United States v. Halliday
| Decision Date | 04 January 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 3:17-cr-00267 (JAM),3:17-cr-00267 (JAM) |
| Citation | 511 F.Supp.3d 205 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America v. Isaiah HALLIDAY, Defendant. |
Geoffrey M. Stone, U.S. Attorney's Office, Hartford, CT, for United States of America.
Charles F. Willson, Federal Public Defender's Office, Hartford, CT, for Defendant.
ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO WITHDRAW GUILTY PLEA
Federal law criminalizes the use of a firearm to further any "crime of violence." See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). The question in this case is whether an attempted robbery in violation of the federal Hobbs Act qualifies as a crime of violence.
Some courts say yes.1 Some courts say no.2 The question has split the circuits, and perhaps one day the Supreme Court will decide who is right, or Congress will clarify this vexing statutory scheme.
My initial take was that an attempted robbery must surely qualify as a crime of violence. After all, a robbery is the paradigm of a violent crime. Why should a failed or attempted robbery be treated any differently? Even worse, the defendant here—Isaiah Halliday—actually shot his fleeing victim in the course of trying to rob him. How could this attempted robbery not qualify as a crime of violence?
Or so I thought until the law got in the way. For starters, the law says that when a judge decides if any particular crime qualifies as a federal crime of violence, what the defendant actually did is not relevant. Next the law says that a judge cannot deem a type of crime to be a federal crime of violence simply because it usually ends up involving force or violence. Instead, the law tells judges that they must strap on their analytic blinders to conduct a narrow inquiry, one that focuses under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A) solely on whether any of the formal elements of the crime at issue actually and necessarily require the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force.
I did that here. And my conclusion is that an attempted Hobbs Act robbery is not a federal crime of violence. Its elements do not necessarily require the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force. Therefore, because Halliday entered a plea of guilty that was wrongfully based on an assumption that an attempted Hobbs Act robbery qualifies as a crime of violence, I will grant his motion to withdraw his guilty plea to that charge.
Halliday went on a robbery spree in the fall of 2017. Some of his robberies were successful and some were not so successful. He ended up indicted on twelve different robbery-related charges. Doc. #21.
On April 29, 2019, Halliday entered pleas of guilty to two of the charges against him. Doc. #53. The first was a plea of guilty to conspiracy to engage in Hobbs Act robberies, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a). The second was a plea of guilty to the use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(iii).
This second charge was based on Halliday's use of a gun during an attempted Hobbs Act robbery that occurred on November 11, 2017. On that day Halliday lured an unsuspecting victim to a location in Hartford for the purpose of robbing him, threatened him with a gun, and then shot him in the arm when he drove away and escaped before Halliday could complete the robbery. Doc. #102 at 1-2. According to the parties’ plea agreement, this second charge requires me to impose a term of at least 10 years of imprisonment that would run consecutive to any term of imprisonment that I might impose for the first charge. Doc. #53 at 5.
Halliday now moves to withdraw his guilty plea to the second charge. Doc. #101. He argues that an attempted Hobbs Act robbery does not qualify as a crime of violence. The Government opposes the motion. Doc. #102.
For purposes of a charge of using a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A), a "crime of violence" is defined in relevant part to mean a crime that "has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another." § 924(c)(3)(A).
This definition is commonly referred to as the "force clause."
The force clause of § 924(c)(3)(A) is distinct from what courts refer to as the "residual clause" of § 924(c)(3)(B) —a clause which provides an alternative definition of a crime of violence to include any crime 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." § 924(c)(3)(B). An attempted Hobbs Act robbery is probably risky enough to satisfy the residual clause. But about two months after Halliday entered his guilty plea, the Supreme Court invalidated the residual clause of § 924(c)(3)(B) on due process vagueness grounds. See United States v. Davis , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2319, 204 L.Ed.2d 757 (2019). It is the Supreme Court's intervening ruling in Davis that makes it necessary now to decide if attempted Hobbs Act robbery satisfies the force clause under § 924(c)(3)(A).
As the words of the force clause make clear, a court must focus on the legal elements of the predicate crime rather than on the details or the risk of any particular defendant's underlying conduct. In other words, the statute instructs courts to decide if the predicate crime has "as an element" any of the following three characteristics: "the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another." 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A).
This formalistic focus on the legal elements of a crime is in keeping with the so-called "categorical approach" that courts routinely follow when deciding if any particular crime qualifies for federal law purposes as a crime of violence. "Under the categorical approach, we compare the elements of the offense ... to the statutory definition of ‘crime of violence’ (here, § 924(c) ), without regard to the particular facts of the defendant's offense conduct." Gray v. United States , 980 F.3d 264, 265–66 (2d Cir. 2020) (per curiam ).
The federal Hobbs Act generally criminalizes robberies that affect interstate commerce. It provides in relevant part that "[w]hoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both." 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) (emphasis added). The Act in turn defines the term "robbery" to mean "the unlawful taking or obtaining of personal property from the person or in the presence of another, against his will, by means of actual or threatened force, or violence, or fear of injury, immediate or future, to his person or property, or property in his custody or possession, or the person or property of a relative or member of his family or of anyone in his company at the time of the taking or obtaining." 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(1).3
Applying the elements-based categorical approach as outlined above, the Second Circuit has held that a substantive Hobbs Act robbery categorically constitutes a crime of violence under the force clause of § 924(c)(3)(A). See United States v. Hill , 890 F.3d 51, 60 (2d Cir. 2018). By contrast, the Second Circuit has more recently held that a conspiracy to commit a Hobbs Act robbery does not constitute a crime of violence. See United States v. Barrett , 937 F.3d 126, 130 (2d Cir. 2019). The Second Circuit has yet to decide if an attempted Hobbs Act robbery categorically constitutes a crime of violence under the force clause of § 924(c)(3)(A).
Because application of the force clause of § 924(c)(3)(A) requires a focus on the elements of the predicate crime, I must first identify the elements of an attempted Hobbs Act robbery. The Hobbs Act by its terms does not define the elements of an attempted robbery, but the elements of any attempted federal crime have long been understood. "Under federal law, ‘[a] person is guilty of an attempt to commit a crime if he or she (1) had the intent to commit the crime, and (2) engaged in conduct amounting to a "substantial step" towards the commission of the crime.’ " United States v. Thrower , 914 F.3d 770, 776 (2d Cir. 2019) (quoting United States v. Martinez , 775 F.2d 31, 35 (2d Cir. 1985) ).
Therefore, the crime of attempted Hobbs Act robbery has just two elements. The first is a pure mens rea element: that the defendant acted with the same mental state as required to commit a substantive Hobbs Act robbery (namely, that the defendant intended to engage in a robbery). The second is an actus reus element: that the defendant took a "substantial step" toward committing the intended robbery. As the Second Circuit has recently observed, "a crime's elements serve to give notice of both the actus reus proscribed by a particular crime and the mens rea required for culpability." United States v. Ojeda , 951 F.3d 66, 75 (2d Cir. 2020).
So the question here is whether either one of these two elements of an attempted Hobbs Act robbery necessarily includes "the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force" as is required to qualify as a "crime of violence" under the force clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A). The answer is quite clearly no.
Let's start with the mens rea element: that the defendant intended to commit a Hobbs Act robbery. This mens rea element is a mismatch for the actus reus requirement imposed under § 924(c)(3)(A) —that is, "the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another." Although a use, attempt to use, or threat to use force presupposes an intention to do so, see United States v. Castleman , 572 U.S. 157, 170-71, 134 S.Ct. 1405, 188 L.Ed.2d 426 (2014), such intent alone does not also establish an actual use, attempted use, or threatened use of force.
Congress could have written the force clause to say that...
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...he attempts a crime that, if completed would be violent." (internal citation omitted)); United States v. Halliday , No. 3:17-CR-00267 (JAM), 511 F. Supp. 3d 205, 212–13 (D. Conn. Jan. 4, 2021) (permitting defendant to withdraw a U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(iii) guilty plea because attempted Hobbs......