United States v. Johnson

227 F. Supp. 3d 1078, 2016 WL 7666523, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185167
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedDecember 16, 2016
DocketCase No. 92-cr-00497-EMC-1
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 227 F. Supp. 3d 1078 (United States v. Johnson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Johnson, 227 F. Supp. 3d 1078, 2016 WL 7666523, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185167 (N.D. Cal. 2016).

Opinion

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANT’S AMENDED MOTION TO VACATE; AND STAYING RELIEF

Docket No. 483

EDWARD M. CHEN, United States District Judge

Defendant Marvin Johnson has filed a motion to vacate his sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Having considered the parties’ briefs and accompanying submissions, as well as all other evidence of record, the Court hereby GRANTS Mr. Johnson’s motion but STAYS the relief pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Lynch v. Dimaya, No. 15-1498, 2016 U.S. LEXIS 4461 (granting petition for writ of certiora-ri).

I. FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Mr. Johnson was arrested in 1992 in connection with drug trafficking, firearm, and arson charges. After a jury trial, he was convicted on sixteen counts, including multiple counts for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which penalizes use of a destructive device during a drug trafficking crime or during a crime of violence. For the § 924(c) count related to a drug trafficking crime (Count 3), Mr. Johnson received a sentence of 30 years. For the § 924(c) counts related to the crime of violence of arson (Counts 10,15, and 21), Mr. Johnson received three life sentences without release. For the § 924(c) count related to the crime of violence of witness tampering (Count 23), Mr. Johnson received a sentence of 20 years. All these sentences are to be served concurrently.

Mr. Johnson’s judgment was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit. See United States v. Johnson, 51 F.3d 283 (9th Cir. 1995). Approximately twenty years later, the Supreme Court issued its decision Johnson v. United States, — U.S. —, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 192 L.Ed.2d 569 (2015) (hereinafter Johnson II). (The criminal defendant in Johnson II is unrelated to Mr. Johnson.) In Johnson II, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of a provision of the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”)—more specifically, the provision under which a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm faces more severe punishment if he has three of more previous convictions for a “violent felony.” The ACCA defined “violent felony” in two ways:

“any crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year ... that—
“(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another; or
“(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.”

Id. at 2555-56 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B) (emphasis added)). “The [1081]*1081closing words ..., italicized above,” are known as the ACCA’s “residual clause.” Id. at 2556.

Overruling James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 127 S.Ct. 1586, 167 L.Ed.2d 532 (2007), and Sykes v. United States, 564 U.S. 1, 131 S.Ct. 2267, 180 L.Ed.2d 60 (2011), the Johnson II Court held that the residual clause of the ACCA is unconstitutionally vague. As explained by the Court:

[T]he [ACCA] requires courts to use a framework known as the categorical approach when deciding whether an offense “is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” Under the categorical approach, a court assesses whether a crime qualifies as a violent felony “in terms of how the law defines the offense and not in terms of how an individual offender might have committed it on a particular occasion.” Deciding whether the residual clause covers a crime thus requires a court to picture the kind of conduct that the crime involves in “the ordinary case,” and to judge whether that abstraction presents a serious potential risk of physical injury....
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Two features of the residual clause conspire to make it unconstitutionally vague. In the first place, the residual clause leaves grave uncertainty about how to estimate the risk posed by a crime. It ties the judicial assessment of risk to a judicially imagined “ordinary case” of a crime, not to real-world facts or statutory elements. How does one go about deciding what kind of conduct the “ordinary case” of a crime involves? ....
At the same time, the residual clause leaves uncertainty about how much risk it takes for a crime to qualify as a violent felony. It is one thing to apply an imprecise “serious potential risk” standard to real-world facts; it is quite another to apply it to a judge-imagined abstraction.... By combining indeterminacy about how to measure the risk posed by a crime with indeterminacy about how much risk it takes for the crime to qualify as a violent felony, the residual clause produces more unpredictability and arbitrariness than the Due Process Clause tolerates.

Id. at 2557-58.

Several months after Johnson II was decided, the Ninth Circuit issued its decision Dimaya v. Lynch, 803 F.3d 1110 (9th Cir. 2015). In Dimaya, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) charged the petitioner with being removable because he had been convicted of a “crime of violence” for which the term of imprisonment was at least one year. The applicable definition for “crime of violence” was found in 18 U.S.C. § 16:

“(a) any offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or
“(b) any other offense that is a felony and 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.”

Id. at 1112 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 16).

The petitioner argued that, based on Johnson II, § 16(b)—which used language similar to that in the ACCA’s residual clause—was unconstitutionally vague. The Ninth Circuit agreed:

The language in ACCA that Johnson [II] held unconstitutional is simi[1082]*1082lar.... Importantly, both the provision at issue here [§ 16(b)] and ACCA’s residual clause are subject to the same mode of analysis. Both are subject to the categorical approach, which demands that courts “look to the elements and the nature of the offense of conviction, rather than to the particular facts relating to. the petitioner’s crime.

Id. at 1115. The court continued: “§ 16(b) is subject to identical unpredictability and arbitrariness as ACCA’s residual clause.” Id. (emphasis added).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
227 F. Supp. 3d 1078, 2016 WL 7666523, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 185167, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-johnson-cand-2016.