United States v. Dixon
| Decision Date | 03 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-1469 |
| Parties | United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Markell T. Dixon, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Argued December 14, 2021.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 4:20-CR-40005-SLD-1 - Sara Darrow Chief Judge.
Before Sykes, Chief Judge, and Hamilton and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.
The issue in this appeal is whether a defendant's prior Iowa conviction for intimidation with a dangerous weapon qualifies as a crime of violence under the Sentencing Guidelines. We hold that it does. Appellant Markell Dixon pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a felon, and the district court sentenced him to 96 months in prison. In calculating the imprisonment range for Dixon under the Guidelines, the district court raised his base-offense level by six levels under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A) because he had a previous conviction for a "crime of violence." That conviction was under Iowa law for intimidation with a dangerous weapon in violation of Iowa Code § 708.6(1).
On appeal Dixon contends that the district court erred because the crime under the Iowa statute is not categorically a crime of violence under the Guidelines. We affirm. A conviction under the Iowa statute requires that the defendant have placed someone in "reasonable apprehension of serious injury." That element necessarily includes a "threatened use of physical force," which is sufficient for the crime to qualify as a crime of violence under the Guidelines.
Dixon's Presentence Investigation Report recommended seting his base-offense level at 20 under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A) because he had a prior conviction for a crime of violence. Four years earlier, Dixon had pleaded guilty in an Iowa state court to intimidation with a dangerous weapon in violation of Iowa Code § 708.6(1). According to the charging document in the Iowa court, Dixon had shot at a vehicle with multiple occupants and continued firing at them as they fled.
The district court overruled Dixon's objection to that use of his prior conviction and used base-offense level 20. The court reasoned that the Iowa statute required the specific intent to injure or provoke fear or anger, so that a conviction qualified as a crime of violence under the "categorical approach" to recidivism enhancements. After applying that conclusion to calculate a guideline range of 84 to 105 months in prison, the court sentenced Dixon to 96 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
We review de novo the district court's ruling that Dixon's conviction for intimidation with a dangerous weapon was for a "crime of violence" that justified the base-offense level of 20 under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A). United States v. Vesey, 966 F.3d 694, 696 (7th Cir. 2020).
In deciding whether an offense is a crime of violence under the current version of the Guidelines that applies here, federal courts apply a "categorical approach." E.g. Vesey, 966 F.3d at 696-97, citing United States v. Ta y l o r , 630 F.3d 629, 633 n.2 (7th Cir. 2010) ( that categorical method applies under Sentencing Guidelines and Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)). This approach requires courts to look only at the elements of the statute of conviction-not the specific facts of the defendant's prior offense-and to ask if the elements define the offense more broadly than the guideline definition of a crime of violence. See Mathis v. United States, 136 S.Ct. 2243, 2248, 2251 (2016) (Armed Career Criminal Act); United States v. Smith, 981 F.3d 606 609 (7th Cir. 2020) (). An offense is not a crime of violence if a person can commit it in a way that falls outside the guideline definition. Bridges v. United States, 991 F.3d 793, 801 (7th Cir. 2021) (). But if the offense's minimum conduct is congruent with or narrower than the federal definition, the offense is a categorical match. Id. at 800; Smith, 981 F.3d at 609.
It might seem odd to think that deliberately shooting a gun at people in a vehicle could be anything but a crime of violence under any definition. Cf. United States v. Duncan, 833 F.3d 751, 752 (7th Cir. 2016) (). But that odd possibility is not precluded by the intricate and sometimes counterintuitive, even Thomistic logic of the categorical approach. See Amit Jain & Phillip Dane Warren, An Ode to the Categorical Approach, 67 UCLA L. Rev. Discourse 132, 134 (2019) (quoting opinions describing categorical method as a "judicial charade" that "require[s] that judges ignore the real world" and reach results that are "counterintuitive" or even "unbelievable"); accord, e.g., United States v. Doctor, 842 F.3d 306, 313 (4th Cir. 2016) (Wilkinson, J., concur- ring) (), quoted in Bridges, 991 F.3d at 805.
The categorical method is firmly in place under the Armed Career Criminal Act, as a mater of statute and Supreme Court precedent. Its role in applying the now-advisory Sentencing Guidelines requires more nuance. In 2018 the Sentencing Commission proposed amendments to the Guidelines that would free courts from rigid adherence to the categorical method and allow them to consider reliable information about the defendant's actual conduct leading to an earlier conviction. Sentencing Guidelines for United States Courts, 83 Fed.Reg. 65400, 65407-12 (proposed Dec. 20, 2018). While action was pending on those proposals, however, the Sentencing Commission lost its quorum. More than three years later, it still lacks a quorum and cannot act on those proposals. So for now, a sentencing court must conduct the categorical analysis to calculate the advisory starting point for sentencing. After making that calculation, however, the sentencing court is not only entitled but obliged to consider that advice through the filter of the statutory sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). See Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 351 (2007), citing United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 259-60 (2005).[1]
The Guidelines define a crime of violence as a crime that "has as an element the use, atempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another." U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(1); see also § 2K2.1 cmt. n.1 (borrowing definition to decide base offense level for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)). "Physical force," in turn, means violent force or force capable of causing injury. Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133, 140 (2010).
Turning to the Iowa law, subsection (1) of the statute criminalizes shooting at people or an occupied vehicle or building and thereby placing the occupants or people in reasonable apprehension of serious injury:
A person commits a class "C" felony when the person, with the intent to injure or provoke fear or anger in another, shoots, throws, launches, or discharges a dangerous weapon at, into, or in a building, vehicle, airplane, railroad engine, rail- road car, or boat, occupied by another person, or within an assembly of people, and thereby places the occupants or people in reasonable apprehension of serious injury or threatens to commit such an act under circumstances raising a reasonable expectation that the threat will be carried out.
Iowa Code § 708.6(1). Subsection (2) covers the same conduct without the specific intent requirement.
The Iowa Supreme Court has interpreted § 708.6(1) to re- quire that the defendant place the victim(s) "in reasonable apprehension of serious injury." State v. Ross, 845 N.W.2d 692, 699 (Iowa 2014). Federal courts follow such an authoritative interpretation of state law by the state's highest court. See Johnson, 559 U.S. at 138 (). The issue here becomes whether placing a person in "reasonable apprehension of serious injury" means "threatening the use of physical force." If so, § 708.6(1) is a categorical match for the Guidelines' definition of a crime of violence.
Our cases make clear that a person who creates reasonable fear of serious injury has also threatened the...
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