Court Opinion

ID: 9486725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:57:29.91411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:53.508874
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
It is inappropriate, in my view, to look to the facts underlying the defendant’s prior burglary convictions in order to decide whether those crimes are violent felonies for the purpose of enhancing the defendant’s sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). In doing so, the majority opinion comes perilously close to doing what the Supreme Court expressly forbids in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 600-03, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 2159-60, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990). Taylor instructs us to look to the statutory definitions of the prior offenses and not to the particular facts underlying those convictions. Id.
The defendant’s prior convictions under the North Carolina statute, N.C.Gen.Stat. 14-15(a), are for violent felonies within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) if section 14-54(a) charges “generic burglary” as defined in Taylor, 495 U.S. at 598-99, 110 S.Ct. at 2158. The statute charges “generic burglary” if the “entry” it proscribes means “unlawful or unprivileged entry.” Id. at 598, 110 S.Ct. at 2158. According to the North Carolina Supreme Court, it does. In State v. Boone, 297 N.C. 652, 256 S.E.2d 683 (1979), the court held that the “entry” proscribed in section 14-54(a) is “wrongful entry, i.e., without the consent of the owner.” Id. 256 S.E.2d at 685.
Therefore, section 14-54(a) charges a “generic burglary”; a “violent felony” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e).