Chambers v. United States

• Citation: 77 USLW 4038,172 L.Ed.2d 484,555 U.S. 122,129 S.Ct. 687
• Decision Date: 13 January 2009
• Docket Number: No. 06–11206.,06–11206.
• Parties: Deondery CHAMBERS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: United States Supreme Court

555 U.S. 122

129 S.Ct. 687

172 L.Ed.2d 484

77 USLW 4038

Deondery CHAMBERS, Petitioner,

v.UNITED STATES.

No. 06–11206.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Nov. 10, 2008.

Decided Jan. 13, 2009.

Syllabus^*

The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) imposes a 15–year mandatory prison term on a felon unlawfully in possession of a firearm who has three prior convictions for committing certain drug crimes or “a violent felony,” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1), defined as a crime punishable by more than one year's imprisonment that, inter alia, “involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another,” § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). At petitioner Chambers' sentencing for being a felon in possession of a firearm, the Government sought ACCA's 15–year mandatory prison term. Chambers disputed one of his prior convictions—failing to report for weekend confinement—as falling outside the ACCA definition of “violent felony.” The District Court treated the failure to report as a form of what the relevant state statute calls “escape from [a] penal institution,” and held that it qualified as a “violent felony” under ACCA. The Seventh Circuit agreed.

Held: Illinois' crime of failure to report for penal confinement falls outside the scope of ACCA's “violent felony” definition. Pp. 690 – 693.

(a) For purposes of ACCA's definitions, it is the generic crime that counts, not how the crime was committed on a particular occasion. Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607. This categorical approach requires courts to choose the right category, and sometimes the choice is not obvious. The nature of the behavior that likely underlies a statutory phrase matters in this respect. The state statute at issue places together in a single section several different kinds of behavior, which, as relevant here, may be categorized either as failure to report for detention or as escape from custody. Failure to report is a separate crime from escape. Its underlying behavior differs from the more aggressive behavior underlying escape, and it is listed separately in the statute's title and body and is of a different felony class than escape. At the same time, the statutory phrases setting forth the various kinds of failure to report describe roughly similar forms of behavior, thus constituting a single category. Consequently, for ACCA purposes, the statute contains at least two separate crimes, escape and failure to report. Pp. 690 – 692.

(b) The “failure to report” crime does not satisfy ACCA's “violent felony” definition. Although it is punishable by imprisonment exceedingone year, it satisfies none of the other parts of the definition. Most critically, it does not “involv[e] conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” Conceptually speaking, the crime amounts to a form of inaction, and there is no reason to believe that an offender who fails to report is otherwise doing something that poses a serious potential risk of physical injury. The Government's argument that a failure to report reveals the offender's special, strong aversion to penal custody—pointing to 3 state and federal cases over 30 years in which individuals shot at officers attempting to recapture them—is unconvincing. Even assuming the relevance of violence that may occur long after an offender fails to report, the offender's aversion to penal custody is beside the point. The question is whether such an offender is significantly more likely than others to attack or resist an apprehender, thereby producing a serious risk of physical injury. Here a United States Sentencing Commission report, showing no violence in 160 federal failure-to-report cases over 2 recent years, helps provide a negative answer. The three reported cases to which the Government points do not show the contrary. Simple multiplication (2 years versus 30 years; federal alone versus federal-plus-state) suggests that they show only a statistically insignificant risk of physical violence. And the Government provides no other empirical information. Pp. 691 – 693.

473 F.3d 724, reversed and remanded.

BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C.J., and STEVENS, SCALIA, KENNEDY, SOUTER, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which THOMAS, JJ., joined.

Robert N. Hochman, for Petitioner.

Matthew D. Roberts, for Respondent.

Gregory G. Garre, Solicitor General, Washington, D.C., for United States.

Gregory G. Garre, Acting Solicitor General, Matthew W. Friedrich, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Michael R. Dreeben, Deputy Solicitor General, Leondra R. Kruger, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Thomas E. Booth, Washington, D.C., for United States.

Michael F. Smith, James F. Gehrke, Kimberly Horsley Allen, Jonh H. Dudley, Jr., Butzel Long, Washington, DC, Troy Nino Giatras, The Giatras Law Firm, Charleston, WV, for Respondent.

Paul D. Clement, Solicitor General, Washington, D.C., for United States.

Justice BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question before us is whether a “failure to report” for penal confinement is a “ ‘violent felony’ ” within the terms of the Armed Career Criminal Act. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). We hold that it is not.

I

The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) imposes a 15–year mandatory prison term on an individual convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm if that individual has “three previous convictions ... for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, committed on occasions different from one another.” § 924(e)(1). ACCA defines a “violent felony” as a “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” that also either

“(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 the use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” § 924(e)(2)(B).

Clause (ii), ACCA's so-called residual clause, is at issue here.

II

The petitioner, Deondery Chambers, pleaded guilty to a charge of being a felon unlawfully in possession of a firearm. § 922(g). At sentencing the Government asked the District Court to apply ACCA's 15–year mandatory prison term because, in its view, three of Chambers' prior convictions qualified as an ACCA “serious drug offense” or “violent felony.” Chambers conceded that two of his prior convictions, namely, a 1998 conviction for robbery and aggravated battery and a 1999 drug crime conviction, fell within ACCA's definitions. But he disputed the Government's claim as to a third conviction. That third conviction arose out of Chambers' sentence for his 1998 robbery and battery offense. The sentence required Chambers to report to a local prison for 11 weekends of incarceration. He failed to report for weekend confinement on four occasions, and was later convicted of the crime of “fail[ing] to report to a penal institution.” Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 720, § 5/31–6(a) (West Supp.2008).

The District Court treated the “failure to report” as a form of what the relevant Illinois statute calls “escape from [a] penal institution,” ibid., and held that the crime qualified as a “violent felony” under ACCA. The Court of Appeals agreed. 473 F.3d 724 (C.A.7 2007). In light of disagreement among the Circuits as to whether failure to report for imprisonment falls within the scope of ACCA's definition of “violent felony,” we granted certiorari. Compare United States v. Winn, 364 F.3d 7, 12 (C.A.1 2004) (failure to report is a “violent felony”), with United States v. Piccolo, 441 F.3d 1084, 1088 (C.A.9 2006) (failure to report is not a “violent felony”).

III

We initially consider the classification of the crime. In ordinary speech, words such as “crime” and “felony” can refer not only to a generic set of acts, say, burglary in general, but also to a specific act committed on a particular occasion, say, the burglary that the defendant engaged in last month. We have made clear, however, that, for purposes of ACCA's definitions, it is the generic sense of the word “felony” that counts. Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990); see also Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 16–17, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005). The statute's defining language, read naturally, uses “felony” to refer to a crime as generally committed. And by so construing the statute, one avoids the practical difficulty of trying to ascertain at sentencing, perhaps from a paper record mentioning only a guilty plea, whether the present defendant's prior crime, as committed on a particular occasion, did or did not involve violent behavior. See id., at 20–21, 125 S.Ct. 1254. Thus, to determine, for example, whether attempted burglary is a “violent felony,” we have had to examine, not the unsuccessful burglary the defendant attempted on a particular occasion, but the generic crime of attempted burglary. James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 204–206, 127 S.Ct. 1586, 167 L.Ed.2d 532 (2007).

This categorical approach requires courts to choose the right category. And sometimes the choice is not obvious. The nature of the behavior that likely underlies a statutory phrase matters in this respect. Where Massachusetts, for example, placed within a single, separately numbered statutory section (entitled “Breaking and entering at night,” Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 266, § 16 (West 2008)) burglary of a “building, ship, vessel or vehicle,” this Court found that the behavior underlying, say, breaking into a building differs so significantly from the behavior underlying, say, breaking into a vehicle that for ACCA purposes a sentencing court must treat the two as different crimes. See Shepard, supra, at 16–17, 125 S.Ct. 1254; see also Taylor, supra, at 598, 110 S.Ct. 2143.

The Illinois statute now before us, like the Massachusetts statute, places together in a single...