Wooden v. United States
| Decision Date | 07 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-5279 |
| Parties | WOODEN v. UNITED STATES |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
A jury convicted William Dale Wooden of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(g). The Government asked the District Court to sentence Wooden under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). ACCA mandates a 15-year minimum penalty for §922 (g) offenders with at least three prior convictions for specified felonies "committed on occasions different from one another." §924(e)(1). Wooden's relevant criminal record included ten burglary convictions arising out of a single criminal episode in 1997, during which Wooden had unlawfully entered a one-building storage facility and stolen items from ten different storage units. Prosecutors indicted Wooden on ten counts of burglary-one for each storage unit-and Wooden pleaded guilty to all counts. Years later, at Wooden's sentencing hearing on his §922(g) conviction, the District Court applied ACCAs penalty enhancement in accordance with the Government's view that Wooden had commenced a new "occasion" of criminal activity each time he left one storage unit and entered another. The resulting sentence was almost sixteen years much higher than the statutory maximum for Wooden's crime absent such an enhancement. The Sixth Circuit affirmed reasoning that ACCAs occasions clause is satisfied whenever crimes take place at different moments in time-that is sequentially rather than simultaneously.
Held: Wooden's ten burglary offenses arising from a single criminal episode did not occur on different "occasions" and thus count as only one prior conviction for purposes of ACCA. Pp. 4-15.
(a) Wooden's successive burglaries occurred on one "occasion" under a natural construction of that term. An ordinary person using language in its normal way would describe Wooden's entries into the storage units as happening on a single occasion, rather than on ten "occasions different from one another." §924(e)(1). The Government's contention that an "occasion" ends at the discrete moment when an offense's elements are established contravenes the ordinary usage of the word. An occasion may itself encompass multiple, temporally distinct activities. For example, the occasion of a wedding may include a ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, and dancing. Those activities need not- and often do not-occur simultaneously; yet they nevertheless compose one occasion. The same is true for sequential criminal offenses. Indeed, the Court has often used the word "occasion" to encompass multiple, temporally discrete offenses. See, e.g., United States v. Bryant, 579 U.S. 140, 151. The Government's contrary view-that each sequential offense forms its own "occasion"-can make someone a career offender in the space of a minute. But that view goes far toward collapsing ACCA's two separate statutory conditions for imposing an enhanced penalty on a §922(g) offender. ACCA's enhancement kicks in only if (1) the offender has three previous convictions for specified felonies; and (2) those predicate felonies were committed on "occasions different from one another." §924(e)(1). The Government's approach would largely collapse the two conditions and give ACCA's three-occasions requirement no work to do. Pp. 5-7.
(b) Given what "occasion" ordinarily means, whether criminal activities occurred on one occasion or different occasions requires a multi-factored inquiry that may depend on a range of circumstances, including timing, location, and the character and relationship of the offenses. For the most part, the determination will be straightforward and intuitive. In many cases, a single factor-especially of time or place-can decisively differentiate occasions. In hard cases, the inquiry may involve keeping an eye on ACCA's history and purpose. Here, every relevant consideration shows that Wooden burglarized ten storage units on a single occasion. Indeed it was because the burglaries "ar[ose] from the same conduct" that Georgia law required the prosecutor to charge all ten in a single indictment. Ga. Code Ann. §16-1-7(b). Pp. 8-9.
(c) Statutory history and purpose confirm the Court's view of the occasions clause's meaning, as well as the Court's conclusion that Wooden is not a career offender. Congress added the occasions clause only after a court applied ACCA's enhancement to Samuel Petty-an offender who, much like Wooden, was convicted of multiple counts of robbery for one night in one restaurant. See United States v. Petty, 798 F.2d 1157. Petty sought review in this Court, and the Solicitor General confessed error, stating that ACCA should not be construed to reach multiple felony convictions arising out of a single criminal episode. Shortly thereafter, Congress amended ACCA to require that the requisite offenses occur on "occasions different from one another." Minor and Technical Criminal Law Amendments Act of 1988, §7056, 102 Stat. 4402. That statutory change, rejecting the original outcome in Petty in light of the Solicitor General's confession of error, is at odds with the Government's current view of the occasions clause. The Government attempts to distinguish the facts of Petty, but nothing about the Solicitor General's confession of error, or Congress's amendment of ACCA, suggests any concern for whether an offender's crimes were committed simultaneously or sequentially. Instead, each was based on another idea-that a person who has robbed a restaurant, and done nothing else, is not a career offender. The history of the occasions clause thus aligns with what this Court has always recognized as ACCA's purpose: to address the "special danger" posed by the eponymous "armed career criminal." Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137, 146. Wooden's burglary of a single storage facility does not suggest that kind of danger, any more than Petty's robbery of a single restaurant did. Pp. 10-14.
945 F.3d 498, reversed.
So-TOMAYOR, J., filed a concurring opinion. KAVANAUGH, J., filed a concurring opinion. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which THOMAS, J., joined. GORSUCH, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to Parts II, III, and IV.
OPINION
In the course of one evening, William Dale Wooden burglarized ten units in a single storage facility. He later pleaded guilty, for that night's work, to ten counts of burglary-one for each storage unit he had entered. Some two decades later, the courts below concluded that those convictions were enough to subject Wooden to enhanced criminal penalties under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). That statute mandates a 15-year minimum sentence for unlawful gun possession when the offender has three or more prior convictions for violent felonies like burglary "committed on occasions different from one another." 18 U.S.C. §924(e)(1). The question presented is whether Wooden's prior convictions were for offenses occurring on different occasions, as the lower courts held, because the burglary of each unit happened at a distinct point in time, rather than simultaneously. The answer is no. Convictions arising from a single criminal episode, in the way Wooden's did, can count only once under ACCA.
Begin in 1997, when Wooden and three confederates unlawfully entered a one-building storage facility at 100 Williams Road in Dalton, Georgia, next door to Wooden's home. The burglars proceeded from unit to unit within the facility "crushing the interior drywall" between them. App. 32 (indictment); see Addendum to Brief for Petitioner 6a (statement of Assistant District Attorney at plea hearing) ("[O]nce they made entry" into the facility, they "burrowed through from . . . unit to unit"). The men stole items from, all told, ten different storage units. So Georgia prosecutors charged them with ten counts of burglary-though, as state law prescribes, in a single indictment. See Ga. Code Ann. §16-1-7(b) (1996) (requiring "crimes arising from the same conduct" to be prosecuted together). Wooden pleaded guilty to all counts. The judge sentenced him to eight years' imprisonment for each conviction, with the ten terms to run concurrently.
Fast forward now to a cold November morning in 2014, when Wooden responded to a police officer's knock on his door. The officer asked to speak with Wooden's wife. And noting the chill in the air, the officer asked if he could step inside, to stay warm. Wooden agreed. But his good deed did not go unpunished. Once admitted to the house, the officer spotted several guns. Knowing that Wooden was a felon, the officer placed him under arrest. A jury later convicted him for being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(g).
The penalty for that crime varies significantly depending on whether ACCA applies. Putting ACCA aside, the maximum sentence for violating §922(g) is ten years in prison. See §924(a)(2). But ACCA mandates a minimum sentence of fifteen years if the §922(g) offender has three prior convictions for "violent felon[ies]" (like burglary) or "serious drug offense[s]" that were "committed on occasions different from one another." §924(e)(1). In Wooden's own case, the record reveals the discrepancy as especially stark. Before the Government decided to seek an ACCA enhancement, its Probation Office recommended a sentence of 21 to 27 months. See App. 38-39, 42. The ACCA minimum sentence is about 13 years longer.
The District...
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