[18-6662] Shular v. United States

Shular v. United States

Wikipedia · Justia (with opinion) · Docket · oyez.org

Argued on Jan 21, 2020.
Decided on Feb 26, 2020.

Petitioner: Eddie Lee Shular.
Respondent: United States of America.

Advocates:

• Richard M. Summa (for the petitioner)
• Jonathan C. Bond (Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, for the respondent)

Facts of the case (from oyez.org)

The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) provides in relevant part that a person who has three previous convictions for a “violent felony” or a “serious drug offense” shall serve a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison. In recent cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has adopted a “categorical” approach to determine whether a prior conviction constitutes a “violent felony” within the ACCA. Under this approach, the sentencing court must look only to the statutory definition of the prior offense and not to the particular facts underlying the prior convictions. At issue in this case is whether the categorical approach applies to the determination of whether a prior conviction constitutes a “serious drug offense” as well.

Eddie Lee Shular qualified as an armed career criminal on the basis of six prior Florida convictions for controlled substance offenses—five for sale of cocaine and one for possession with intent to sell. None of these offenses required that the government prove that Shular had “knowledge of the illicit nature of the substance,” that is, that the substance possessed or sold was cocaine. Under the categorical approach, none of Shular’s Florida convictions would qualify as a “serious drug offense” because the Florida crimes are broader than the generic drug analogues under federal law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected the categorical approach to serious drug offenses, holding that the plain language of the ACCA definition “requires only that the predicate offense involve certain activities related to controlled substances.”

Question

Does the determination of a “serious drug offense” under the Armed Career Criminal Act require the same categorical approach used in the determination of a “violent felony” under the act?

Conclusion

The statute does not require “a generic-offense matching exercise” between the elements of the offenses listed in the federal statute and the elements of the state offense under which the defendant was convicted. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Ginsburg adopted the argument of the United States, which instead would have the trial court asked “whether the state offense’s elements necessarily entail one of the types of conduct” identified in the federal statute.

The Court found that two features of the statute in question lead to this interpretation. The first is that the offenses listed in the statute are “unlikely names for generic offenses” and therefore refer to underlying conduct and not offenses themselves. Secondly, the use of the word “involving” in the statute suggests an intention to describe criminal conduct and not particular criminal offenses.

The Court noted that both parties’ interpretations of the statutory language “achieve a measure of inconsistency. Justice Ginsburg explained, “Resolving this case requires us to determine which form of consistency Congress intended: application of [the statute] to all offenders who engaged in certain conduct or to all who committed certain generic offenses (in either reading, judging only by the elements of their prior convictions).“ She continued, “For the reasons explained, we are persuaded that Congress chose the former.”

In a brief concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh stated he joined the Court’s opinion in full but wrote separately to explain that the rule of lenity advocated by Shular was not appropriately invoked where the Court found the statutory language unambiguous.