Court Opinion

ID: 9493612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:13:08.150809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:55.849643
License: Public Domain

TORRUELLA, Chief Judge,
dissenting in part.
Although I agree with the majority on the bulk of this opinion, I would find that the breaking and entering statute here, R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-8-2, qualifies as a “violent felony” with respect to 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) under, both Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 591, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990), and this Court’s prior decisions. I accordingly dissent from Part III.
The majority focuses on the fact that the Supreme Court’s definition of “burglary” in Taylor required that a criminal statute include two elements to qualify: that the defendant break and enter into a “building or structure” and that the defendant break and enter “with intent to commit a crime.” Id. at 599, 110 S.Ct. 2143. From this definition of burglary in § 924(e) (2) (B) (i), the majority concludes that Congress did not intend that the “otherwise” clause of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) include any breaking and entering offense lacking these two features. Admittedly, the Rhode Island statute does not include a felonious intent element.
However, I can not conclude that the Taylor decision, which only interpreted § 924(e)(2)(B)(i), necessarily excluded breaking and entering crimes such as this one from the “otherwise” clause of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). Although the majority is correct that the legislative history concentrates on “entirely different genera” of property crimes (such as arson and extortion), the history also discusses at length the reasons why Congress considered burglary to be a prototypical violent felony. The legislative sponsor, cited in the House Report, found burglary to be “one of the ‘most damaging crimes to society,’ because it involves ‘invasion of [victims’] homes or workplaces’ and ‘violation of their privacy.’ ” Taylor, 495 U.S. at 581, 110 S.Ct. 2143 (citing H.R.Rep. No. 98-1073, at 1, 3 (1984)). The Senate Report noted that while burglary is often considered nonviolent, “its character can change rapidly, depending on the fortuitous presence of the occupants of the home when the burglar enters, or their arrival while he is still on the premises.” Id. (citing S.Rep. No. 98-190, at 5 (1983)). These animating purposes suggest the appropriateness of finding § 11-8-2 to be a violent felony: whether criminal intent is an element of the statute or not, a violation of § 11-8-2 potentially involves the “invasion of the home or workplace,” the “violation of privacy,” and the potential for violence toward unanticipated occupiers or discoverers feared by Congress in enacting and amending this legislation.
This Court’s prior decisions have realized that the motivation for including a breaking and entering felony as “violent” under the “otherwise” clause rests primarily on the negative effects of the intrusion and minimally on the reason why the criminal enters the structure. In United States v. Payne, 966 F.2d 4 (1st Cir.1992), we found that attempted breaking and entering was a violent felony. We held that the risk of injury stemmed not from the completion of the break-in, “but rather from the possibility that some innocent party may appear on the scene while the break-in is occurring.” Id. at 8. Notably, we did not premise this serious risk on the fact that the perpetrator was entering the building to commit a felony, or indeed any crime, inside. See also United States v. Sawyer, 144 F.3d 191, 195-96 (1st Cir. 1998) (distinction between crime and one of four serious felonies irrelevant to violent felony determination); United States v. Patterson, 882 F.2d 595, 603 (1st Cir.1989) (“[W]hile a burglary might start out as a non-violent crime, the burglar may resort to violence if someone is on the premises or appears there while the burglary is in process.... Congress could quite reasonably conclude that no matter what the felon’s intent upon breaking in, the property owner may return, a neighbor may in*113vestigate, or a law enforcement official may respond. All of these scenarios present a grave threat of harm to persons.” (citing United States v. Portwood, 857 F.2d 1221, 1224 (8th Cir.1988))). We concluded in Patterson, as I would conclude here, that “[u]nder the catch-all provision of the statute, it matters not how burglary is defíned[; t]he crucial factor is an unauthorized entry of the premises of another.” Id.
Although the majority does not need to reach the issue, Peterson also argues that the “unoccupied” status of the building should pull it out of the ambit of the “otherwise” clause. Again, neither the Supreme Court nor this Court has premised the risk of harm on the occupied or unoccupied status of the dwelling. See Taylor, 495 U.S. at 597, 110 S.Ct. 2143 (The definition of a violent felony includes any “unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime.”); United States v. Schofield, 114 F.3d 350, 352 (1st Cir. 1997) (“Under Taylor, it is irrelevant whether the school was occupied.”); Payne, 966 F.2d at 8 (Although “any confrontation is more likely to result in violence if it occurs while the perpetrator is in the building, as he is then likely to have no easy way out and to cause greater alarm to whomever he confronts,” there remains “a serious risk of confrontation while a perpetrator is attempting to enter the building.”). This risk of serious injury stemming from the arrival of a passerby, or even more seriously, from the discovery of a trespasser inside a building with limited exit possibilities, is enough to meet the threshold of violence under the ACCA.
Our analysis requires us to examine whether “the probability of physical harm presented by the mine-run of conduct that falls within the heartland of the statute” is sufficient to meet the “violent felony” standard of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). United States v. De-Jesús, 984 F.2d 21, 24 (1st Cir.1993). After a careful reading of Taylor and this Court’s precedent, I find that the same risks inherent in other “violent felony” statutes are at play in this one. Accordingly, I would affirm the district court’s decision on this issue.