Court Opinion

ID: 9486004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:35:41.187509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:29.199377
License: Public Domain

WALLACE, Chief Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the majority opinion except for section VB. I cannot join in this part of the majority opinion, and concur only in its result.
Our opinion is very narrow: it concerns only the Guidelines in effect at the time of Innie’s arrest. Under the categorical approach of those Guidelines, we may “not look to the specific conduct” of which the defendant was convicted, “but only to the statutory definition of the crime.” United States v. Becker, 919 F.2d 568, 570 (9th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 911, 111 S.Ct. 1118, 113 L.Ed.2d 226 (1991). Innie pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder for hire in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3. This statute provides that “[wjhoever, knowing that an offense against the United States has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact.” I agree with the majority that, under this statutory definition, the accessory after the fact offense is not a crime of violence. Maj. op. at 851.
Our cases do carve out a limited exception to the general rule that a court may only look to the fact of conviction and the. statutory definition of the prior offense. However, the exception is limited to those situations where the language of the statute itself defines crimes of both violence and nonviolence. Thus, in United States v. Selfa, 918 F.2d 749 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 986, 111 S.Ct. 521, 112 L.Ed.2d 532 (1990), the district court determined that the defendant’s two prior convictions for bank robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) constituted crimes of violence. The first paragraph of section 2113(a) prohibits bank robbery committed “by force and violence, or by intimidation” while the second paragraph criminalizes the act of entering or attempting to enter a bank with intent to commit a felony in it. As we discussed in Selfa, only the first paragraph describes a crime of violence. Id. at 751-52 & n. 2. Nonetheless we upheld the district court’s decision to apply U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 because the presentence report, “based upon a review of relevant portions of the record underlying the prior convictions, including a review of the charging documents, ... showed that this defendant had been convicted of actual bank robbery pursuant to the first paragraph of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a).” Id.; see also United States v. Mendez, 992 F.2d 1488, 1490-92 (9th Cir.1993) {Mendez) (holding conspiracy to rob in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951 a crime of violence for purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) even though section 1951 also covers conspiracy to extort among other crimes), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 262, 126 L.Ed.2d 214 (1993). Likewise, in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 2160, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990), the Supreme Court suggested that the
categorical approach ... may permit the sentencing court to go beyond the mere fact of conviction in a narrow range of eases where a jury was actually required to find all the elements of generic burglary. For example, in a State whose burglary statutes include entry of an automobile as well as a building, if the indictment or information and jury instructions show that the defendant was charged only with a burglary of a building, and that the jury necessarily had to find an entry of a building to convict, then the Government should be allowed to use the conviction for en*854hancement [pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)],
(Emphasis added.)
18 U.S.C. § 3 does not describe the accessory after the fact crime “using several permutations, any one of which constitutes the same offense.” Mendez, 992 F.2d at 1490. Rather, the same statutory definition applies to every accessory after the fact conviction regardless of the nature of the underlying federal offense, whether it be murder for hire or tax evasion. Under the categorical approach, therefore, we are barred from going beyond the statutory definition of the offense in determining whether Innie’s prior felony conviction as an accessory after the fact to murder for hire was a crime of violence. Indeed, any different interpretation would leave United States v. Young, 990 F.2d 469, 472 (9th Cir.1993), petition for cert. filed, (U.S. Aug. 19, 1993) (No. 93-5647), superfluous.