that offense.

                               3
I.     BACKGROUND

       In January 2020, Stevens and co-defendants Maurice
Quinn and Donnie Smith were tried in connection with the
armed robbery of a Philadelphia convenience store. The
evidence at trial, including witness testimony, video footage,
and the guns and money recovered from the defendants,
reflected that Quinn entered first, stopped in front of the store’s
ATM, and then attempted to buy a pack of cigarettes with a
$20 dollar bill that the clerk immediately rejected as
counterfeit. Quinn responded that the bill had just come out of
the ATM and demanded that the clerk reimburse him with
genuine bills for a series of withdrawals totaling $100 that he
had made that day.

        Events unfolded quickly when the clerk refused. As
Quinn walked behind the counter and began shoving and
shouting at the clerk, Stevens entered the store and confronted
the clerk from the other side of the counter. But when the clerk
grabbed the store’s security pistol, both made a quick exit, with
Stevens “screaming” at the clerk for having retrieved the
security pistol and threatening that they would return. App.
217–18.

        Return they did, in short order. Quinn came back first,
followed by Donnie Smith, who pulled out a gun and pointed
it at the clerk’s head. Then Stevens returned, also holding a
gun, and the three defendants forced the clerk to the cashier’s
booth where Smith disarmed him and Quinn made him open
the register. Smith told Quinn to “take everything,” id. at 414,
but Quinn took only $100 before he headed for the exit, yelling
to Stevens to let him take Stevens’s gun with him. After a brief
argument, Stevens handed it to Quinn, who then left the store.

                                4
        That was not the end of the encounter, however, even
for Quinn. As he left, the store’s owner came in and confronted
Stevens and Smith. Stevens, lamenting that they went through
“all this for $100,” id. at 418, attempted to persuade the owner
that he was just there trying to “fix things,” id. at 490. As
Stevens was talking to the owner, Quinn pulled out Smith, who
was still holding the store’s security pistol. Smith fled by car,
chased by the police, while Quinn escaped on foot. Stevens,
meanwhile, yelled at the store owner for having called the
police, told her that he “owned the neighborhood” and “would
close the store at any time he want[ed] to,” id. at 354, and then
also departed by foot. All three defendants were arrested
within a few months.

        At the conclusion of trial, the District Court instructed
the jury that each defendant could be convicted of Hobbs Act
robbery under three alternative theories of liability: direct,
aiding and abetting, or for participation in a Pinkerton
conspiracy.      The District Court further instructed that
defendants could be convicted under § 924(c) based on either
a direct or an aiding and abetting theory. After deliberating for
several hours, the jury found Stevens, Smith, and Quinn guilty
on all counts in a general verdict, and the District Court denied
their motions for judgment of acquittal. Stevens now brings
this timely appeal.1

1
  Quinn and Smith have also appealed their respective
convictions, United States v. Maurice Quinn (21-2174); United
States v. Donnie Smith (21-1384), but we will resolve those
appeals separately.

                               5
II.    DISCUSSION2

       Stevens raises two arguments on appeal. First, although
he concedes that the evidence would be sufficient to sustain his
Hobbs Act robbery conviction if that were merely a general-
intent crime, he asserts that Hobbs Act robbery requires a
“specific intent to permanently deprive the victim of property,”
Opening Br. 1, and that a properly instructed jury could not
have found that element satisfied. Second, he claims that his §
924(c) conviction cannot stand because he did not commit a
“crime of violence.” While Stevens styles this as a sufficiency-
of-the-evidence claim, his challenge, at bottom, is that a
conviction under an aiding and abetting or a Pinkerton theory
of liability for a completed crime of violence—here, Hobbs
Act robbery—does not itself qualify as a crime of violence for
purposes of § 924(c). We address each argument below.

       A.     The District Court Correctly Charged the
              Jury on the Elements of Hobbs Act Robbery.

        Stevens contends that Hobbs Act robbery requires a
specific intent to permanently deprive a victim of property and
that, by failing to instruct the jury on this element, the District
Court deprived him of “a jury determination that [he] is guilty
of every element of the crime with which he is charged, beyond
a reasonable doubt.” Reply Br. 3 (quoting Apprendi v. New
Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 477 (2000)) (internal quotation marks
omitted). Because trial counsel failed to raise this objection at
trial, we review only for plain error. See United States v.
Dobson, 419 F.3d 231, 236 (3d Cir. 2005) (citation omitted).

2
 The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §
3231, and we have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

                                6
In the context of jury instructions, however, that is not a
particularly heavy burden because a trial court has an
independent “obligation to distill the law correctly” for the
jury, Robinson v. First State Cmty. Action Agency, 920 F.3d
182, 190 (3d Cir. 2019), so its “omission of an essential
element of an offense . . . ordinarily constitutes plain error,”
United States v. Haywood, 363 F.3d 200, 207 (3d Cir. 2004)
(citation omitted) (emphasis omitted). Here, however, we
discern no error, much less plain error.

        Stevens bases his argument on our 1958 decision in
Nedley. There, we held that, absent “contrary direction” from
Congress, we presume it “knows and adopts the cluster of ideas
that [are] attached to each . . . word” that it has “borrowed”
from the common law. 255 F.2d at 357 (quoting Morissette v.
United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263 (1952)) (internal quotation
marks omitted). Notwithstanding the Hobbs Act’s express
definition of “robbery” in § 1951(b)(1), we stated that
Congress had not provided such contrary direction because the
Act’s legislative history suggested an intent to adopt common-
law robbery. Id. at 355–57. Specifically, we observed that the
Congressional Record suggested the Act’s robbery definition
was “copied from the New York Code substantially,” so we
reviewed the “New York Penal Laws relating to robbery and
the construction given them by the New York courts.” Id. at
355 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). From
that review, we determined that “while [the Penal Laws did
not] specify any requirement of ‘intent’ or ‘asportation’ or
‘carrying away’, the New York courts have ruled that they are
elements of robbery and must be established in order for a
conviction to stand.” Id. (citations omitted). We therefore
concluded that “‘[r]obbery’ under the Hobbs Act . . . is
common law robbery,” which requires the Government to

                               7
additionally “prove [1] forcible taking and [2] carrying away
[3] with the specific intent to steal personal property taken from
the person of another by violence or putting in fear, and [4]
with the intention to permanently keep the property so taken.”
Id. at 357 (emphases added).

        In the sixty-five years since Nedley, the Supreme
Court’s approach to statutory construction has changed
significantly. Today, the Court only looks to legislative
history, if at all, “when interpreting ambiguous statutory
language.” Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1749
(2020) (emphasis in original). And although the Court has
continued to impute common-law concepts when a “federal
criminal statute uses a common-law term of established
meaning,” Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 114 (1990)
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted), it has applied
that imputation doctrine only to specific undefined words or
phrases within a statute rather than to the statutory offense as a
whole, see, e.g., Evans v. United States, 504 U.S. 255, 259–63
(1992) (imputing common-law meaning to the undefined
phrase “under color of official right” within the Hobbs Act’s
definition of extortion while pointing out that “the present
statutory text is much broader than the common-law definition
of extortion because it [also] encompasses conduct by a private
individual”). Where the statutory text is unambiguous, we
need look no further. See Carter v. United States, 530 U.S.
255, 266–67 & n.5 (2000).

       This evolution in statutory construction informed the
Supreme Court’s decisions in two cases that bear directly on
our ruling today. In United States v. Culbert, the Court rejected
the argument that the Hobbs Act required the Government to
prove that a defendant’s conduct constituted “racketeering.”
435 U.S. 371, 373 (1978). Instead, the Court looked to “the

                                8
face of the statute,” id., observed that it “carefully defines its
key terms, such as ‘robbery,’ ‘extortion,’ and ‘commerce,’” id.,
found corroboration in the legislative history, id. at 374–75,
and ultimately held that “Congress intended to make criminal
all conduct within the reach of the statutory language,” id. at
380.

       More recently, in Carter, the Court considered whether
Congress “sought to discard the [common-law] asportation
requirement” when it criminalized bank robbery in 18 U.S.C.
§ 2113(a), which defines the offense in terms nearly identical
to § 1951(b)(1).3 530 U.S. at 272. The appellant there argued
that because § 2113(a) describes a “similar” offense to
common-law robbery, the Court “must assume” that it requires
the “same elements” as its “common-law predecessor[].” Id.
at 264. The Court disagreed, explaining that the “common law
should be imported into statutory text only when Congress
employs a common-law term,” not when it merely describes an
analogous offense. Id. at 265. It added that although the term

3
  In relevant part, 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) defines robbery as
“[w]hoever, by force and violence, or by intimidation, takes, or
attempts to take, from the person or presence of another, . . .
any property or money or any other thing of value belonging
to, or in the care, custody, control, management, or possession
of, any bank,” while the Hobbs Act defines it as the “unlawful
taking or obtaining of personal property from the person or in
the presence of another, against his will, by means of actual or
threatened force, or violence, or fear of injury, immediate or
future, to his person or property, or property in his custody or
possession, or the person or property of a relative or member
of his family or of anyone in his company at the time of the
taking or obtaining,” 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(1).

                                9
“robbery” appeared in the statute’s title, which could be
relevant to “‘shed[] light on some ambiguous word or phrase’
in the statute itself,” there was not “any such ambiguous
language” in § 2113(a). Id. at 267 (citation omitted).

        Instead, the Court explained, Congress unambiguously
opted against asportation and specific-intent requirements by
not “simply punish[ing] ‘robbery’ . . . , thereby leaving the
definition of [that] term[] to the common law,” but “instead
followed the more prevalent legislative practice of spelling out
elements of [the] crime[].” Id. at 267 n.5. Carter thus also
rejected the argument that legislative history compelled a
common-law reading of “robbery,” noting that “[s]uch
reasoning [] misunderstands our approach to statutory
interpretation.” Id. at 270–71. The Carter Court explained
that, “[i]n analyzing a statute, [a court] begin[s] by examining
the text . . . , not by ‘psychoanalyzing those who enacted it,’”
id. at 271 (citations omitted). But where the text of a “statute
by its terms does not contain” a mental state, id. at 267–68
(quoting United States v. X–Citement Video, Inc., 513 U.S. 64,
70 (1994)), the court instead applies the “presumption in favor
of scienter,” and reads in “only that mens rea which is
necessary to separate wrongful conduct from ‘otherwise
innocent conduct,’” id. at 268–69 (quoting X–Citement Video,
Inc., 513 U.S. at 72).

       As relevant here, the Court ultimately held that while
“some situations may call for implying a specific intent
requirement into statutory text,” id. at 269, where a statute
criminalizes a “forceful taking,” a “general intent requirement
suffices,” id. at 269–70 (noting that once “proof of knowledge
with respect to the actus reus of the crime . . . and [the] actus
reus are shown . . . , a forceful taking—even by a defendant
who takes under a good-faith claim of right—falls outside the

                               10
realm of the ‘otherwise innocent’”); see also Elonis v. United
States, 575 U.S. 723, 737 (2015).

       Stevens attempts to distinguish Carter in a number of
ways, none of which is persuasive. First, he points out that
“robbery” only appeared in the title of § 2113, while it appears
in the text of § 1951(b), and he argues on that basis that it is
sufficiently ambiguous to impart a common-law reading. But
that argument ignores the express definition of “robbery” in §
1951(b)(1). Cf. Moskal, 498 U.S. at 114 (noting that we adopt
common law meaning when Congress uses a term “without
otherwise defining it”) (citation omitted and emphasis added).
And the definition in § 1951(b) is virtually identical to the
description of the robbery offense in § 2113(a). Thus, the
Carter Court’s refusal to read in “‘extra’ [common-law]
elements” maps directly onto the Hobbs Act, as the Act’s
express definition of robbery precludes the applicability of the
canon on imputing common law meaning. Carter, 530 U.S. at
267.

        Next, Stevens points out that the Supreme Court has
relied on legislative history to justify importing common-law
concepts into the Hobbs Act’s definition of extortion in
§ 1951(b)(2). See, e.g., Evans, 504 U.S. at 264; see also Sekhar
v. United States, 570 U.S. 729, 732–35 (2013); Scheidler v.
Nat’l Org. for Women, Inc., 537 U.S. 393, 402–03 & n.7
(2003). In those cases, however, the Court looked to legislative
history and, in turn, to the common law to interpret particular
terms within the definition of “extortion”—namely, “under
color of official right” in Evans, 504 U.S. at 256, and
“obtaining of property” in Sekhar, 570 U.S. at 730, and
Scheidler, 537 U.S. at 400—not to substitute the common-law
definition of the entire offense for the statutory one or to add
an element to the statutory offense that was not grounded in the

                              11
text. Because Stevens does not point us to any such undefined
term here, we see no need to review legislative history.

        Finally, Stevens argues that, while § 2113 prohibits only
the “taking” of property, Hobbs Act robbery prohibits the
“taking or obtaining” of property, and “obtaining” must carry
the same common-law connotation of permanent deprivation
in § 1951(b)(1) as Sekhar and Scheidler said it does in §
1951(b)(2). The problem here is that Sekhar and Scheidler said
no such thing. In Sekhar, the Court held that Hobbs Act
extortion did not cover threats made to induce an investment
recommendation because “[o]btaining property requires ‘not
only the deprivation but also the acquisition of property,’” 570
U.S. at 734, (quoting Scheidler, 537 U.S. at 404), and a
recommendation “was not obtainable property” that the
perpetrator could acquire, id. at 737 (emphasis in original).
Scheidler likewise made no mention of asportation and held
only that extortion did not cover protests that “in some
instances completely deprived” abortion clinics of their ability
to operate because the protesters interfered with an “alleged
property right” but did not receive “something of value from”
the clinics. 537 U.S. at 404–05 (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted). Thus, none of Stevens’s attempts to
distinguish Carter’s central holding persuade us.

       As such, we believe that Culbert and Carter have
undermined the Nedley Court’s rationale for looking to the
Hobbs Act’s legislative history, along with its decision to
impute common-law meaning for a statutorily defined term.
See DiFiore v. CSL Behring, LLC, 879 F.3d 71, 76 (3d Cir.
2018).     And while our Internal Operating Procedures
“generally obligate[] [us] to follow our precedent absent en
banc reconsideration,” Karns v. Shanahan, 879 F.3d 504, 514
(3d Cir. 2018) (discussing 3d Cir. I.O.P. 9.1), they “must give

                               12
way” where, as here, a “prior panel’s holding is in conflict with
Supreme Court precedent,’” id. at 515 (citation and internal
quotation marks omitted); see also United States v. Henderson,
64 F.4th 111, 118 (3d Cir. 2023). Accordingly, we recognize
that Nedley’s analysis and holding with respect to the
applicable mens rea for Hobbs Act robbery have been
abrogated by intervening precedent.

       Further reinforcing this conclusion, every other Court of
Appeals to have squarely considered this issue has concluded
that Hobbs Act robbery is a general-intent crime. See, e.g.,
United States v. García-Ortiz, 904 F.3d 102, 108 (1st Cir.
2018) (“The elements of Hobbs Act robbery similarly include
‘an implicit mens rea element of general intent—or
knowledge—as to the actus reus of the offense.’”) (internal
quotations omitted); United States v. Gray, 260 F.3d 1267,
1283 (11th Cir. 2001) (“[T]he only mens rea required for a
Hobbs Act robbery conviction is that the offense be committed
knowingly.”); United States v. Du Bo, 186 F.3d 1177, 1179
(9th Cir. 1999) (“Although not stated in the Hobbs Act itself,
criminal intent—acting ‘knowingly or willingly’—is an
implied and necessary element that the government must prove
for a Hobbs Act conviction.”) (citation omitted). The Eleventh
Circuit even went so far as to expressly reject Nedley and to
observe that intervening Supreme Court cases “indicate that it
may have been wrongly decided.” United States v. Thomas, 8
F.3d 1552, 1563 (11th Cir. 1993).

       The abrogation of Nedley is fatal to Stevens’s Hobbs
Act robbery claim. The Court’s directive in Carter and the
general-intent standard adopted by our sister Circuits map
directly onto our Third Circuit Model Jury Instructions for
Hobbs Act robbery, which the District Court followed nearly

                               13
verbatim here.4 See App. 1142–43; Third Circuit Model
Criminal Jury Instructions § 6.18.1951.          Under those
instructions, the Government must prove that a defendant acted
“knowingly and willfully,” a phrase which we have previously
interpreted to mean “knowledge that [one’s] conduct was, in
some general sense, ‘unlawful,’” United States v. Starnes, 583
F.3d 196, 210 (3d Cir. 2009) (citations omitted). Thus, the
District Court’s instruction here fits squarely within the
general-intent standard that Carter prescribed for “forceful
takings.”

        In sum, the District Court did not err, much less plainly
err, in giving this jury instruction, and Stevens concedes that a
reasonable jury, following this instruction, could have
concluded that he aided and abetted Smith’s completed Hobbs
Act robbery by intending to “facilitate[] the taking of the gun
from the clerk.” Opening Br. 25; see also Jackson v. Virginia,
443 U.S. 307, 318–19 (1979) (explaining that the relevant
question for evidence sufficiency claims is “whether, after
viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the
prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the
essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt”).
We will therefore affirm that robbery conviction.

4
  Of course, adherence to the Model Jury Instructions does not
preclude the possibility of plain error. These instructions are
“neither law nor precedential,” Robinson, 920 F.3d at 190, and
are therefore “reviewed like any other instructions for their
correctness, both on plenary review and plain-error review,”
id. at 190 n.38.

                               14
       B.      Stevens Committed a Crime of Violence
               Under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).

        We turn next to Stevens’s § 924(c) challenge. Section
924(c) punishes “any person who, during and in relation to any
crime of violence . . . , uses or carries a firearm, or who, in
furtherance of any such crime, possesses a firearm.” 18 U.S.C.
§ 924(c)(1)(A). Here, Stevens asserts that “[a] conviction
under § 924(c) for carrying a gun during a ‘crime of violence’
requires a predicate conviction for a crime of violence,” and
that he committed no such crime. Opening Br. 27 (citation
omitted). While Stevens frames this as a sufficiency-of-the-
evidence challenge, it necessarily requires us to consider
whether his conviction for Hobbs Act robbery qualifies as a
valid § 924(c) predicate, even if Stevens has not framed it in
those terms. See U.S. Nat’l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents
of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 447 (1993) (“[A] court may
consider an issue antecedent to . . . and ultimately dispositive
of the dispute before it, even an issue the parties fail to identify
and brief.”) (quotation omitted).

        To qualify as a crime of violence, a crime must fall
within the ambit of the so-called “elements clause” of § 924(c).
Under that clause, a predicate must have “as an element the
use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against
the person or property of another.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A).
The inquiry turns on whether a crime “always requires the
government to prove—beyond a reasonable doubt, as an
element of its case—the use, attempted use, or threatened use
of force.” United States v. Taylor, 142 S. Ct. 2015, 2020 (2022)
(emphasis added). In answering that question, however, we
“‘look only to the statutory definitions’—i.e., the elements—
of a defendant’s [] offense[], and not ‘to the particular facts

                                15
underlying [the offense].’” Descamps v. United States, 570
U.S. 254, 261 (2013) (emphasis in original) (citation omitted).

       Importantly, in assessing whether Stevens’s conviction
qualifies, we do not start with a blank canvas. While Stevens’s
appeal was pending, we decided United States v. Stoney, where
we held that Taylor, 142 S. Ct. 2015—a recent Supreme Court
ruling that attempted Hobbs Act robbery does not satisfy the
elements clause—“[did] not change our [pre-Taylor] position”
that “completed Hobbs Act robbery is categorically a crime of
violence under § 924(c)(3)(A).” 62 F.4th 108, 113–14 (3d Cir.
2023). That said, Stoney’s direct offense analysis does not end
our inquiry, as Stevens himself did not actually take anything
from the convenience store, and the Stoney Court expressly left
open whether a Hobbs Act robbery conviction under an aiding
and abetting or a Pinkerton theory of guilt—which the District
Court charged in the alternative here—qualifies as a valid
§ 924(c) predicate. Id. at 112.

        Our analyses are straightforward for both theories of
liability. Section 2 of U.S. Code, Title 18, the federal aiding
and abetting statute, requires the Government to prove “(1) that
the substantive crime has been committed; and (2) that the
defendant charged with aiding and abetting knew of the
commission of the substantive offense and acted with intent to
facilitate it.” United States v. Petersen, 622 F.3d 196, 208 (3d
Cir. 2010) (emphasis added) (citations omitted). That
distinguishes § 2 offenses from the types of inchoate offenses
that require only that a defendant take a “substantial step”
towards a completed offense. Taylor, 142 S. Ct. at 2021;
Henderson, 64 F.4th at 119 (citation omitted). Under § 2,
where the underlying substantive offense includes, as an
element, the use of physical force, that same physical force is
necessarily an element of aiding and abetting liability. See,

                              16
e.g., United States v. Ali, 991 F.3d 561, 574 (4th Cir. 2021)
(“[A]iding and abetting a crime has the exact same elements as
the principal offense.”); App. 1149 (instructing that aiding and
abetting liability requires that “someone, including one of the
Defendants, committed the offense charged by committing
each of the elements of the offense”). And because the force
required for completed Hobbs Act robbery is sufficient to
satisfy the elements clause, Stoney, 62 F.4th at 113, the force
required for an aiding and abetting conviction is necessarily
also sufficient.

        True, the force required for abetting liability need not
actually come from the abettor herself. But § 924(c) lacks any
personal “use of force” requirement, and the relevant inquiry
looks to the elements of the underlying offense. Taylor, 142 S.
Ct. at 2020. Even if § 924(c) did require an individualized use
of force, § 2 provides that “the acts of the principal become
those of the aider and abettor as a matter of law.” In re Colon,
826 F.3d 1301, 1305 (11th Cir. 2016) (citation omitted); see
also Sasay v. Att’y Gen. United States, 13 F.4th 291, 294 n.3
(3d Cir. 2021) (noting that when applying the categorical
approach we “treat the commission of [aiding and abetting]
crimes the same” as a principal’s crime) (citation omitted).
Thus, we join the other circuits that have unanimously reached
the same conclusion: aiding and abetting a completed Hobbs
Act robbery qualifies as a crime violence under § 924(c). See,
e.g., García-Ortiz, 904 F.3d at 109; United States v. McCoy,
995 F.3d 32, 57–58 (2d Cir. 2021), vacated on other grounds,
142 S. Ct. 2863 (2022); Ali, 991 F.3d at 573–74; United States
v. Hill, 63 F.4th 335, 363 (5th Cir. 2023); United States v.
Richardson, 948 F.3d 733, 741–42 (6th Cir. 2020); United
States v. Worthen, 60 F.4th 1066, 1069–70 (7th Cir. 2023);
Young v. United States, 22 F.4th 1115, 1123 (9th Cir. 2022)

                              17
(same for bank robbery); United States v. Deiter, 890 F.3d
1203, 1214–16 (10th Cir. 2018) (same for bank robbery); In re
Colon, 826 F.3d at 1305.

       Likewise, under a Pinkerton liability theory, where the
use of physical force is an element of the completed offense, it
suffices to impute use of force to co-conspirators. Under
Pinkerton, the Government may “prove the guilt of one
defendant through the acts of another committed within the
scope of and in furtherance of a conspiracy of which the
defendant was a member, provided the acts are reasonably
foreseeable as a necessary or natural consequence of the
conspiracy.” United States v. Lopez, 271 F.3d 472, 480 (3d
Cir. 2001) (citing Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640,
647–48 (1946)). So like aiding and abetting liability,
Pinkerton liability requires proof that at least one conspirator
“commit[ed] each of the elements of [the underlying
substantive] offense,” App. 1154; see also Lopez, 271 F.3d at
480, and thus also necessarily satisfies § 924(c)’s elements
clause, see, e.g., United States v. Serrano-Delgado, 29 F.4th
16, 28 (1st Cir. 2022); United States v. Gahagen, 44 F.4th 99,
109 (2d Cir. 2022) (same for bank robbery); United States v.
Gillespie, 27 F.4th 934, 942 (4th Cir. 2022); Reyes v. United
States, 998 F.3d 753, 757–59 (7th Cir. 2021) (same for bank
robbery); United States v. Henry, 984 F.3d 1343, 1356 (9th Cir.
2021) (same for bank robbery).

       Stevens’s § 924(c) challenge here is therefore
unavailing. He indisputably brandished his firearm during
Smith’s completed Hobbs Act robbery, and while the jury’s
general verdict obscures whether Stevens’s Hobbs Act robbery
conviction was based on an aiding and abetting or a Pinkerton
theory of guilt, under either theory he is liable for committing

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a crime of violence. See, e.g., Worthen, 60 F.4th at 1069–70;
Henry, 984 F.3d at 1356.

III.   CONCLUSION

      For the foregoing reasons, we will uphold Stevens’s
convictions and the judgment of the District Court.

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