# Irma Ovalles v. United States

> Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit · October 4, 2018 · 905 F.3d 1231

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4318394

## Case

- **Full name:** Irma OVALLES, Petitioner - Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent - Appellee.
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- **Decided:** October 4, 2018
- **Citations:** 905 F.3d 1231
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Opinion by Newsom
- **Judges:** Carnes, Tjoflat, Marcus, Wilson, Pryor, Martin, Jordan, Rosenbaum, Newsom, Branch, Hull
- **Nature of suit:** ENB
- **Cited by:** 101 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Abrogated by United States v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4318394

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding that defendant’s conviction for attempted carjacking constituted a “crime of violence” under section 924(c)(3)(B) because the undisputed “real-life details” of the crime demonstrated that defendant’s conduct “posed a very real ‘risk’ that physical force ‘may’ be used.”
- holding that the residual clause is not unconstitutionally vague and applying a conduct-based approach to that definition of “crime of violence”
- establishing a new test to determine whether a defendant's prior conviction qualifies as a "crime of violence" under 18 U.S.C. § 924 (c

## Opinion text

Case: 17-10172 Date Filed: 10/04/2018 Page: 1 of 153

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________

No. 17-10172
________________________

D.C. Docket Nos. 1:16-cv-02392-TWT; 1:10-cr-00305-TWT-RVG-1

IRMA OVALLES,

Petitioner - Appellant,

versus

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent - Appellee.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
________________________

(October 4, 2018)

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, TJOFLAT, MARCUS, WILSON, WILLIAM
PRYOR, MARTIN, JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM,
BRANCH, and HULL, * Circuit Judges.

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:

*
Senior Circuit Judge Hull elected to participate in this decision, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(c).
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The question before us is whether one of the key provisions of an important

federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), is unconstitutionally vague. As

relevant to our purposes, § 924(c) makes it a federal offense—punishable by a term

of imprisonment ranging from five years to life—for any person to use, carry, or

possess a firearm in connection with a “crime of violence.” 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(c)(1)(A). The provision challenged here—§ 924(c)(3)’s “residual clause”—

defines the term “crime of violence” to mean a felony “that by its nature, involves

a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may

be used in the course of committing the offense.” Id. § 924(c)(3)(B).

This case is in some respects a successor to Johnson v. United States, 135 S.

Ct. 2551 (2015), and Sessions v. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. 1204 (2018), in which the

Supreme Court invalidated similarly-worded residual clauses on vagueness

grounds. In the wake of those decisions, all here seem to agree that if § 924(c)(3)’s

residual clause is interpreted to require determination of the crime-of-violence

issue using what (in court-speak) has come be called the “categorical approach,”

the clause is doomed. As the Supreme Court has explained and applied it, this

categorical approach—which the provisions at issue in both Johnson and Dimaya

were deemed to embody—does not permit consideration of a defendant’s specific

conduct or how she “might have committed [her crime] on a particular occasion,”

but rather focuses exclusively on “how the law defines the offense” as a formal

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matter and whether, in the abstract, “the kind of conduct that the crime involves in

the ordinary case” meets the statutory standard. Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2557

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In both Johnson and Dimaya, the

Court concluded that application of a standard that requires a reviewing court “to

‘imagine’ an ‘idealized ordinary case of the crime’” rendered the challenged

clauses impermissibly vague. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1214 (quoting Johnson, 135 S.

Ct. at 2557–58).

On the flip side, Johnson and Dimaya also make clear—and it is common

ground here—that if § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause is instead interpreted to

incorporate what we’ll call a “conduct-based approach” to the crime-of-violence

determination, then the provision is not unconstitutionally vague. As its name

suggests, the conduct-based approach, in stark contrast to the categorical, focuses

not on formal legal definitions and hypothetical “ordinary case[s],” but rather on

the real-world facts of the defendant’s offense—i.e., how the defendant actually

went about committing the crime in question. And as the Supreme Court

emphasized in Johnson—and then reiterated in Dimaya—there is no reason to

“doubt the constitutionality of laws that call for the application of a qualitative

standard such as ‘substantial risk’ to real-world conduct.” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at

2561 (quoted in Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1214).

The obvious (and decisive) question, then: Which is it here—categorical or

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conduct-based? Because we find ourselves at this fork in the interpretive road—

the categorical approach imperiling § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause, a conduct-based

reading saving it—we invoke the canon of “constitutional doubt.” Pursuant to that

“elementary rule,” the Supreme Court has long held, “every reasonable

construction must be resorted to in order to save a statute from

unconstitutionality.” Hooper v. California, 155 U.S. 648, 657 (1895). The pivotal

issue, therefore, is not whether § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause is necessarily, or even

best, read to incorporate a conduct-based interpretation—but simply whether it can

“reasonabl[y],” see id., “plausibl[y],” Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371, 381 (2005),

or “fairly possibl[y],” I.N.S. v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 300 (2001), be so understood.

Joining the Second Circuit, which recently came to the same conclusion, see

United States v. Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 4288566 (2d Cir. Sept. 10, 2018),

we find that § 924(c)(3)(B) can be read to embody the conduct-based approach—

and therefore, under the constitutional-doubt canon, that it must be.

Accordingly, we hold that § 924(c)(3)(B) prescribes a conduct-based

approach, pursuant to which the crime-of-violence determination should be made

by reference to the actual facts and circumstances underlying a defendant’s

offense. To the extent that our earlier decision in United States v. McGuire, 706

F.3d 1333 (11th Cir. 2013), holds otherwise, it is overruled.

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I

A

Under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), “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” is guilty of a federal offense and subject to a prison

term ranging between five years and life. 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). Section

924(c) defines the term “crime of violence” as “an offense that is a felony” and—

(A) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of
physical force against the person or property of another, or
(B) that by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force
against the person or property of another may be used in the course of
committing the offense.

Id. § 924(c)(3). For ease of reference—and as a way of facilitating comparisons

with other similar statutes—we’ll call Subsection (3)(A) the “elements clause” and

Subsection (3)(B) the “residual clause.”1

Importantly here, this Court held in United States v. McGuire that the

question whether a predicate offense qualifies as a “crime of violence” under either

subsection is one that a court “must answer ‘categorically’—that is, by reference to

the elements of the offense, and not the actual facts of [the defendant’s] conduct.”

1
We have at times referred to these as the “use-of-force” and “risk-of-force” clauses,
respectively. See Ovalles v. United States, 861 F.3d 1257, 1263 (11th Cir. 2017), reh’g en banc
granted, opinion vacated, 889 F.3d 1259 (11th Cir. 2018). The terminological distinction makes
no substantive difference.

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706 F.3d 1333, 1336 (11th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted).

B

In 2010, Irma Ovalles was charged by information with six robbery- and

carjacking-related offenses, all of which arose out of what can only be described as

a three-day crime binge. As particularly relevant here, Ovalles was charged with

(1) attempted carjacking in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2119 and (2) using and

carrying a firearm during a “crime of violence”—the attempted carjacking—in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). Ovalles entered into a written plea

agreement in which she admitted that “she [was] in fact guilty” on all six counts.

At her plea hearing, the government outlined the elements of each crime, and

Ovalles explained that she understood what the government would have to prove

should she opt to go to trial.

The government then made a comprehensive factual proffer detailing

Ovalles’s involvement in the crimes. In general, the proffer summarized the

evidence demonstrating that Ovalles and her co-conspirators (1) robbed a grocery

store while armed with baseball bats, then (2) still wielding the bats, carjacked a

Dodge Ram, then (3) carjacked a Toyota 4-Runner, pistol-whipping its owner, then

(4) attempted to carjack a Chevy Venture—more on this one below—and finally

(5) carjacked a Ford F-150 at gunpoint. More specifically, concerning the

attempted carjacking of the Chevy Venture—during which one of Ovalles’s

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accomplices fired an AK-47, and which therefore serves as the predicate offense

for Ovalles’s § 924(c) conviction—the government’s proffer explained as follows:

They see a family getting out of a Chevy Venture in Clayton
County, Georgia, and as the family is getting out of their car, these
two defendants along with their co-conspirators go up to the family
and demand the keys to the car and demand the car. Now, they have a
baseball bat and guns with them. There’s a juvenile, a 13-year-old
female, who is part of that family group of victims. They hit that
juvenile in the mouth with a baseball bat. The damage to her I am
sure will be addressed at sentencing. It was not—she did not go to the
hospital. Let me say that.

They are demanding the keys. Somebody comes out of the
apartment complex where this is happening and that person has a gun.
He then confronts the assailants …. They flee, not taking the Chevy
Venture, which is why it is an attempted carjacking.

The government would show that the Chevy Venture traveled
in interstate commerce, that it was not made in the State of Georgia.
The government would prove it was these defendants not only through
their confessions as to this event, also through the victims’ testimony.
They do I.D. the defendants in this particular case.

On the way out of the apartment complex … co-conspirator …
Jerry Arriaga … has an AK-47 style assault rifle and he then
discharges that gun several times towards the victim family, the guy
who came to rescue them, who was armed, and the car, and that is the
basis of Count Five, the use of a firearm during and in relation to a
crime of violence.

With respect to each of the charges—including, as relevant here, the

attempted-carjacking and § 924(c) counts—Ovalles stated that she had no

“material disagreement with what the government sa[id] it could prove . . . .”

Having heard the government’s summary of the evidence against her, Ovalles

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pleaded guilty to each of the charged offenses, acknowledged that her pleas were

voluntary, and explained that she was so pleading because she was “in fact guilty

as charged in the criminal information.”

The district court thereafter sentenced Ovalles to serve 120 months in prison

on the § 924(c) count—which, per the statute, the court imposed to run

consecutively to the concurrent 108-month terms on the remaining charges.

Ovalles did not object to her sentences, nor did she file a direct appeal.

C

Several years later, Ovalles filed a motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255

contending that her § 924(c) conviction and sentence were unconstitutional in light

of the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct.

2551 (2015). In short, the Court in Johnson invalidated as unconstitutionally

vague the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause—which, for purposes of

applying that statute’s recidivism-based sentence enhancement, defines the term

“violent felony” to include any crime that is punishable by a year in prison and that

“involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to

another.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). The Court voided the ACCA’s residual

clause principally based on its conclusion that the provision necessitated the

categorical approach to determining whether an underlying conviction constitutes a

“violent felony.” See Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2557–58, 2561–63. Ovalles asserted

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that because § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause is “nearly identical to” the ACCA’s,

Johnson’s reasoning rendered it unconstitutional, as well. Accordingly, she

argued, she was “no longer guilty of violating” § 924(c) because her predicate

attempted-carjacking offense “no longer qualifie[d] as a crime of violence under §

924(c)(3)(B).”

The district court denied Ovalles’s § 2255 motion, reasoning that

§ 924(c)(3)’s residual clause did “not suffer from the same unpredictability” as the

ACCA’s. The court subsequently granted Ovalles a certificate of appealability on

the question whether § 924(c)(3)(B) is unconstitutionally vague under Johnson.

A panel of this Court affirmed the district court’s decision. For our

purposes, the panel’s opinion did two significant things. First, in accordance with

(and citing to) our earlier decision in McGuire, it held that the question whether

Ovalles’s attempting-carjacking offense constitutes a “crime of violence” within

the meaning of § 924(c)(3) had to be answered using the categorical approach. See

Ovalles v. United States, 861 F.3d 1257, 1268–69 (11th Cir. 2017), reh’g en banc

granted, opinion vacated, 889 F.3d 1259 (11th Cir. 2018). Second, though—and

notwithstanding its application of the categorical approach—the panel held that

Johnson did not invalidate § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause because, it said, the

definition of “crime of violence” in § 924(c)(3)(B) is clearer than the definition of

“violent felony” in the ACCA. Id. at 1265–66. In particular, the panel emphasized

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(1) that § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause refers not (as does the ACCA’s) to the risk of

“physical injury,” but rather to the risk of “physical force,” which it thought was

more precise; (2) that § 924(c)(3)(B)’s inclusion of the qualifying phrase “in the

course of committing the offense”—which is absent from the ACCA—narrows the

statute’s reach; and (3) that § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause isn’t plagued (and

confused, as is the ACCA’s) by linkage to a disjointed hodgepodge of enumerated

offenses. Id. at 1266.2

Not long after the panel issued its opinion, the Supreme Court decided

Sessions v. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. 1204 (2018). There, following Johnson, the Court

struck down 18 U.S.C. § 16’s residual clause (at least as that clause is incorporated

by a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act prescribing the bases on

which aliens may be rendered removable). Section 16’s residual clause is similar

to the clause invalided in Johnson and essentially identical to § 924(c)(3)’s residual

clause at issue here. Once again applying the categorical approach―there, to

determining whether an alien’s prior conviction qualified as a “crime of

violence”—the Court concluded that § 16’s residual clause is unconstitutionally

vague under the reasoning of Johnson. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1214–15. Notably,

in the course of its opinion, the Dimaya Court rejected, with respect to § 16(b),

2
The panel separately held that Ovalles’s attempted-carjacking offense qualifies as a “crime of
violence” under the elements clause, see 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A). Ovalles, 861 F.3d at 1267–
69. That holding is not before the en banc Court.

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many of the same textual arguments that the panel decision in this case had

embraced as bases for distinguishing § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause from the

ACCA’s. See id. at 1218–21.

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dimaya, we vacated the panel’s

opinion and took this case en banc to determine (1) whether 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(c)(3)’s residual clause is unconstitutionally vague under Dimaya and (2)

whether we should overrule McGuire to the extent that it requires a categorical

approach to determining whether an offense constitutes a “crime of violence”

within the meaning of § 924(c)(3)(B).3

II

At the outset, some table-setting is in order. How exactly did we get here?

Why did the Supreme Court conclude in both Johnson and Dimaya that the

residual clauses before it were unconstitutionally vague, and what do the decisions

in those cases tell us about § 924(c)(3)’s own residual clause? Here’s how—and

why, and what.

A

We begin with a deeper dive into Johnson. As already explained briefly,

Johnson involved the ACCA, which prescribes a mandatory minimum 15-year

3
In a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 proceeding—as always—we review questions of law, like those
presented here, de novo. Devine v. United States, 520 F.3d 1286, 1287 (11th Cir. 2008).

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sentence for any person who already “has three previous convictions . . . for a

violent felony . . . committed on occasions different from one another.” 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(e)(1). The ACCA goes on to define the term “violent felony” to mean any

crime punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year that—

(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of
physical force against the person of another; or
(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or
otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of
physical injury to another[.]

18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). Subsection (B)(i) of the ACCA’s definitional provision

is called (as we have called § 924(c)’s parallel provision) the “elements clause,”

while Subsection (B)(ii) contains both the “enumerated-offenses clause” and

separately (and again like § 924(c)’s catch-all) the “residual clause.” Beeman v.

United States, 871 F.3d 1215, 1218 (11th Cir. 2017).

In striking down the ACCA’s residual clause as unconstitutionally vague,

the Supreme Court in Johnson emphasized “[t]wo features.” 135 S. Ct. at 2557.

For one thing, the Court pointed to the statute’s hazy “serious potential risk”

standard, which it said “leaves uncertainty about how much risk it takes for a crime

to qualify as a violent felony.” Id. at 2558. Far more problematic, the Court

explained, was the fact that the ACCA’s residual clause had long been construed to

incorporate the categorical approach—which, the Court observed, entails a

“speculative,” “idealized” analysis that “ties the judicial assessment of risk to a
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judicially imagined ‘ordinary case’ of a crime, not to real-world facts or statutory

elements,” and thus “leaves grave uncertainty about how to estimate the risk posed

by a crime.” Id. at 2557–58. Indeed, the Court made clear that application of the

categorical approach was the hinge on which its vagueness determination turned:

“It is one thing,” the Court stressed, “to apply an imprecise ‘serious potential risk’

standard to real-world facts; it is quite another to apply it to a judge-imagined

abstraction” of the sort required by the categorical approach. Id. at 2558.

Continuing in the same vein, the Court reiterated that “[a]s a general matter, we do

not doubt the constitutionality of laws that call for the application of a qualitative

standard such as ‘substantial risk’ to real-world conduct.” Id. at 2561. But, the

Court held, the categorical approach’s focus on the “idealized ordinary case”

requires an “abstract inquiry” that “offers significantly less predictability than one

that deals with” actual facts. Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

B

Next, Dimaya. There, the Court considered a provision of the INA that

renders an alien removable if he is “convicted of an aggravated felony at any time

after admission.” 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). The INA goes on to define the

term “aggravated felony” to include, by statutory cross-reference, “a crime of

violence (as defined in section 16 of Title 18[)].” Id. § 1101(a)(43)(F). Section

16’s definition of “crime of violence,” in turn, reads a lot like the ACCA’s

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definition of “violent felony” at issue in Johnson:

(a) an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or
threatened use of physical force against the person or property of
another, or
(b) any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a
substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of
another may be used in the course of committing the offense.

18 U.S.C. § 16. Subsection (a) is commonly called (you guessed it) the “elements

clause” and Subsection (b) the “residual clause.” Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1211.

In Dimaya, the Supreme Court voided § 16’s residual clause (again, as

incorporated in the INA) as unconstitutionally vague, concluding that it shared the

two features that had doomed the ACCA’s residual clause in Johnson―namely,

(1) a fuzzy “substantial risk” standard and (2) incorporation of the categorical

approach to determining the violence of the underlying crime. Id. at 1213–14.

Significantly, though, just as in Johnson, the Dimaya Court stressed that § 16(b)’s

vagueness problem resulted principally from the categorical approach: “The

[Johnson] Court emphasized that [the ‘serious potential risk’ standard] alone

would not have violated the void-for-vagueness doctrine: Many perfectly

constitutional statutes use imprecise terms like ‘serious potential risk’ (as in

ACCA’s residual clause) or ‘substantial risk’ (as in § 16’s). The problem came

from layering such a standard on top of the requisite ‘ordinary case’ inquiry”

required by the categorical approach. Id. at 1214 (citing Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at

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2561). As Justice Thomas summarized in his dissent—without pushback—“[t]he

sole reason that the Court deem[ed] § 16(b) unconstitutionally vague is because it

read[] the statute as incorporating the categorical approach,” without which “the

Court ‘d[id] not doubt’ the constitutionality of § 16(b).” Id. at 1252 (Thomas, J.,

dissenting).

An important caveat about Dimaya’s application of the categorical approach

to invalidate § 16’s residual clause: Only a plurality of the Court concluded that the

statute actually requires the categorical approach. Justice Gorsuch, who provided

the decisive fifth vote, concurred separately on the assumption—but not a

determination—that § 16(b) incorporates the categorical approach. Id. at 1232

(Gorsuch, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (stating that he

was “proceed[ing] on the premise” that the categorical approach applied). Justice

Gorsuch emphasized that he “remain[s] open to different arguments about

[Supreme Court] precedent and the proper reading of language like” that found in

§ 16(b), and that he “would address them in another case, whether involving the

INA or a different statute, where the parties have a chance to be heard and we

might benefit from their learning.” Id. at 1233.

C

So what do Johnson and Dimaya portend for § 924(c), which again, as

relevant here, makes it a federal offense to use, carry, or possess a firearm in

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connection with a “crime of violence”―which again, as relevant here, means a

felony offense that “by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force …

may be used in the course of committing the offense,” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B)?

Allow us first to state the obvious: Section 924(c)(3)’s residual clause is

identical—in every jot and tittle—to § 16’s, which the Supreme Court struck down

in Dimaya. Next, the less obvious but no less true: While the panel decision in this

case offered several distinctions between § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause and the

ACCA’s—which at the time had recently been invalidated in Johnson—the

Supreme Court’s intervening decision in Dimaya (in a portion of the opinion

joined by a majority of the justices) demolished all of them. As already noted, the

panel first emphasized that § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause refers not to the risk of

“physical injury” but to the risk of “physical force,” which it said was “much more

definite.” 861 F.3d at 1263. When the government asserted the same injury-force

distinction in seeking to save § 16(b) in Dimaya, the Court flatly rejected it,

holding that “this variance in wording cannot make ACCA’s residual clause vague

and § 16(b) not.” 138 S. Ct. at 1221. Second, the panel thought that

§ 924(c)(3)(B)’s inclusion of the qualifying phrase “in the course of committing

the offense”—which is missing from the ACCA—narrowed the statute’s reach.

861 F.3d at 1266. Wrong, said the Dimaya Court in addressing the identical

argument aimed at § 16’s residual clause: “Th[at] phrase . . . cannot cure the

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statutory indeterminacy Johnson described.” 138 S. Ct. at 1220. Finally, the panel

reasoned that § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause was clearer, in a constitutional sense,

because it wasn’t linked, as was the ACCA’s, to a “confusing list” of enumerated

offenses. 861 F.3d at 1266. Wrong again, Dimaya held with respect to § 16,

which likewise lacks an enumerated-offenses clause: Even if one “[s]trip[s] away

the enumerated crimes,” the Court said, “textual indeterminacy” remains. 138 S.

Ct. at 1221. In short, in the course of rebuffing the government’s attempts to

distinguish § 16’s residual clause from the ACCA’s, the Dimaya Court explicitly

rejected the very same arguments that the panel in this case had adopted as a means

of distinguishing § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause—calling them “minor linguistic

disparities” that didn’t “make[] any real difference.” Id. at 1223.

Accordingly, it seems clear that if we are required to apply the categorical

approach in interpreting § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause—as the panel did, per our

earlier decision in McGuire, and as the Supreme Court did in voiding the residual

clauses before it in Johnson and Dimaya—then the provision is done for. If, by

contrast, we are not required to apply the categorical approach in interpreting

§ 924(c)(3)(B), then there is every reason to believe that the provision will survive,

notwithstanding its incorporation of a “substantial risk” term—because, as the

Supreme Court said in Johnson and then reiterated in Dimaya, there is no reason to

“doubt the constitutionality of laws that call for the application of a qualitative

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standard such as ‘substantial risk’ to real-world conduct.” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at

2561 (quoted in Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1214).

III

That stark divergence—in which the categorical approach dooms

§ 924(c)(3)’s residual clause, while a conduct-based interpretation salvages it—

tees up the rule of “constitutional doubt.” Simply stated, that canon of construction

provides that “[a] statute should be interpreted in a way that avoids placing its

constitutionality in doubt.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The

Interpretation of Legal Texts 247 (2012).

As the Supreme Court has explained it, the constitutional-doubt canon “is a

tool for choosing between competing plausible interpretations of a statutory text,

resting on the reasonable presumption that Congress did not intend the alternative

which raises serious constitutional doubts.” Clark v. Martinez, 543 U.S. 371, 381

(2005). Under the canon, “when statutory language is susceptible of multiple

interpretations, a court may shun an interpretation that raises serious constitutional

doubts and instead may adopt an alternative that avoids those problems.” Jennings

v. Rodriguez, 138 S. Ct. 830, 836 (2018). Indeed, the Supreme Court has held that

courts are “obligated to construe [a] statute to avoid [constitutional] problems” if it

is “fairly possible” to do so. I.N.S. v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 300 (2001) (citations

omitted) (emphasis added). That is particularly true where (as here) absent a

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reasonable saving construction, a statute might be unconstitutionally vague. See

United States ex rel. Att’y Gen. v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U.S. 366, 407

(1909) (noting that courts have a “plain duty” to adopt any “reasonabl[e]”

interpretation of a statute that avoids vagueness concerns).

The question here, therefore, is whether § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause is in

fact “susceptible of multiple interpretations,” Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 836—and

more particularly, whether it is “plausible,” Clark, 543 U.S. at 381, or “fairly

possible,” St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 300, to interpret the clause to incorporate the

(statute-preserving) conduct-based approach. Ovalles contends that the

constitutional-doubt canon doesn’t apply here because, she says, “the text of

§ 924(c)(3)(B) is not open to competing, plausible interpretations”—it can be

understood only, she insists, to require the categorical approach. Appellant’s En

Banc Br. at 23; accord Dissenting Op. of J. Pryor at 140 (asserting that a conduct-

based reading “does not … even approach plausible”). For the reasons explained

below, we disagree.

A

In assessing whether § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause truly compels the

categorical approach, we begin at the beginning: Where did this “categorical

approach” come from? It’s certainly not, it seems to us, the most intuitive way of

thinking about a particular crime’s risk of violence. Surely the usual means of

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considering that issue would be to account for all of the specific circumstances

surrounding the offense’s commission—i.e., the actual facts. If you were to ask

John Q. Public whether a particular crime posed a substantial risk of violence,

surely he would respond, “Well, tell me how it went down—what happened?”

How, then, did we get to the point where, in certain circumstances, reviewing

courts are required to ignore the real-world facts in favor of a sterile academic

inquiry into what the Johnson Court called “speculative,” “idealized,” “judge-

imagined abstraction[s]”? 135 S. Ct. at 2557–58. And what are the considerations

that have impelled the Supreme Court to conclude that certain statutes require

application of the categorical approach?

That story follows.

1

The Supreme Court initially conceived the categorical approach in Taylor v.

United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990). The question there was whether the reference

to “burglary” in the ACCA’s enumerated-offenses clause meant burglary as

defined by each of the 50 states’ separate laws or, instead, burglary in some

“generic” sense. Id. at 579–80. In concluding that the ACCA referred to “generic”

burglary, the Court rejected not only the idea that the definition of “violent felony”

should vary from state to state, but also the notion that the government, in seeking

to prove the violence of the underlying crime, could introduce evidence about the

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“particular facts” of the defendant’s conduct, and instead adopted what the Court

dubbed—and we still call—a “categorical approach.” Id. at 598–602. In

explaining why the ACCA’s enumerated-offenses clause requires the categorical

approach, the Taylor Court emphasized two factors—one textual, the other

practical.

First, the Court concluded that when read in context, § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii)

“most likely refers to the elements of the statute of conviction, not to the facts of

each defendant’s conduct.” Id. at 600–01. The reason, the Court explained, is that

the language of the ACCA’s operative provision, § 924(e)(1), “refers to ‘a person

who ... has three previous convictions’ for—not a person who has committed—

three previous violent felonies or drug offenses.” Id. at 600. Congress’s targeted

focus on “convictions” rather than conduct, the Court reasoned, indicated that it

“intended the sentencing court to look only to the fact that the defendant had been

convicted of crimes falling within certain categories, and not to the facts

underlying the prior convictions.” Id.

Second, the Taylor Court stressed that in the ACCA context, “the practical

difficulties and potential unfairness of a factual approach [would be] daunting.”

Id. at 601. In particular, the Court worried about the amount of evidence that

might need to be introduced at a sentencing hearing in order to reconstruct the

circumstances underlying a defendant’s prior (and often long-since-passed)

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convictions. Id. Relatedly, the Court anticipated a Sixth Amendment problem that

later decisions would amplify―namely, that judicial factfinding at sentencing

about the real-world facts of crimes that led to prior convictions could “abridg[e a

defendant’s] right to a jury trial[.]” Id.; see also Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S.

466, 490 (2000) (“Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases

the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be

submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”). In short, the Taylor

Court feared that if the parties could introduce evidence bearing on the violence of

the defendant’s past crimes, then sentencing proceedings might devolve into full-

blown mini-trials (hence the impracticability) in which judges, rather than juries,

were doing the factfinding (hence the Sixth Amendment concern). See 495 U.S. at

601–02.

For these reasons—the text’s focus on “convictions” and the impracticability

(and unfairness) of effectively re-litigating the seriousness of stale crimes long

after the fact—the Taylor Court concluded that for purposes of deciding whether a

prior conviction constitutes a “violent felony,” the “only plausible interpretation”

of § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) is that it “generally requires the trial court to look only to the

fact of conviction and the statutory definition of the prior offense,” and not to the

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actual circumstances of the defendant’s crime. Id. at 602.4

2

The Supreme Court next applied the categorical approach in Leocal v.

Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004), which held that a DUI conviction under Florida state

law did not constitute a “crime of violence” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 16,

as that statute’s definition applies in the INA. The Court there concluded that

§ 16’s language, like the ACCA’s, “requires us to look to the elements and the

nature of the offense of conviction, rather than to the particular facts relating to

[the defendant’s] crime.” 543 U.S. at 7. In so doing, the Leocal Court didn’t

provide a detailed explanation. It simply stated that in both § 16’s elements and

residual clauses, “the statute directs our focus to the ‘offense’ of conviction”—and

with respect to the residual clause in particular, noted its use of the phrase “by its

nature.” Id.at 7–8. See 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) (defining “crime of violence” to mean

an “offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk” of

physical force); 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) (rendering deportable an alien

“convicted of” an aggravated felony, which under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F)

includes a “crime of violence” as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 16).

4
Although Taylor involved the ACCA’s enumerated-offenses clause, the Supreme Court later
extended the categorical approach (albeit without explanation) to the ACCA’s residual clause.
See James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192 (2007), overruled by Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2563.

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3

That, for present purposes, brings us (back) to Johnson, in which, as already

explained, the Supreme Court applied the categorical approach in the course of

invalidating the ACCA’s residual clause. See 135 S. Ct. at 2557–61. The Johnson

Court insisted on the categorical approach—and refused a dissenting justice’s

suggestion that it consider the actual facts of the defendant’s underlying crimes—

for three reasons. Id. at 2561–62. First, the Court noted that “the Government

ha[d] not asked [it] to abandon the categorical approach in residual-clause cases”

in favor of a conduct-based approach. Id. at 2562. Second, relying on and quoting

its earlier decision in Taylor, the Court highlighted the ACCA’s operative clause’s

focus on “convictions”: “Taylor explained that the relevant part of the [ACCA]

refers to a ‘person who … has three previous convictions’ for—not a person who

has committed—three previous violent felonies or drug offenses.” Id. (internal

quotation marks and citation omitted). “This emphasis on convictions,” the

Johnson Court reiterated—again echoing Taylor—“indicates that Congress

intended the sentencing court to look only to the fact that the defendant had been

convicted of crimes falling within certain categories, and not to the facts

underlying the prior convictions.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation

omitted). Third, and yet again channeling Taylor, the Johnson Court

underscored—at least in the context of a statute, like the ACCA, that predicates a

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sentence enhancement on prior crimes—the “utter impracticability” of requiring a

court “to reconstruct, long after the original conviction, the conduct underlying that

conviction.” Id.

4

Last came Dimaya, in which the Court applied the categorical approach in

striking down § 16’s residual clause—again, at least as that provision is

incorporated by the INA. A four-justice plurality concluded that § 16(b)

incorporates the categorical approach for a handful of (now increasingly familiar)

reasons. First, as in Johnson, the plurality noted that the government hadn’t

advocated a conduct-based approach: “To begin where Johnson did, the

Government once again ‘has not asked us to abandon the categorical approach in

residual-clause cases.’” Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1217 (quoting Johnson, 135 S. Ct.

at 2562). Second, the plurality emphasized that the categorical approach was

adopted “in part to avoid the Sixth Amendment concerns that would arise from

sentencing courts’ making findings of fact that properly belong to juries.” Id.

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

Third, the plurality explained that “[b]est read,” the text of § 16’s residual

clause incorporates the categorical approach. Id. Quoting the Court’s earlier

decision in Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U.S. 29, 34 (2009), the plurality stated:

Simple references to a ‘conviction,’ ‘felony,’ or ‘offense,’ . . . are
‘read naturally’ to denote the ‘crime as generally committed.’ And
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the words ‘by its nature’ in § 16(b) make that meaning all the clearer.
The statute, recall, directs courts to consider whether an offense, by its
nature, poses the requisite risk of force. An offense’s ‘nature’ means
its ‘normal and characteristic quality.’

Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1217 (internal citations omitted). Fourth, and relatedly, the

plurality said that “the same conclusion follows if we pay attention to language that

is missing from § 16(b).” Id. at 1218. In particular, the plurality reasoned, “the

absence of terms alluding to a crime’s circumstances, or its commission, makes a

[conduct]-based interpretation an uncomfortable fit.” Id.

Finally, following Taylor and Johnson, the plurality stressed the “utter

impracticability” of applying a conduct-based approach to a statute, like § 16(b),

that requires consideration of prior convictions―in particular, the “daunting

difficulties of accurately reconstructing, often many years later, the conduct

underlying a conviction.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

As already noted, Justice Gorsuch concurred separately in Dimaya,

explaining that he was “proceed[ing] on the premise”—without definitively

concluding—that as used in the INA, § 16(b) incorporates the categorical

approach. Id. at 1232 (Gorsuch, J., concurring in part and concurring in the

judgment). He gave several reasons for his circumspection: (1) “because no party

[had] argued for a different way to read” the provision at issue; (2) because

Supreme Court precedent (by which he presumably meant Leocal) “seemingly

require[d]” application of the categorical approach to § 16(b); and (3) “because the
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government itself ha[d] conceded (repeatedly) that the law compels” the

categorical approach in immigration-related § 16(b) cases. Id. He emphasized,

though, that he would “remain open” in future cases “to different arguments about

our precedent and the proper reading of language like” that found in § 16(b). Id. at

1233.

* * *

So . . . what are the takeaways? What factors have led the Supreme Court to

conclude that a statute requires the categorical approach? The decisions

interpreting the ACCA and § 16 reveal that the Court has historically applied the

categorical approach to those statutes’ residual clauses for the following reasons:

1. because the government never asked the Court to consider a conduct-based
approach (Johnson, Dimaya);

2. because the text of those statutes’ operative provisions focused not on
conduct, but rather on “convictions”—and thus, the Court reasoned, solely
on formal legal elements (Taylor, Johnson);

3. because those statutes’ definitional provisions used terms and phrases like
“offense,” “felony,” and “by its nature,” which the Court concluded pointed
toward a categorical (rather than conduct-based) inquiry (Leocal, Dimaya);

4. because those statutes lacked any reference to the underlying crime’s
commission or circumstances (Dimaya);

5. because applying the categorical approach would avoid the impracticability
of requiring sentencing courts to engage in after-the-fact reconstructions of
the circumstances underlying prior convictions (Taylor, Johnson, Dimaya);
and

6. because applying the categorical approach would avoid the Sixth
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Amendment issues that could arise from sentencing courts making findings
of fact that properly belong to juries (Taylor, Johnson, Dimaya).

The decisive question, it seems to us, is whether those considerations require

us to interpret § 924(c)(3)’s own residual clause to incorporate the categorical

approach—or whether, instead, the clause can “plausibly” be read to incorporate

the conduct-based approach. For reasons explained below, we conclude that

§ 924(c)(3)(B) can at the very least plausibly be read to bear a conduct-based

interpretation, and we therefore hold, pursuant to the canon of constitutional doubt,

that because the conduct-based reading spares the residual clause from the near-

certain death to which the categorical approach would condemn it, the conduct-

based approach must prevail. In so doing, we join the Second Circuit, which also

recently concluded—likewise applying the constitutional-doubt canon—that

§ 924(c)(3)(B) should be interpreted to embody the conduct-based approach. See

United States v. Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 4288566, at *9–14 (2d Cir. Sept.

10, 2018).

B

Although it’s not particularly elegant—in fact, it’s downright clunky and

more than a little repetitive—there’s really not a better way to assess whether the

Supreme Court’s own stated reasons for adopting the categorical approach in the

ACCA and immigration-related § 16 contexts likewise compel a categorical

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interpretation of § 924(c)(3)(B) than simply to march through them, one by one.

1

In applying the categorical approach in both Johnson and Dimaya, the

Supreme Court “first” and most prominently noted that the government hadn’t

advocated a conduct-based interpretation. See Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2562;

Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1217 (plurality opinion); id. at 1232 (Gorsuch, J., concurring

in part and concurring in the judgment). Frankly, this seems like an odd place to

start in interpreting a statute—it’s not particularly, well, interpretive—but be that

as it may, the Supreme Court has “beg[u]n” with it, see id. at 1217 (plurality

opinion), so we will too.

Suffice it to say that things are very different here. In the wake of Johnson

and Dimaya—and the ensuing drumbeat suggesting that application of the

categorical approach likewise imperils § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause―the

government has expressly (and at length) urged us to abandon the categorical

approach to § 924(c)(3)(B) in favor of a conduct-based interpretation. See

Appellee’s En Banc Br. at 12–43. We have here, therefore, what the Supreme

Court lacked in both Johnson and Dimaya, and what the panel lacked in

McGuire—namely, the benefit of the full “adversarial testing” that is so “crucial to

sound judicial decisionmaking,” Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1232 (Gorsuch, J.,

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concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).5

2

A second basis that the Supreme Court has highlighted in applying the

categorical approach—derived from the text of the ACCA’s operative provision,

and specifically its reference to “convictions”―is likewise inapplicable here. As

already noted, the Court in Johnson (relying on and quoting its earlier decision in

Taylor) emphasized that the ACCA’s operative clause “refers to a person who …

has three previous convictions for—not a person who has committed—three

previous violent felonies or drug offenses.” 135 S. Ct. at 2562 (internal quotation

marks and citation omitted). The statute’s focus on “convictions,” the Court said,

demonstrates that “Congress intended the sentencing court to look only to the fact

that the defendant had been convicted of crimes falling within certain categories,

and not to the facts underlying the prior convictions.” Id. (internal quotation marks

omitted); see also Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 4288566, at *10 (emphasizing

that, “[i]n rejecting a conduct-specific approach, the [Taylor] Court cited the

statutory text, which specifically referred to ‘convictions’ rather than conduct”).

Section 924(c)’s operative provision nowhere refers to “convictions.” See

5
Although the parties in McGuire dickered over whether a pure categorical approach or a
“modified” categorical approach should govern § 924(c)(3)(B), they agreed that some form of
categorical approach applied. No one urged the Court to apply a conduct-based approach. See
McGuire Appellant’s Br. at 17–19; McGuire Appellee’s Br. at 17–18.

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18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). Quite the opposite, in fact—it refers to conduct: It

prescribes an increased term of imprisonment for “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.” Id. That’s not dispositive, of

course—§ 924(c)’s operative provision also applies to the statute’s elements

clause, which all seem to agree incorporates the categorical approach. But it does

demonstrate that § 924(c) lacks one of the key textual hooks that has traditionally

buttressed the Supreme Court’s application of the categorical approach to statutory

residual clauses.

3

Now, in fairness, there is some textual evidence that, on balance, might be

thought to favor interpreting § 924(c)(3)(B) to incorporate the categorical

approach. But it does not, we conclude, truly compel a categorical interpretation,

especially when weighed against other textual and practical considerations.

In McGuire, we applied the categorical approach to § 924(c)(3)’s residual

clause because, we said, “of the statute’s terms.” 706 F.3d at 1336. In particular,

we noted that the residual clause’s text “asks whether [the defendant] committed

‘an offense’ . . . that ‘by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force

against the person or property of another may be used.’” Id. at 1336–37 (quoting

18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B)). We now re-examine whether that language—and in

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particular, the statute’s use of the term “offense” and the phrase “by its nature”—

mandates the categorical approach. We conclude that it does not.

a

In support of its determination that § 16’s residual clause requires the

categorical approach, the Dimaya plurality relied on the Court’s earlier observation

in Leocal that § 16(b) “directs our focus to the ‘offense’ of conviction . . . rather

than to the particular facts.” Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1217 (quoting Leocal, 543 U.S.

at 7). “Simple references to a ‘conviction,’ ‘felony,’ or ‘offense,’” the plurality

observed, “are ‘read naturally’ to denote the ‘crime as generally committed.’” Id.

(quoting Nijhawan, 557 U.S. at 34).

Ovalles’s position finds some support in § 924(c)(3)’s definition of “crime

of violence,” which incorporates two of the three terms—“offense” and “felony”—

that the Dimaya plurality highlighted: “[T]he term ‘crime of violence’ means an

offense that is a felony . . . .” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3). There are important

counterweights, though. First, as already explained, § 924(c) nowhere uses the

word “conviction,” the term that the Supreme Court has historically (going all the

way back to Taylor) emphasized as a key textual driver of the categorical

approach. Second, even as to “offense” and “felony,” all the plurality said in

Dimaya—echoing the Court’s earlier decision in Nijhawan—was that those terms

are “naturally” read to refer to generic crimes, not that they are necessarily so read.

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And indeed, on the very same page from which the Dimaya plurality took its “read

naturally” quote, Nijhawan explains “the linguistic fact” that “in ordinary speech

words such as ‘crime,’ ‘felony,’ ‘offense,’ and the like” can go either way—

“sometimes [they] refer to a generic crime . . . and sometimes [they] refer to the

specific acts in which an offender engaged on a specific occasion.” 557 U.S. at

33–34; see also id. at 32 (holding that statutory provision using the term “offense”

called for application of a conduct-based, rather than categorical, approach);

United States v. Hayes, 555 U.S. 415, 426 (2009) (same); Barrett, __ F.3d ___,

2018 WL 4288566, at *13 (emphasizing Nijhawan’s conclusion that “words such

as ‘crime,’ ‘felony,’ and ‘offense’ can be used in both respects”). 6

6
The dissent thinks it inconceivable that that the word “offense” could require the categorical
approach for cases arising under § 924(c)(3)’s elements clause and yet, at the same time, permit a
conduct-based approach for cases arising under the residual clause. See Dissenting Op. of J.
Pryor at 127, 134–35. It cites Nijhawan for the proposition that “where . . . Congress uses
similar statutory language and similar statutory structure in two adjoining provisions, it normally
intends similar interpretations”—and from that premise reasons that because the term “offense”
supports application of the categorical approach to the elements clause, it “must” do so with
respect to the residual clause, as well. Id. at 26 (quoting Nijhawan, 557 U.S. at 39). But
Nijhawan itself refutes the dissent’s position. First, and most obviously, the dissent says almost
nothing in response to the Nijhawan Court’s explanation of “the linguistic fact”—quoted in text
above—that “in ordinary speech words such as ‘crime,’ ‘felony,’ ‘offense,’ and the like
sometimes refer to a generic crime . . . and sometimes refer to the specific acts in which an
offender engaged on a specific occasion.” 557 U.S. at 33–34. Second, and more deeply, the
dissent ignores the fact that in his opinion for the Court, Justice Breyer marched methodically
through a number of adjacent statutory provisions that use the word “offense” to describe the
underlying crimes and concluded that in some of them the “offense” should be established
categorically, see Nijhawan, 557 U.S. at 37 (citing, e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(E), (H), (I), and
(J)), while in others the “offense” could be demonstrated through attention to the underlying
conduct and circumstances, see id. at 37–38 (citing, e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(K)(ii), (M)(ii),
(N), and (P)). “The upshot” here is the same as in Nijhawan: The terms “offense” and “felony”

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All things considered, therefore, § 924(c)(3)’s use of the terms “offense” and

“felony”―particularly when combined with the absence of the word

“conviction”―would be a pretty thin reed on which to base a conclusion that the

residual clause requires the categorical approach.

b

The strongest piece of evidence in favor of applying the categorical

approach to § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause, it seems to us, is the provision’s use of

the phrase “by its nature”: “[T]he term ‘crime of violence’ means an offense that is

a felony and . . . that by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force

against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing

the offense.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B) (emphasis added).

In Leocal, the Court relied in part on § 16(b)’s use of the same “by its

nature” phrase to conclude that the statute “requires us to look to the elements and

the nature of the offense of conviction, rather than to the particular facts relating to

petitioner’s crime.” 543 U.S. at 7. The plurality in Dimaya likewise pointed to the

“by its nature” language—at least as a secondary consideration, saying that it made

the case for applying the categorical approach to § 16’s residual clause “all the

clearer.” 138 S. Ct. at 1217. Quoting Webster’s Third New International

do not have invariable meanings that—all other considerations notwithstanding—always and
everywhere require the categorical approach. 557 U.S. at 38.

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Dictionary for the proposition that “[a]n offense’s ‘nature’ means its ‘normal and

characteristic quality,’” the Dimaya plurality reasoned that “§ 16(b) tells courts to

figure out what an offense normally—or, as we have repeatedly said,

‘ordinarily’—entails, not what happened to occur on one occasion.” Id. at 1217–

18 (internal citation omitted).

That is undoubtedly a reasonable interpretation of § 16(b)’s language—

which, again, § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause mirrors. But importantly here—where

the constitutional-doubt canon is in play—it is not a necessary interpretation.

There are other reasonable understandings—especially of § 924(c)(3)(B), with

respect to which other interpretive considerations point in the other direction.

Webster’s Third, for instance—the same dictionary that the Dimaya plurality cited

in support of its categorical-approach interpretation of the “by its nature” language,

alternatively defines the word “nature” to mean “the essential character or

constitution of something.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1507

(2002). The Oxford Dictionary of English similarly defines “nature” as “the basic

or inherent features, character, or qualities of something.” Oxford Dictionary of

English 1183 (3d ed. 2010). It seems to us at the very least plausible that the

“something[s]” to which the term “nature” alludes could be particular acts rather

than (or in addition to) the “judge-imagined abstraction[s],” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at

2558, that underlie the categorical approach. See Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL

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4288566, at *13 (“[N]othing in these definitions indicates whether the offense

whose inherent characteristics are to be considered is the generic crime or the

particular one charged.”).

So, as Justice Thomas noted in Dimaya, “[o]n the one hand, the statute

might refer to the metaphysical ‘nature’ of the offense and ask whether it ordinarily

involves a substantial risk of physical force.” Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1254

(Thomas, J., dissenting). So too, though, “[o]n the other hand, the statute might

refer to the underlying facts of the offense that the offender committed; the words

‘by its nature,’ ‘substantial risk,’ and ‘may’ would mean only that an offender who

engages in risky conduct cannot benefit from the fortuitous fact that physical force

was not actually used during his offense.” Id. “The text can bear either

interpretation,” and “[i]t is entirely natural to use words like ‘nature’ . . . to refer to

an offender’s actual underlying conduct.” Id.

To be clear, it’s no answer to say, “Sure, but Justice Thomas lost in

Dimaya.” As an initial matter, he was objecting there to a plurality’s (not a

majority’s) interpretation—and in particular its interpretation of a different statute,

§ 16(b), that lacks many of the textual, contextual, and practical features that we

conclude permit a conduct-based interpretation of § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause.

Moreover, and in any event, Justice Thomas’s linguistic observation about the

alternative meanings of the word “nature” remains—and indeed, finds support in

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dueling dictionary definitions. Especially in light of the inapplicability of other

reasons for applying the categorical approach to § 924(c)(3)(B), we simply aren’t

convinced that the phrase “by its nature” requires application of the categorical

approach here.

4

In addition to focusing on what the controlling statutes say in assessing the

categorical-approach issue, the Supreme Court has emphasized what they don’t

say. In Dimaya, for instance, the plurality reasoned that “the absence” from § 16

“of terms alluding to a crime’s circumstances, or its commission, makes a

[conduct]-based interpretation an uncomfortable fit.” 138 S. Ct. at 1218.

But again, § 924(c) is different. Not only (as already explained) does the

statute’s operative provision refer exclusively to conduct, but its definitional

provision (i.e., the residual clause itself) also contains conduct-based

language―namely, its requirement that the risk of force arise “in the course of

committing the offense.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B).

5

Textual indicia aside, the Supreme Court has also emphasized practical

considerations in deciding between categorical and conduct-based interpretations.

As already explained, in initially devising the categorical approach in Taylor—and

thereafter applying it in Johnson and Dimaya—the Supreme Court underscored the

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“utter impracticability” of applying a conduct-based approach retrospectively to

determining the violence of prior crimes. E.g., Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2562. In

particular, the Court in Taylor fretted about the prospect that mounds of evidence

would need to be introduced at sentencing in order to reconstruct the circumstances

underlying long-since-passed convictions—potentially turning sentencing

proceedings into de facto mini-trials. See 495 U.S. at 601–02. That “look-back”

concern (our term, not the Supreme Court’s) has continued to animate the Court’s

application of a categorical approach in the ACCA and § 16 contexts. As the

plurality summarized in Dimaya: “This Court has often described the daunting

difficulties of accurately ‘reconstruct[ing],’ often many years later, ‘the conduct

underlying [a] conviction.’” 138 S. Ct. at 1218 (quoting Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at

2562, and citing Taylor, 495 U.S. at 601–02); see also Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018

WL 4288566, at *12 (“[T]he mandate for a categorical approach to residual

definitions of violent crimes has developed in a singular context: judicial

identifications of what crimes (most often, state crimes) of prior conviction fit

federal definitions of violent crimes so as to expose a defendant to enhanced

penalties or other adverse consequences in subsequent federal proceedings.”).

Importantly, the look-back problem doesn’t arise with respect to § 924(c),

which serves an altogether different function from the statutes at issue in Johnson

and Dimaya and operates differently in order to achieve that function. The ACCA

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identifies “previous convictions” for the purpose of applying a recidivism-based

sentencing enhancement to three-time felons who later possess firearms in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). See 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1) (emphasis added).

Similarly, § 16(b)―as incorporated by the INA―classifies certain prior

convictions as “crime[s] of violence” for the purpose of rendering aliens

removable. See 18 U.S.C. § 16; 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F); 8 U.S.C.

§ 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii). 7 Section 924(c), by contrast, operates entirely in the

present—it creates a new and distinct offense for 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). So, unlike in

the ACCA and § 16 contexts—where courts have to look backwards in time to

consider past crimes remote from (and wholly unconnected to) the charged

7
A point of clarification: The dissent charges—as if it were a bad thing—that our opinion
“focuses solely on § 16’s incorporation into the INA.” Dissenting Op. of J. Pryor at 110; see
also id. at 123 n.8. But of course it does—by design and with good reason. We have so
“qualif[ied our] references to § 16(b),” id. at 110, because Dimaya’s holding is likewise limited.
See 138 S. Ct. at 1210–12, 1213–16, 1223. Dimaya’s reasoning only covers—and, frankly, only
makes sense in the context of—§16(b)’s incorporation into the INA. Think about it: If the Court
had meant to impose the categorical approach on all of § 16(b)’s applications—even those in
which the incorporating statutes address contemporaneous crimes—then why would the plurality
have so heavily emphasized the look-back problem and the “daunting difficulties of
‘reconstructing’” prior convictions? 138 S. Ct. at 1218. Perhaps even clearer is crucial-fifth-
vote-caster Justice Gorsuch’s insistence that he certainly wasn’t prepared to venture beyond §
16(b)’s incorporation into the INA. See id. at 1232–33 (Gorsuch, J., concurring in part and
concurring in the judgment) (emphasizing that he “remain[s] open to different arguments about
[Supreme Court] precedent and the proper reading of language like” that found in § 16(b), and
that he “would address them in another case, whether involving the INA or a different statute”).
So yes, our focus is trained on § 16(b) as incorporated into the INA—just as the Dimaya
plurality’s and Justice Gorsuch’s were.

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offense, § 924(c)(3)’s definition of a “crime of violence” is never applied to an

unrelated prior crime or conviction. Instead, in § 924(c) cases, the firearms offense

and the predicate “crime of violence” go hand-in-hand; they inherently arise out of

the same event. By dint of the statute’s plain language, the gun-related conduct

must occur “during,” “in relation to,” or “in furtherance of” the crime of violence,

and with respect to that underlying offense the actionable risk of force must occur

specifically “in the course of committing” it. In short, it’s all one big ball of

wax—the crimes are typically (as here) charged in the same indictment, and if they

are tried, they are considered by the same jury. The “utter impracticability” that

Taylor, Johnson, and Dimaya identified—what we have called the look-back

problem—simply isn’t an issue. See Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 4288566, at

*12 (“Section 924(c)(3) . . . is not concerned with prior convictions. It pertains

only to § 924(c)(1) crimes of pending prosecution.”).

6

Relatedly, echoing the earlier decision in Taylor, the Dimaya plurality

acknowledged that the Court “adopted the categorical approach in part to avoid the

Sixth Amendment concerns that would arise from sentencing courts’ making

findings of fact that properly belong to juries.” 138 S. Ct. at 1217 (internal

quotation marks and citation omitted). Its point was that in reconstructing the

circumstances underlying a prior crime in order to assess its risk of violence, a

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reviewing court could well run afoul of the rule that “[o]ther than the fact of a prior

conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed

statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable

doubt,” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490. See Taylor, 495 U.S. at 601 (expressing

concern that judicial factfinding during a sentencing hearing about the real-world

facts of crimes that led to prior convictions could “abridg[e a defendant’s] right to

a jury trial”).

Yet again, that isn’t a concern here. For starters, because the jury in a §

924(c) case—unlike in, say, an ACCA case—is considering contemporaneous gun-

related and predicate offenses, its role already necessarily entails consideration of

the entire course of conduct charged as the underlying “crime of violence.”

Moreover, and significantly, the government here has conceded that whether the

defendant’s predicate offense constitutes a “crime of violence” within the meaning

of § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause should be treated as a mixed question of fact and

law to be resolved by a jury. See Appellee’s En Banc Br. at 33–34 (citing United

States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 509–10, 522–23 (1995)). In particular, the

government admits that under a conduct-based approach, a § 924(c)(3)(B)

conviction requires a jury separately to find (or the defendant to admit through a

plea) not only (1) that the defendant committed the underlying federal offense, (2)

that the defendant used, carried, or possessed a firearm, and (3) that any use,

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carriage, or possession of the firearm occurred during and in relation to (or in

furtherance of) the federal offense, but also—and importantly—(4) that the federal

offense was in fact a “crime of violence.” As has the Supreme Court in similar

circumstances, we conclude that the government’s concession that, absent a plea, it

must prove and a jury must find all four elements―including that the underlying

offense qualifies as a “crime of violence”―“eliminat[es] any constitutional

concern.” Nijhawan, 557 U.S. at 40; see also Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL

4288566, at *12 (“The Sixth Amendment concern is avoided because the trial jury,

in deciding whether a defendant is guilty of using a firearm ‘during and in relation

to any crime of violence,’ 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A), can decide whether the

charged predicate offense is a crime of violence as defined in § 924(c)(3)(B), i.e.,

whether the felony offense ‘by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical

force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of

committing the offense,’ 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B).”).8

8
We are unpersuaded by Ovalles’s assertion (which the dissent echoes, see Dissenting Op. of J.
Pryor at 148–49) that a conduct-based approach would require hopelessly complex and
ineffective jury instructions about the crime-of-violence element. The district court can simply
instruct jurors that they must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the underlying offense―the
defendant’s commission of which they must already have found in order to satisfy the first
element―“involve[d] a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of
another may [have] be[en] used in the course of committing the offense.” 18 U.S.C. §
924(c)(3)(B). There is nothing remarkable about asking jurors to make that sort of risk
determination—and, if necessary, requiring judges to instruct jurors on the meaning of terms like
“substantial” and “physical force.” That’s exactly how similar questions have been resolved for
centuries and are resolved every day in courts throughout the country. See Gaudin, 515 U.S. at
511–15; see also, e.g., Ala. Code § 13A-6-2(a)(2) (“A person commits the crime of murder if he

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* * *

So where does all of this leave us? With something of a mixed bag, frankly.

While some of the factors to which the Supreme Court has pointed in adopting and

applying the categorical approach might be thought (on balance) to favor a similar

interpretation of § 924(c)(3)(B), others cut pretty decisively in the opposite

direction, toward a conduct-based approach. And in constitutional-doubt land, the

tie (or the toss-up, or even the shoulder-shrug) goes to the statute-saving option—

which, here, is the conduct-based interpretation. So to be clear, we needn’t—and

don’t—conclude that textual, contextual, and practical considerations compel a

conduct-based reading of § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause. Nor, for that matter, do we

even need to find that § 924(c)(3)(B) is best read to incorporate a conduct-based

approach. Reasonable minds—say, for instance, the minds of the (putatively)

or she . . . recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person other
than himself or herself, and thereby causes the death of another person.”); Conn. Gen. Stat. §
53a-112(a)(1)(A) (“A person is guilty of arson in the second degree when, with intent to destroy
or damage a building . . . he starts a fire or causes an explosion and . . . such act subjects another
person to a substantial risk of bodily injury . . . .”); Mo. Stat. § 565.120(1) (“A person commits
the offense of kidnapping in the second degree if he or she knowingly restrains another
unlawfully and without consent so as to interfere substantially with his or her liberty and exposes
him or her to a substantial risk of serious physical injury.”).
Nor are we particularly troubled by Ovalles’s argument that allowing jurors to consider a
defendant’s use or possession of a firearm will inevitably transform every underlying offense
into a “crime of violence” within the meaning of § 924(c)(3). The government concedes that it
must separately prove—and that jurors should be charged that they must separately find—(1)
that the federal offense was “a crime of violence” and (2) that the defendant used, carried, or
possessed a firearm in the course of committing the underlying offense. District courts should
caution jurors that they may not find that the underlying offense involved a substantial risk of
physical force solely because the defendant possessed a gun.

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reasonable judges who join this opinion—can and will disagree about that. It is

enough for us to conclude—as we think is indisputable—that § 924(c)(3)(B) is at

least “plausibl[y]” (or “fairly possibl[y]”) understood to embody the conduct-based

approach. See Clark, 543 U.S. at 381; St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 300.9 Accordingly, it is

our “plain duty” to adopt the conduct-based approach as the proper interpretation

of § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause. See Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U.S. at 407. 10

We therefore overrule McGuire to the extent that it requires application of

the categorical approach to determine whether an offense constitutes a “crime of

violence” within the meaning of § 924(c)(3)(B) and hold that the crime-of-violence

determination should be made, instead, using a conduct-based approach.

9
Needless to say, we reject the dissent’s charge that we have “reach[ed]” out to “effectively
rewrite[]” § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause in order “to avoid having to strike it down.” Dissenting
Op. of J. Pryor at 124, 137. To the contrary, we have simply acknowledged that the interpretive
question is a close one and, accordingly—and pursuant to time-honored canons of
construction—saved it from the trash heap. It is the dissent, by contrast, that doggedly insists on
the one and only reading of § 924(c)(3)(B) that guarantees its invalidation.
10
One brief word in conclusion: The dissent repeatedly criticizes our reliance on what it calls
“extra-textual factors” in determining whether § 924(c)(3)(B) can plausibly be read to bear a
conduct-based interpretation. In particular, the dissent objects to the first, fifth, and sixth factors
examined above. See Dissenting Op. of J. Pryor at 103, 119–20, 124, 139–40, 143–44. The
reason, the dissent says, is that under the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Jennings v.
Rodriguez, 138 S. Ct. 830 (2018), practical considerations are categorically (pun intended) off-
limits in determining whether a statute can reasonably be interpreted in a particular manner. The
argument is difficult to discern, frankly, given that Dimaya—in which the plurality emphasized
the very same considerations—post-dates Jennings by almost two months. In any event, for
better or worse, these are the considerations that the Supreme Court has highlighted, and as the
dissent says, “[w]e are not free to ignore the Supreme Court’s decisions.” Dissenting Op. of J.
Pryor at 126 n.9. See also, e.g., Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 4288566, at *9–14 (evaluating
the same factors in holding that § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause should be interpreted to incorporate
the conduct-based approach).

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IV

Having jettisoned the categorical interpretation in favor of the conduct-based

approach for cases arising under § 924(c)(3)’s residual clause, we can make quick

work of the contention that the clause is unconstitutionally vague in the light of

Dimaya. It is not. The Supreme Court has repeatedly explained—and again all

here agree—that the vagueness problem that plagued the ACCA and § 16, and that

is asserted here, is a function of the “speculative,” “idealized,” “abstract” inquiries

required by the categorical approach. Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2557–58, 2561.

Accordingly, if § 924(c)(3)(B) is interpreted to embody a conduct-based

approach—as we have held it should be—there is no reason whatsoever to “‘doubt

[its] constitutionality.’” Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1214 (quoting Johnson, 135 S. Ct.

at 2561); see also Barrett, __ F.3d ___, 2018 WL 4288566, at *10 (emphasizing

that under Johnson and Dimaya, “no constitutional vagueness inheres in a

substantial-risk definition of a crime of violence when applied to case-specific

conduct”).

V

That leaves us only to apply § 924(c)(3)(B)’s conduct-based approach to

Ovalles’s case. Given the stipulated facts before us—embodied in a written plea

agreement and a detailed colloquy—doing so is remarkably straightforward.

It is common ground here that in order to convict Ovalles on the § 924(c)

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charge, the government would need to prove (or Ovalles would need to plead to)

four distinct elements: (1) that Ovalles actually committed the underlying federal

offense—here, the attempted carjacking; (2) that the attempted-carjacking offense

constitutes a “crime of violence” within the meaning of § 924(c)(3); (3) that

Ovalles knowingly used, carried, or possessed a firearm; and (4) that any use or

carriage of the firearm occurred during and in relation to, or that any possession of

the firearm was in furtherance of, the attempted carjacking. See 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(c)(1)(A). The only element in dispute here is the second: Did Ovalles’s

attempted-carjacking offense, as she has admitted it actually occurred, constitute a

“crime of violence”—i.e., did her own acknowledged conduct “involve[] a

substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be

used in the course of committing the offense”? Easy. Of course it did.

As it pertained to the attempted-carjacking count, the information charged

Ovalles with “attempt[ing] to take a motor vehicle . . . from the person and

presence of another, by force, violence and intimidation” with “the intent to cause

death and serious bodily harm.” Ovalles then executed a written plea agreement

acknowledging that she understood each charge in the information—including the

attempted-carjacking charge—and that “she [was] pleading guilty because she is in

fact guilty of the crimes [as] charged.” If attempting to steal a car “by force,

violence and intimidation” and with “the intent to cause death and serious bodily

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harm” (as Ovalles has admitted she did) doesn’t involve a “substantial risk” that

physical force may be used, then it’s hard to imagine what does.

Here, though, there’s no need for imagination—the real-life details of

Ovalles’s crime, all of which she has admitted, confirm it. We won’t restate in full

the government’s factual proffer recounting Ovalles’s involvement in the three-day

carjacking spree. Suffice it to say that, in general, the proffer demonstrated that

Ovalles and her co-conspirators robbed a grocery store, successfully carjacked

three automobiles by force, and attempted to carjack a fourth. With respect to the

attempted carjacking, in particular—which, again, serves as the predicate offense

for Ovalles’s § 924(c) conviction—the proffer detailed that Ovalles and her co-

conspirators approached a family getting out of their minivan, demanded the keys,

hit the family’s 13-year-old child in the face with a baseball bat, and then, in

making their escape, fired an AK-47 assault rifle at the family and a Good

Samaritan who had come to their aid. See supra at 6–7.

Especially when layered on top of Ovalles’s admission to the overtly violent

charge in the information, the government’s detailed factual proffer―with which

Ovalles repeatedly said she had no “material disagreement”—leads inexorably to

the conclusion that the attempted carjacking at issue here constitutes a “crime of

violence” within the meaning of § 924(c)(3)(B). Based on the facts to which she

has expressly stipulated, there simply can be no serious dispute that Ovalles

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recognized that her conduct posed a very real “risk” that physical force “may” be

used―just, as it turns out, it was.

VI

Accordingly, we hold as follows:

1. The question whether a predicate offense constitutes a “crime of

violence” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B) should be determined

using a conduct-based approach that accounts for the actual, real-world facts of the

crime’s commission, rather than a categorical approach.

2. To the extent that our decision in United States v. McGuire, 706 F.3d

1333 (11th Cir. 2013), required use of the categorical approach in making the

crime-of-violence determination under § 924(c)(3)(B), it is overruled.

3. As interpreted to embody a conduct-based approach, § 924(c)(3)(B) is

not unconstitutionally vague.

4. In light of the particular circumstances of its commission, all of which

Ovalles has expressly admitted, her attempted-carjacking offense was a “crime of

violence” within the meaning of § 924(c)(3)(B).

The case is REMANDED to the panel for proceedings consistent with this

opinion.

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WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judge, joined by ED CARNES, Chief Judge, and
TJOFLAT, NEWSOM, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges, concurring:

How did we ever reach the point where this Court, sitting en banc, must

debate whether a carjacking in which an assailant struck a 13-year-old girl in the

mouth with a baseball bat and a cohort fired an AK-47 at her family is a crime of

violence? It’s nuts. And Congress needs to act to end this ongoing judicial charade.

I join the majority opinion in full, but I write separately to explain why our

resolution of this appeal forecasts how Congress should address the vexing issue of

how to punish violent recidivists under laws like the Armed Career Criminal Act 1:

by restoring the traditional role of the jury. The caselaw about how to punish

recidivists has confounded the federal courts for decades and has made the

resolution of this appeal tricky, but our decision also suggests a way out of the

mess. Although our decision involves a contemporaneous crime and not a prior

conviction, our conclusion that a jury may make findings about a defendant’s

violent conduct applies with equal force to recidivist statutes. Indeed, the modern

abandonment of the jury’s traditional role of making findings about prior

convictions has created more problems than it has solved.

1
18 U.S.C. § 924(e).

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A. Recidivist Wars

Empirical research proves that Congress has good reason to punish

recidivists with long sentences of imprisonment. A recent study by the United

States Sentencing Commission found that “[c]areer offenders, as a group, tend to

recidivate at a higher rate than non-career offenders.”2 More specifically, “almost

two-thirds . . . of career offenders released between 2004 and 2006 were

rearrested” in the eight-year period after their release, while just under “one-

half . . . of non-career offenders released in 2005 were rearrested” in the same

period.3 And a defendant’s criminal history as calculated under the Sentencing

Guidelines is a strong predictor of future encounters with the justice system. 4

Offenders without any criminal history points are rearrested at a rate of 30.2

percent. 5 This rate jumps to 63.3 percent for offenders with five criminal history

points and catapults to 81.5 percent for offenders with more than 10 criminal

history points.6 Relatedly, offenders with the lowest criminal history category are

2
U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Report to the Congress: Career Offender Sentencing Enhancements
39 (2016).
3
Id.
4
See U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Recidivism Among Federal Offenders: A Comprehensive
Overview 5, 18–19, 27 (2016).
5
Id. at 18.
6
Id.

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rearrested at a rate of 33.8 percent, while offenders with the highest criminal

history category are rearrested at a rate of 80.1 percent.7

Among career offenders, violent offenders, not surprisingly, pose the

greatest risk to the public. For example, “drug trafficking only” career offenders

recidivate at a rate of 54.4 percent, while “violent [crime] only” career offenders

recidivate at a rate of 69 percent. 8 The median drug trafficker recidivates after 26

months, while the median violent offender recidivates after only 14 months. 9 The

median drug trafficker commits two “[r]ecidivism [e]vents,” while the median

violent offender commits three. 10 And when a drug trafficker reoffends, he is most

likely to commit another drug trafficking offense, while a violent offender is most

likely to commit robbery. 11 Indeed, even “mixed” career offenders who have at

least one violent offense12 recidivate at a rate of 69.4 percent and are most likely to

commit assault when they recidivate.13

Past offenses involving a firearm are also a strong predictor of future

crimes. 14 For example, “[o]ffenders whose federal offense involved firearms [are]

7
Id. at 19.
8
U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Report to the Congress, supra note 2, at 42.
9
Id.
10
Id.
11
Id.
12
See id. at 38.
13
Id. at 42.
14
See U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Recidivism Among Federal Offenders, supra note 4, at 20.

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most likely to be rearrested” at a rate of 68.3 percent, and “[o]ffenders who

received an enhanced sentence for a weapon . . . ha[ve] higher recidivism rates

than other offenders.”15 In short, criminals with an affinity for guns and violence

are the least likely to change their ways. 16

That recidivists merit longer sentences is hardly a new discovery. Over a

century ago, the Supreme Court explained that “[t]he propriety of inflicting severer

punishment upon old offenders has long been recognized in this country and in

England.”17 Accordingly, “[s]tatutes providing for such increased punishment were

enacted in Virginia and New York as early as 1796, and in Massachusetts in 1804;

and there have been numerous acts of similar import in many states.”18

In more recent years, Congress has moved to protect public safety by

enacting federal crimes that provide lengthy terms of imprisonment for

15
Id.
16
Id.; see also U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, The Past Predicts the Future: Criminal History and
Recidivism of Federal Offenders 12 (2017) (“Offenders convicted of a firearms offense had the
highest rearrest rate (68.4%]), followed by offenders convicted of a violent offense (64.1%)
. . . .”).
17
Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U.S. 616, 623 (1912).
18
Id. (collecting cases); see also Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 566 n.9 (1967) (citing data
“that 62% of prisoners committed to federal prisons in the year ending June 30, 1965, had been
previously committed”); People v. Gowasky, 155 N.E. 737, 739 (N.Y. 1927) (reviewing the
history of recidivism statutes); Nancy J. King, Sentencing and Prior Convictions: The Past, the
Future, and the End of the Prior-Conviction Exception to Apprendi, 97 Marq. L. Rev. 523, 533–
34 & nn.52–62 (2014).

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recidivists.19 The Armed Career Criminal Act, for example, provides a 15-year

mandatory minimum sentence for a criminal convicted of unlawfully possessing a

firearm or ammunition who has “three previous convictions . . . for a violent felony

or serious drug offense.” 20 The Act defines a “serious drug offense” in terms of

convictions under certain federal and state laws that provide a maximum sentence

of 10 or more years of imprisonment. 21 And it defines a “violent felony” to include

crimes that (1) have “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” as

an “element”22—the so-called “elements clause”; (2) are “burglary, arson, or

extortion, [or] involve[] use of explosives”23—the “enumerated offenses clause”;

or (3) “otherwise . . . present[] a serious potential risk of physical injury to

another” 24—the “residual clause.”

B. The Residual Clause Strikes Back

As thoroughly chronicled in the majority opinion, years of litigation about

federal recidivist statutes have weakened the penalties created by Congress. But

19
See, e.g., H.R. Rep. No. 98-1073, at 2 (1984) (relying on “extensive studies on recidivism” to
justify an earlier version of the Armed Career Criminal Act). See generally U.S. Sentencing
Comm’n, Mandatory Minimum Penalties for Firearms Offenses in the Federal Criminal Justice
System (2018).
20
18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1).
21
Id. § 924(e)(2)(A).
22
Id. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i).
23
Id. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii).
24
Id., invalidated by Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015).

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these developments have not benefited all offenders. Recidivist drug traffickers

who possess a firearm are still subject to the 15-year mandatory minimum under

the Armed Career Criminal Act. But after the demise of the residual clause in

Johnson v. United States,25 violent recidivists who possess a firearm—the ones

akin to the violent career offenders who recidivate at a rate nearly 15 percentage

points higher than recidivist drug traffickers and who tend to commit violent

crimes when they do so—sometimes escape the mandatory minimum if their

earlier offenses lacked a legal “element” that involves physical force, regardless of

how the offender actually committed the offense. For example, an offender may

have been convicted of “sexual abuse in the first degree . . . by forcible

compulsion” under Alabama law for a crime that was actually violent.26 But

because the Supreme Court of Alabama has adopted a “water[ed] . . . down”

interpretation of the statute that “means that [the statute] does not categorically

include as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force,”

the conviction will not count as a crime of violence because “the true facts matter

little, if at all, in this odd area of the law.”27

The same problem may exist for other offenses that can technically be

committed in nonviolent ways—but rarely, if ever, are—such as kidnapping, arson,
25
135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015).
26
Ala. Code § 13A-6-66(a)(1).
27
United States v. Davis, 875 F.3d 592, 600, 604 (11th Cir. 2017).

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and other sex crimes. Criminals who have committed violent crimes may escape

the mandatory minimum sentence of the Armed Career Criminal Act because

sentencing judges must “close [their] eyes” to everything but the legal definitions

of prior convictions. 28 In essence, the so-called categorical approach “divorces

what a habitual offender actually did from the punishment they are meant to

receive.”29 “The bizarre results” occasioned by this approach “are hard to grasp”

because “the doctrine is not based in reality, but rather relies on the legal fiction

that crimes are [merely] comprised of a set of elements, as opposed to the

underlying criminal conduct.”30

I do not mean to suggest that the residual clauses of the Armed Career

Criminal Act or of the federal definition of a crime of violence in recidivist

statutes 31 should have survived—at least not in their original forms that required

the sentencing judge to decide whether the offender’s criminal history qualified

him for an increased punishment. Judges have rightfully complained that the

categorical approach has taxed judicial economy. “The dockets of . . . all federal

28
Id. at 595.
29
Sheldon A. Evans, Punishing Criminals for Their Conduct: A Return to Reason for the Armed
Career Criminal Act, 70 Okla. L. Rev. 623, 626 (2018).
30
Id. at 645
31
See Sessions v. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. 1204 (2018) (invalidating 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) as
incorporated into the Immigration and Nationality Act for purposes of determining if an alien
was previously convicted of an aggravated felony).

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courts are now clogged with [ACCA] cases,” 32 and perhaps “no other area of law

has demanded more of [the courts’] resources.”33 And as the Supreme Court

explained in Johnson, the two-step process demanded by the categorical approach,

in which the sentencing judge imagined the “ordinary case” of a crime and then

decided “whether that abstraction present[ed] a serious potential risk of physical

injury,” was vague and confusing.34 The residual clause produced several circuit

splits over whether certain crimes were sufficiently violent. 35 Indeed, the justices

could not agree whether fleeing in a vehicle from law enforcement or drunk

driving qualified as violent crimes, 36 eventually leading the Supreme Court to

conclude that “trying to derive meaning from the residual clause . . . [was] a failed

enterprise.”37 And even the elements clause has created confusion, with members

of this Court disagreeing about whether crimes like attempted murder, attempted

armed robbery, robbery, aggravated assault, and felony battery are violent

crimes. 38

32
United States v. Vann, 660 F.3d 771, 787 (4th Cir. 2011) (Agee, J., concurring).
33
United States v. Aguila-Montes de Oca, 655 F.3d 915, 917 (9th Cir. 2011), abrogated by
Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. 254 (2013).
34
135 S. Ct. at 2557.
35
See id. at 2560 (collecting cases).
36
See Sykes v. United States, 564 U.S. 1, 36 (2011) (Kagan, J., dissenting) (opining that fleeing
in a vehicle is not a violent felony); Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137, 156 (2008) (Alito, J.,
dissenting) (opining that drunk driving is a violent felony).
37
Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2560.
38
See, e.g., Hylor v. United States, ___ F.3d ____, No. 17-10856, slip op. at 10–13 (11th Cir.
July 18, 2018) (Jill Pryor, J., concurring) (opining that attempted murder and attempted armed

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The problems with the categorical approach also cannot necessarily be

remedied by having the sentencing judge make findings about the underlying facts

of prior convictions. The Sixth Amendment requires that, “[o]ther than the fact of a

prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the

prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury.” 39 And the specific

details of a recidivist’s past crimes go beyond the simple “fact of [his] prior

conviction.” 40 Indeed, some members of the Supreme Court have opined that,

under the Sixth Amendment, even the bare fact of a prior conviction should be

proved to a jury. 41

C. Return of the Jury

robbery are not violent felonies); United States v. Lee, 886 F.3d 1161, 1165–71 (11th Cir. 2018)
(Jordan, J., concurring) (opining that prior Eleventh Circuit decisions holding that robbery is a
violent felony were wrongly decided);United States v. Vail-Bailon, 868 F.3d 1293, 1308 (11th
Cir. 2017) (en banc) (Wilson, J., dissenting) (opining that battery is not a violent felony); Vail-
Bailon, 868 F.3d at 1315 (Rosenbaum, J., dissenting) (same); United States v. Golden, 854 F.3d
1256, 1257–60 (11th Cir. 2017) (Jill Pryor, J., concurring) (opining that a prior Eleventh Circuit
decision holding that aggravated assault is a violent felony was incorrect); In re Colon, 826 F.3d
1301, 1306–08 (11th Cir. 2016) (Martin, J., dissenting) (opining that aiding and abetting a Hobbs
Act robbery is not a crime of violence).
39
Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000).
40
Id.; see also Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2252 (2016) (citing “serious Sixth
Amendment concerns” about judicial factfinding); Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 601
(1990) (expressing concern that judicial factfinding about earlier offenses would “abridg[e a
defendant’s] right to a jury trial”); King, Sentencing and Prior Convictions, supra note 18, at
550–58, 562–63 (explaining constitutional concerns about the role of judges).
41
See, e.g., Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. at 1254 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (“In my view, if the
[g]overnment wants to enhance a defendant’s sentence based on his prior convictions, it must put
those convictions in the indictment and prove them to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”);
Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 267 (1998) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“[I]t is . . .
‘unfair,’ of course, to deprive [a] defendant of a jury determination . . . on the critical question of
[a] prior conviction.”).

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The combination of the need to punish violent recidivists and the problem of

judicial factfinding about prior convictions yields an obvious solution for

Congress: rewrite the Armed Career Criminal Act and other recidivist statutes to

require that the government must prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that

the defendant has previously been convicted of a felony the actual commission of

which involved the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against

another person. For example, in the case of a defendant with a prior conviction

under Alabama law for first-degree sexual abuse by forcible compulsion, the

prosecution could introduce evidence that the defendant in fact used violent force

to subdue his victim. This evidence might include certified charging documents,

stipulations, plea agreements, factual proffers, and verdict forms from the past

prosecution, as well as traditional evidence such as witness testimony and physical

evidence.

Tasking the jury with determining recidivism is consistent with the common

law. “Habitual offender laws like the ACCA enjoy a long tradition in this country

that dates back to colonial times.” 42 And“[a]t common law, the fact of prior

convictions had to be charged in the same indictment charging the underlying

crime . . . and submitted to the jury for determination along with that crime.” 43 In

42
Evans, Punishing Criminals for Their Conduct, supra note 29, at 628.
43
Almendarez-Torres, 523 U.S. at 261 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (collecting authorities).

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1967, the Supreme Court acknowledged that “[t]he common-law procedure for

applying recidivist statutes . . . , which requires allegations and proof of past

convictions in the current trial, is, of course, the simplest and best known

procedure.” 44 And earlier decisions of state courts left little doubt that “a verdict of

the jury finding the prior conviction . . . [was] essential to the power of the court to

impose the increased punishment” absent a statute that displaced the common

law. 45

“[T]he right to have a jury decide prior-offense status . . . was the law in

virtually every federal and state jurisdiction, from the Founding past World War

II.” 46 For example, a former Texas recidivism statute provided enhanced penalties

when the prosecutor proved to the jury that the offender “ha[d] been before

convicted of the same [felony] offense . . . or one of the same nature.” 47 And a jury

finding was more than a formality. Under a former Indiana statute, “the previous

convictions, sentences, and imprisonments [had to] be described specifically, and

the jury [had to] find that the defendant was convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned
44
Spencer, 385 U.S. at 566.
45
State v. Findling, 144 N.W. 142, 143 (Minn. 1913) (collecting cases); see also King,
Sentencing and Prior Convictions, supra note 18, at 566–98 (collecting extensive data on
historic state practices); Anthony M. Radice, Recidivist Procedures: Prejudice and Due Process,
53 Cornell L. Rev. 337, 341 n.19 (1968); Harold Dubroff, Note, Recidivist Procedures, 40
N.Y.U. L. Rev. 332, 333 (1965).
46
King, Sentencing and Prior Convictions, supra note 18, at 553.
47
1925 Tex. Crim. Stat. art. 62; see also Spencer, 385 U.S. at 556 n.1 (citing Tex. Penal Code
Ann. art. 62 (West 1952)); King, Sentencing and Prior Convictions, supra note 18, at 566–98
(collecting state laws).

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in the instances described, and not otherwise.” 48 Indeed, in Kelley v. State,49 the

Supreme Court of Indiana held that the prosecution could not rely on “a certified

transcript of a judgment . . . [that did] not describe the crime for which [the

defendant] was convicted, but merely recite[d]” that the defendant was sentenced

to between one and seven years of imprisonment. 50

The common-law method for proving prior convictions ordinarily permitted

the prosecutor to rely on a broad array of evidence if the defendant refused “to

stipulate as to the prior conviction[] and thereby relieve the State of the necessity

of . . . adducing proof before the jury of such prior convictions.”51 For example, in

Crocker v. State,52 after a defendant accused of “robbery with a prior conviction

for robbery” contested the fact of his first conviction, the prosecutor introduced

“records from the penitentiary,” “testimony of one of the officers involved in the

prior case,” and a “comparison of finger prints of the [defendant] with the finger

prints taken in connection with the prior offense.” 53 And in Dozier v. State,54 the

48
Kelley v. State, 185 N.E. 453, 455 (Ind. 1933) (quoting Burns’ Ann. Ind. Stat. § 2340 (1926)).
49
185 N.E. 453 (Ind. 1933).
50
Id. at 455; cf. Carter v. Commonwealth, 11 Ky. Op. 92, 93 (Ky. 1881) (“The fact that the
accused had been previously indicted for a felony, describing the nature of the offense, in a court
having jurisdiction, that he was assigned and pled to the indictment . . . , etc., are facts necessary
to be alleged.”).
51
Crocker v. State, 385 S.W.2d 392, 394 (Tex. Crim. App. 1964).
52
385 S.W.2d 392 (Tex. Crim. App. 1964).
53
Id. at 393.
54
318 S.W.2d 80 (Tex. Crim. App. 1958).

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jury was tasked with weighing “certified copies of the judgment and sentence,”

“records of the Texas Department of Correction, including fingerprints,” and

“expert testimony identifying [the fingerprints] as identical with those of the

[defendant].” 55 Factfinding by juries was considered essential to recidivism

statutes.

And still today, there are states that require factfinding by juries to sentence

an offender under their own recidivist statutes. Under Indiana’s current habitual

offender statute, 56 “habitual offender proceedings are treated as substantive

criminal trials. The State must prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt” to

a jury. 57 The test for determining whether a prior conviction from another

jurisdiction qualifies as a predicate offense under Indiana’s statute does not turn on

the elements of the offense, but on whether the acts that resulted in the out-of-state

conviction would have constituted a predicate offense “if they had been committed

in Indiana.”58

California also uses a conduct-based approach in cases in which it is not

possible to determine whether an offense committed in another jurisdiction would

qualify as a predicate felony through an inspection of the elements of the offense
55
Id. at 82.
56
Ind. Code § 35-50-2–8.
57
Moore v. State, 769 N.E.2d 1141, 1146 (Ind. Ct. App. 2002); see also Seay v. State, 698
N.E.2d 732, 733–34 (Ind. 1998) (describing the role of the jury in Indiana habitual-offender
proceedings).
58
Weiss v. State, 903 N.E.2d 557, 561 (Ind. Ct. App. 2009).

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alone.59 Although California law permits judges to make the factual findings

required to determine that the conduct that resulted in an out-of-state conviction

would have been a predicate offense if committed in the state, a California court

“may not rely on its own independent review of record evidence to determine what

conduct ‘realistically’ led to the defendant's conviction,” but must instead rely on

“those facts that were already necessarily found by a prior jury in rendering a

guilty verdict or admitted by the defendant in entering a guilty plea.” 60

Within our own Circuit, Alabama 61 and Georgia62 likewise require the state

to prove that the conduct underlying an offender’s prior out-of-state conviction

would have been a predicate offense under the state’s recidivist statute if

committed in the state, although both Alabama 63 and Georgia64 permit judges to

make the requisite factual findings. So in advocating a return to the jury’s

traditional role in determining recidivism at the federal level, I am not advancing a

59
See People v. Gallardo, 407 P.3d 55, 57 (Cal. 2017).
60
Id.
61
See Skinner v. State, 987 So. 2d 1172, 1175 (Ala. Crim. App. 2006) (“In determining whether
an out-of-state conviction will be used to enhance punishment pursuant to the [Alabama
habitual-offender statute], the conduct upon which the foreign conviction is based must be
considered and not the foreign jurisdiction’s treatment of that conduct.”).
62
See Walker v. Hale, 657 S.E.2d 227, 230 (Ga. 2008) (holding that an out-of-state crime
qualifies as a predicate offense under Georgia’s recidivist statute if “the same offense, if
committed in this State, would constitute a serious violent felony” as defined under the statute).
63
See Ala. R. Crim. P. 26.6(a) (“Except in death penalty cases and in cases involving offenses
committed prior to January 1, 1980, the judge shall impose the sentence in all cases.”).
64
See Brown v. State, 670 S.E.2d 400, 402 (Ga. 2008) (holding that the right to trial by jury is
not violated by the Georgia repeat-offender statute’s requirement that the judge make findings of
prior convictions).

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proposal untested by contemporary experience. I am instead proposing a solution

that has proved workable in practice in several states.

Some may object that jurors’ knowledge of past convictions will lead them

to engage in propensity reasoning,65 but the Supreme Court long ago held that the

“use of prior convictions in [a] . . . criminal trial . . . [is not] so egregiously unfair

upon the issue of guilt or innocence as to offend” the guarantee of due process of

law.66 In any event, the details of past convictions are unlikely to reach the jury. 67

To begin, about 97 percent of federal prosecutions end in guilty pleas.68 And those

few defendants who go to trial can stipulate to their past convictions and limit any

proceedings to the charged offenses.69

65
See, e.g., Dubroff, supra note 45, at 337 (citing the “prejudice engendered by proving guilt for
the present offense simultaneously with the issue of recidivism” under the common-law method).
66
Spencer, 385 U.S. at 559; see also id. at 560 (“Such statutes . . . have been sustained in this
Court on several occasions against contentions that they violate constitutional strictures dealing
with double jeopardy, ex post facto laws, cruel and unusual punishment, due process, equal
protection, and privileges and immunities.”).
67
See generally Nancy J. King, Juries and Prior Convictions: Managing the Demise of the Prior
Conviction Exception to Apprendi, 67 SMU L. Rev. 577 (2014) (outlining procedures that
preserve the right to a jury trial in recidivism proceedings while limiting prejudice to
defendants).
68
See U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, 2017 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics fig. C,
https://www.ussc.gov/research/sourcebook-2017.
69
See Pitcock v. State, 367 S.W.2d 864, 865 (Tex. Crim. App. 1963) (explaining that under a
recidivism statute, “should the appellant again offer to fully stipulate as to the prior conviction,
the state should not be allowed to introduce evidence on this point”), overruled on other grounds
by Lehman v. State, 792 S.W.2d 82 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990) (en banc); cf. Old Chief v. United
States, 519 U.S. 172, 174 (1997) (explaining that in a federal prosecution of a felon for
possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), a district court abuses its discretion if it allows
the government to “prove the element of prior conviction” when a defendant “offer[s] to concede
th[at] fact”).

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The supposed unfairness to defendants of admitting proof of prior

convictions is the same concern that motivated the failed experiment of allowing

judges to assess recidivism. When the Supreme Court decided Spencer v. Texas 70

in 1967 and upheld the common-law jury method against a challenge under the

Fourteenth Amendment,71 the majority opined that it “might well agree” that other

methods of assessing recidivism, such as “leaving that question to the court,”

would be “faire[r]” than placing a defendant’s criminal history before the jury. 72

Justice Stewart also wrote in his concurring opinion that, “[i]f the Constitution

gave [him] a roving commission to impose upon the criminal courts of [the states

his] own notions of enlightened policy, [he] would not join the [majority] opinion”

because other “recidivist procedures . . . are far superior to those utilized [under the

common law].” 73 And then-contemporary academic commentators critiqued the

common-law method and identified alternatives, including “determination of

[recidivist] status by the judge.” 74 But here we are. The cure of judicial factfinding

has proved worse than the disease it was supposed to treat.

70
385 U.S. 554 (1967).
71
Id. at 559.
72
Id. at 566–67.
73
Id. at 569 (Stewart, J., concurring); see also id. (observing that many states had recently
modified or abandoned the common-law method).
74
David S. Sidikman, Note, The Pleading and Proof of Prior Convictions in Habitual Criminal
Prosecutions, 33 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 210, 215–16 (1958) (capitalization omitted) (explaining that
judicial assessment “should be preferred over the common-law” method and that “a jury trial
should not be considered essential where the issue is conviction of prior offenses”); cf. Radice,

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Another objection might be that compiling evidence of prior convictions will

be burdensome. But with the advent of electronic records and other advantages of

modern technology, the task of reconstructing the details of prior convictions will

today be far easier than it was under the original common-law procedure and, over

time, will become easier still. 75 Because most state and federal prosecutions end in

guilty pleas, the relevant details of prior convictions ordinarily will be preserved in

factual proffers and other plea records. 76 And in the light of the rapid rate at which

many violent offenders recidivate, other relevant evidence likely will be fresh.77

In any event, Congress has some options for ensuring that all violent

recidivists remain subject to the mandatory minimum penalty. As explained above,

the elements clause may fail to capture offenders who commit broadly defined

crimes in violent ways. But the facts of their prior crimes, when ascertainable,

should not be immune from consideration when they commit new crimes.

supra note 45, at 340–41 & n.21 (critiquing the common-law method, but also acknowledging
that judicial factfinding “deprives the defendant of a jury trial on the issue”).
75
Cf. Crocker, 385 S.W.2d at 393 (explaining that the prosecution introduced “records from the
penitentiary,” “testimony of one of the officers involved in the prior case,” and fingerprint
evidence); King, Sentencing and Prior Convictions, supra note 18, at 561 (discussing how
technology has improved the identification of repeat offenders).
76
See Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Plea and Charge Bargaining 1 (2011)
(“[A]bout 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through [plea
bargaining].”).
77
See U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Report to the Congress, supra note 2, at 42 (finding a
“[m]edian [t]ime to [r]ecidivism” of 14 months).

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That this country comprises 50 states with different criminal codes all but

ensures that a formalist approach to defining a crime of violence—administered

only by judges—will be either over- or underinclusive and almost certainly will be

vulnerable to persistent litigation like that which felled the residual clause. For

example, a recent bill introduced in the United States Senate proposes to apply the

mandatory minimum to defendants with “[three] or more previous serious felony

convictions,” namely “any conviction . . . for an offense . . . punishable by

imprisonment for a statutory maximum term of not less than 10 years.” 78 But this

definition is both too narrow and too broad. It would exclude the offense of “felony

battery” under Florida law, 79 a third-degree felony with a maximum term of

imprisonment of five years, 80 even though this crime requires the infliction of

“great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement.” 81 It also

would exclude convictions for “domestic battery by strangulation” under Florida

law82 and for “assault[ing] another and inflict[ing] substantial bodily harm” under

Minnesota law. 83 But it would include the Florida offense of “[u]nlawful

78
Restoring the Armed Career Criminal Act, S. 3335, 115th Cong. § 2 (2018).
79
Fla. Stat. § 784.041(1).
80
Id. § 775.082(3)(e).
81
Id. § 784.041(1)(b).
82
Id. § 784.041(2)(a).
83
Minn. Stat. § 609.223 subd. 1.

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possession or use of a fifth wheel,”84 a second-degree felony with a maximum term

of imprisonment of 15 years. 85 It would include a conviction under Utah law for

“the intentional sale of five or more unlawful telecommunication devices within a

six-month period,” 86 also a second-degree felony with a maximum term of

imprisonment of 15 years.87 And it would include the Massachusetts offense of

knowing possession of “ten or more pieces of false money . . . with intent to utter

or pass the same as true,” a crime punishable by a life sentence. 88 In the light of the

substantial recidivism differences between violent and nonviolent offenders,

Congress should ensure that their punishments are based on the nature of their past

convictions and not the potential sentences for those convictions.

Make no mistake—Congress must eventually do something. The need to

punish violent recidivists is just as strong today as it was when the Supreme Court

decided Spencer over 50 years ago.89 The only question is what Congress should

do. Restoring the common-law role of the jury is the right place to start.

84
Fla. Stat. § 812.0147.
85
See id. § 775.082(3)(d).
86
Utah Code § 76-6-409.8(2).
87
Id. § 76-3-203(2).
88
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 267, § 17.
89
See Spencer, 385 U.S. at 566 n.9 (reporting “62% of prisoners committed to federal prisons in
the year ending June 30, 1965, had been previously committed.”).

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MARTIN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

As United States Circuit Judges, we have been given great power and

privilege. And our positions call upon us to decide the fate of many people who

have neither. In a nation that incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than

almost all others, federal judges devote much time to examining (and reexamining)

the sentences imposed on people serving time in our federal and state prisons. The

interpretation the majority of this en banc Court gives to the sentencing statute at

issue here, which gives no relief for Irma Ovalles, presents the opportunity to

review the development of this Circuit’s sentencing jurisprudence in recent years.

My review reveals a body of law that has relentlessly limited the ability of the

incarcerated to have their sentences reviewed. Decisions of this Court have left

only a narrow path to relief for those serving sentences longer than the law now

allows. Yet this narrow path is not mandated by decisions of the Supreme Court or

by Acts of Congress. Indeed, this Court has withheld relief from prisoners even

when precedent counsels otherwise.

As did my colleagues in the majority, I begin with the landmark Supreme

Court decision in Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015).

Having read the majority opinion, the reader is surely aware that in Johnson, the

United States Supreme Court invalidated part of the Armed Career Criminal Act

(ACCA), a sentencing statute designed to punish violent repeat offenders more

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harshly. Id. at 2557. The question before the Court in Johnson was not whether

violent repeat offenders should be punished more harshly. Rather, the question

was how to decide who is a violent repeat offender. Id. at 2555. In Johnson, the

Court held that one definition the statute used to identify violent repeat offenders

was so vague, and so susceptible to divergent meanings, that relying on it to

lengthen people’s prison sentences violated the protections guaranteed by the U.S.

Constitution. Id. at 2557. As a result, the Supreme Court struck down the part of

ACCA known as the residual clause. This ruling called into question the sentences

of thousands of federal prisoners sentenced under ACCA and other, similarly

worded statutes—including the one that was the basis for Irma Ovalles’s sentence.

After Johnson, it was the job of the Eleventh Circuit, and all inferior federal courts,

to review the lawfulness of these sentences.

Yet at every turn, this Court erred in ways that stopped prisoners from

getting their sentences reviewed and prevented people who had meritorious claims

from getting relief. Ms. Ovalles’s case is a “successor” to Johnson, Maj. Op. at 2,

and it is the latest in this line of decisions. Judge Jill Pryor’s dissent shows how

the majority strays from the plain text of the statute and from Supreme Court

precedent. I fully join her opinion. I write separately to provide the context of the

Eleventh Circuit’s response to Johnson. This is not the first time this Court has

mistakenly applied Johnson, nor the first time our mistake will leave an unlawful

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sentence intact. Indeed, today’s en banc decision, like others before it, promises to

have lasting effects for many prisoners.

I. JOHNSON AFTERMATH

When the Supreme Court invalidates a statute that was the basis for

sentences being served by thousands of federal prisoners, the first question

becomes, who benefits? Do we simply quit relying on this unconstitutional statute

for those who will be sentenced in the future, or do we go back and give relief to

those who were sentenced under the flawed statute in the past? There are rules

governing who gets relief. See generally Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S. Ct.

1060 (1989). Generally, people sentenced under a flawed statute more than a year

before the Supreme Court announces a new rule like the one in Johnson get relief

based on the new rule (retroactive relief) if the Supreme Court has told us they can.

See 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(3), (h); In re Henry, 757 F.3d 1151, 1157–60 (11th Cir.

2014).

One statutory tool for a person seeking relief from an unlawful federal

prison sentence is found in 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Provisions of this statute were

intended to (and do) limit opportunities for prisoners to get courts to review

problems with their sentences. Prisoners may contest their sentences once as a

matter of right under § 2255, but they must do it within one year of their sentences

becoming final. Id. § 2255(f). This one-year statute of limitations goes by quickly

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indeed for most federal prisoners, who are routinely sentenced to serve decades-

long prison terms. Section 2255 does allow prisoners to bring a second or

successive challenge to their sentences after that first year, but it is much harder.

For starters, prisoners seeking relief when they are years into serving their sentence

must first come to a court of appeals to get permission. Id. §§ 2244(b)(3)(A),

2255(h). There are other barriers to getting a second chance at relief in federal

court, but for purposes of this discussion, perhaps the most important is that the

statute gives inmates no ability to contest a decision from a panel of this Court

telling them they cannot file a second or successive petition. Id. § 2244(b)(3)(E)

(“The grant or denial of an authorization by a court of appeals to file a second or

successive application shall not be appealable and shall not be the subject of a

petition for rehearing or for a writ of certiorari.”). For this “seeking permission”

process, prisoners are stuck with the answer we give them, whether our answer is

right or wrong.

As one would expect, after the Supreme Court decided Johnson, thousands

of prisoners tried to get permission from our Court (and others) to challenge their

sentences. This is understandable because many of them had been sentenced under

a statute they now knew was, in part, unconstitutional. To the best of my

knowledge, our Court applied Johnson to give relief to inmates exercising their

direct appeal rights, and to those who were within the one-year time limit for

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bringing their first collateral attack. E.g., Mays v. United States, 817 F.3d 728,

736–37 (11th Cir. 2016) (applying Johnson to a first § 2255 motion); United States

v. Braun, 801 F.3d 1301, 1307–08 (11th Cir. 2015) (applying Johnson on direct

appeal).

However, prisoners who were already more than a year into serving

sentences impacted by Johnson have had a hard time getting the

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4318394. Public record. Not legal advice.