Williams v. United States, 19-10308

• Decision Date: 13 January 2021
• Docket Number: No. 19-10308,19-10308
• Parties: Jerome WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

985 F.3d 813

Jerome WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 19-10308

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

January 13, 2021

Tobie John Smith, Kevin L. Butler, Allison Case, Federal Public Defender, BIRMINGHAM, AL, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Michael B. Billingsley, U.S. Attorney Service - Northern District of Alabama, U.S. Attorney's Office, BIRMINGHAM, AL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before JORDAN, LAGOA, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.

BRASHER, Circuit Judge:

This appeal comes to us from a post-judgment challenge to a 1998 federal sentence. The question on appeal is under what circumstances the legal landscape at the time of a defendant's sentencing can establish, as a matter of historical fact, that the sentencing court relied on the unconstitutionally vague residual clause of the Armed Career Criminals Act ("ACCA") to classify a prior felony as violent and, so, to increase the defendant's statutory sentencing range. After the Supreme Court ruled that the ACCA's residual clause is unconstitutionally vague and held that its ruling was retroactive to collateral review, Jerome Williams filed a " Johnson motion" challenging his sentence for bank robbery. He argued that case law at the time of his sentencing established that the sentencing court relied on the residual clause alone to increase his statutory range of sentences and not on one of the ACCA's other clauses left unaffected by the Supreme Court's ruling. The district court denied this motion, concluding that Williams had not met his burden of proof to establish that the unconstitutionally vague residual clause affected his sentence. We affirm.

I.

In 1998, Williams was convicted of robbing a bank while carrying a firearm. The ACCA provides a statutory sentencing enhancement for certain previously convicted felons who use a firearm. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). To qualify for this enhancement, a defendant must have committed three previous "violent" felonies as defined by one of the ACCA's clauses. The sentencing court found that Williams had committed the following "violent" felonies: Kentucky first-degree robbery, Georgia armed robbery, and federal kidnapping. As to the federal kidnapping conviction, the presentence report recounted that Williams "accosted" a man at a Kentucky motel, threatened him with a revolver, and demanded a ride to Tennessee. When they reached Knoxville, the victim leapt from the car and signaled a police officer, who promptly arrested Williams. Williams was convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1), which provides that a person commits a federal kidnapping when he "unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person, except in the case of a minor by the parent thereof," and "the person is willfully transported in interstate or foreign commerce."

At the sentencing hearing on his bank robbery conviction, Williams did not object to the application of the ACCA, and the sentencing court never addressed why any of his previous felonies counted as violent. Applying the ACCA, the sentencing court sentenced Williams to concurrent terms of 300 months of imprisonment for bank robbery and 327 months for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, with a consecutive term of 60 months for carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

After serving about 220 months of his sentence, Williams moved for leave to file his third motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. We granted him leave, and he filed the motion underlying this appeal. He did not dispute that the two robbery convictions were violent felonies, but he did argue that the sentencing court had improperly found his federal kidnapping conviction to be a "violent felony" under the "residual clause" of the ACCA. Because the Supreme Court had held this clause unconstitutional and had made its ruling retroactive in Johnson v. United States , 576 U.S. 591, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 192 L.Ed.2d 569 (2015), and Welch v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S.Ct. 1257, 194 L.Ed.2d 387 (2016), respectively, Williams argued that he was due to be resentenced. Williams did not support his motion with case-specific evidence that the "residual clause" affected his sentence. Instead, he argued only that case law at the time of his sentencing established that more likely than not the sentencing court relied on the residual clause.

After reviewing the then-existing legal landscape, the district court denied Williams's motion. The same judge who had sentenced Williams nearly two decades ago found that the sentencing record failed to illuminate which clause of the ACCA he had relied on to qualify the kidnapping conviction as a violent felony. As for the then-existing legal landscape, the district court concluded it was, at best, unclear which clause or clauses the sentencing court would have relied on. Instead, persuasive authority supported a sentence under either or both the residual and elements clauses. Because Williams did not prove the sentencing court more likely than not relied on only the residual clause to enhance his sentence, the district court denied his motion.

We granted Williams a certificate of appealability on the question whether the district court erred in concluding that he had not made the requisite showing under Beeman v. United States , 871 F.3d 1215 (11th Cir. 2017), as to his kidnapping conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 1201. We have jurisdiction to decide this question under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 28 U.S.C. § 2253.

II.

This appeal raises a mixed question of law and fact. Mixed questions of law and fact are "questions in which the historical facts are admitted or established, the rule of law is undisputed, and the issue is whether the facts satisfy the statutory standard, or to put it another way, whether the rule of law as applied to the established facts is or is not violated." Lincoln v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga. , 697 F.2d 928, 940 n.15 (11th Cir. 1983) (quoting Pullman-Standard v. Swint , 456 U.S. 273, 289 n.19, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982) ). Our review of a mixed question of law and fact depends "on whether answering it entails primarily legal or factual work." U.S. Bank N.A. v. Village at Lakeridge, LLC , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S.Ct. 960, 967, 200 L.Ed.2d 218 (2018). We apply de novo review when the question requires a court to "expound on the law, particularly by amplifying or elaborating on a broad legal standard." Id. We apply clear error review when the question requires a court to "marshal and weigh evidence, make credibility judgments, and otherwise address ... ‘multifarious, fleeting, special, narrow facts that utterly resist generalization.’ " Id. (quoting Pierce v. Underwood , 487 U.S. 552, 561–62, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988) ).

A district court may resolve a Johnson motion by making a finding of historical fact that the sentencing court did or did not rely on a specific clause of the ACCA. See Beeman , 871 F.3d at 1224 n.5 ("What we must determine is a historical fact: was [the defendant] in 2009 sentenced solely per the residual clause?"); United States v. Pickett , 916 F.3d 960, 967 (11th Cir. 2019) (vacating and remanding because "[t]he district court obviously is in a better position than we are to evaluate what likely happened ..., especially since we are remanding this case to the very judge who initially sentenced [the defendant]"). We would review such a finding for clear error. But because Williams's Johnson motion relies exclusively on the state of the law in 1998 and the district court resolved it by reference to legal principles alone, the issue before this Court is a mixed question of law and fact that entails primarily legal work. Accordingly, we review this mixed question of law and fact de novo. Our decision to apply a de novo standard of review under the circumstances of this case is consistent with authority from other circuits. See Dimott v. United States , 881 F.3d 232, 236 (1st Cir. 2018) ("We review de novo the district courts’ denials of [the defendants’] habeas petitions" under Johnson .); Golinveaux v. United States , 915 F.3d 564, 568 (8th Cir. 2019) ("Determining the legal environment requires a ‘legal conclusion’ about the controlling law at the time of sentencing," which the court reviews de novo.); United States v. Copeland , 921 F.3d 1233, 1242 (10th Cir. 2019) ("our review of a district court's denial of a [ Section] 2255 Johnson claim is de novo[,] unless the court conducted an evidentiary hearing from which it made findings").

III.

Before we address the specifics of Williams's argument, a little background is necessary. The ACCA defines the kind of crimes that count as a "violent felony" in three ways. First, a felony may qualify as violent under the elements clause of the ACCA because it "has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another." 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i). Second, a felony may qualify as violent under the enumerated-offenses clause of the ACCA because it is for "burglary, arson, or extortion, [or] involves use of explosives." Id. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). Third, a felony may qualify as violent under the residual clause of the ACCA because it "otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another." Id.

The Supreme Court held in Johnson that the residual clause is unconstitutionally vague such that "imposing an increased sentence under the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act violates the Constitution's guarantee of due process." Johnson , 576 U.S. at 606, 135 S.Ct. 2551. But the Court emphasized that its "decision does not call into question application of the Act to the four enumerated offenses, or the remainder of the Act's definition of a violent felony." Id. The Supreme Court made its decision in Johnson retroactive in Welch , which means the Court's decision in Johns...