United States v. Garcia

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Defendant-appellant Phillip Garcia pled guilty to one count of possessing a firearm after having been convicted of a felony. He moved to withdraw his guilty plea, but the judge denied the motion. His crime carried a prison term of up to 10 years, but because he had three or more prior “violent felony” convictions, the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984 (ACCA) increased his punishment range to a mandatory 15 years to life. In 2008, the judge sentenced him to a prison term of 188 months. He appealed; the Tenth Circuit affirmed. In 2015, the Supreme Court decided Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015) (Johnson II). Under the ACCA, to fall within the definition of a violent felony, a prior conviction must be “punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year,” and must satisfy one of three predicates, at issue in this case, the Residual Clause, must "otherwise involve[] conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another." The Supreme Court held because the Residual Clause was unconstitutionally vague, “imposing an increased sentence under the residual clause . . . violates the Constitution’s guarantee of due process.” Garcia filed a section 2255 motion contending his sentence was unconstitutional under Johnson II. He claimed one of his three predicate convictions, possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner, only qualified as a violent felony under the then defunct Residual Clause. The government argued Garcia's robbery conviction qualified as a violent felony under the Elements Clause and was an apt substitution for the conviction for unlawful weapon possession. Before the judge decided Garcia’s 2255 motion, the government changed course, now contending the robbery conviction did not qualify as a violent felony under the ACCA’s Elements Clause after all. On the same day the district court entered its Memorandum Opinion and Order, the government filed a supplemental brief in which it again reversed course; the government’s second revised position was that “New Mexico robbery in the third degree is indeed a qualifying violent felony under the ‘force clause’ [or “Elements Clause”]." The judge denied the 2255 motion. Agreeing with the district court's d View "United States v. Garcia" on Justia Law