Court Opinion

ID: 9478955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:04:16.760882+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:44.148774
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I subscribe to the analysis of the statute and its history contained in Judge Green-berg’s dissenting opinion, infra, and therefore I cannot join in Chief Judge Gibbons’ opinion announcing the judgment of the court. I also agree with Judge Green-berg’s conclusion and the conclusion of a number of Courts of Appeals that Congress intended that, to qualify as triggering offenses for the enhanced penalty, the three previous convictions must each have arisen from separate criminal episodes, but need not be separated by intervening convictions. See United States v. Towne, 870 F.2d 880 (2d Cir.1989) (“§ 924’s references to ‘convictions’ pertains to single ‘episodes’ of felonious criminal activity that are distinct in time, rather than literal convictions”); United States v. Herbert, 860 F.2d 620, 622 (5th Cir.1988) (rejecting rule requiring intervening convictions between criminal episodes and adopting “separate distinct criminal transactions” as test); United States v. Gillies, 851 F.2d 492, 497 (1st Cir.) (robberies on different days in different drug stores sufficiently distinct), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 147, 102 L.Ed.2d 119 (1988); United States v. Rush, 840 F.2d 580, 581 (8th Cir.) (“[I]t is the criminal episodes underlying the convictions, not the dates of conviction, that must be distinct to trigger the provisions of the ACCA.”), cert. denied, _ U.S. _, 108 S.Ct. 2908, 101 L.Ed.2d 940 (1988); United States v. Greene, 810 F.2d 999, 1000 (11th Cir.1986) (separate buildings, separate felonies, different days sufficiently distinct).
However, I am sufficiently persuaded by Chief Judge Gibbons’ account of the concern of the Congress that the statute ensnare only hard core repeat offenders that I believe that the separate criminal episode requirement must be read rigorously and that we must insist that the government prove convincingly that the crimes (and the episodes of which they were part) were truly separate.
Applying that rigorous standard here, I am unconvinced that the government has proven that the two Levittown burglaries, which constitute the second and third offenses, were part of separate criminal episodes. The government produced evidence that during the night of July 10-11, 1981, Balascsak committed two burglaries, one at a residence in Levittown, Pennsylvania, at about 10:45 p.m., and a second at a residence one block away from the first, some time between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. the next morning. The government has not, in my view, established that two burglaries, occurring sometime between 10:45 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., are separate. For example, it is more than possible that the two burglaries *685were committed within minutes of each other.1 Therefore, I believe the government has failed to establish three burglaries that are distinct in time.
I concede my inability to establish a bright line, e.g., as to whether two days’ or two weeks’ hiatus is enough. But developing the law on a case-by-case basis and drawing lines depending on the facts is the stuff of judging and I would leave the development of the law to that process. Therefore, like Chief Judge Gibbons, I would vacate the judgment of sentence and remand for resentencing.2 I thus concur in the judgment.

. The facts of United States v. Wicks, 833 F.2d 192 (9th Cir.1987), are very similar to this case. There, the two burglaries "occurred on the same night." 833 F.2d at 193. As I have stated above, I believe that if that is all the government has proven, it has not succeeded.

. I do, however, join in Part C of Chief Judge Gibbons’ opinion announcing the judgment of the court.