United States v. Michael Herrold

883 F.3d 517
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 20, 2018
Docket14-11317
StatusPublished
Cited by87 cases

This text of 883 F.3d 517 (United States v. Michael Herrold) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Michael Herrold, 883 F.3d 517 (5th Cir. 2018).

Opinion

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

Three decades ago, Congress set the courts upon a new course for the sentencing of federal defendants, moving away from a long-in-place system that gave wide discretion to federal judges to impose sentences from nigh no prison time to effective life sentences.

But this discretion was not so wide in practice as in appearance-the judge's sentence gave way when the prisoner left the court for prison. The total time served by the prisoner was on his arrival determined in the main by a parole commission. The commission determined release dates, and in a rough and crude way-relative to the work of the Sentencing Commission-anticipated the system now in place by using a scoring system that looked in part to a defendant's criminal history. In response to charges from the Left of disparate and from the Right of anemic sentencing, and thus with the support of both ends of the political spectrum, Congress shifted the focus to a defendant's individual circumstances on the one hand and mandatory minimum sentences tailored to particular crimes on the other. With much work from its newly erected Sentencing Commission, nourished by reflection, essential empirical study, and judges tasked with applying its regulations, this reform effort appears to now be understood by bench and bar, enjoying a measure of well-earned credibility. Yet its relatively calibrated system of adjustments struggles with rifle-shot statutory efforts deploying an indeterminate calculus for identification of repetitive, sentence-enhancing conduct that add on to the sentence produced by the guidelines, such as the Armed Career Criminal Act. In setting a federal criminal sentence the district judge looks, in part, to both the number and type of a defendant's prior convictions, a task complicated by the statute's effort to draw on criminal conduct bearing differing labels and boundaries set by the various states. Today, we continue to refine our efforts.

In this case, we consider questions posed by the use of Texas's burglary statute, Texas Penal Code § 30.02, to enhance a federal sentence. First, we confront whether two provisions of the statute, Texas Penal Code §§ 30.02(a)(1) and (3), are indivisible for the purposes of categorical analysis. Second, we consider whether either of these two provisions is broader than the federal generic definition of burglary encoded in the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924 (e)(1). We answer each of these questions in the affirmative, and VACATE the appellant's sentence and REMAND for resentencing consistent with this decision.

On November 5, 2012, Dallas police officers stopped Michael Herrold for failing to signal a right turn. An officer approaching his car saw a handgun on the floor and arrested him. Herrold pled guilty to possession of a firearm by a former felon. 1 This latest conviction came on top of a series of past felonies, including three convictions for Texas offenses that his PSR listed as making him eligible for the sentence enhancement imposed by the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA") 2 : (1) unlawful possession of LSD with intent to distribute; (2) burglary of a building; and (3) burglary of a habitation. Herrold argued that none of these offenses qualified as ACCA-predicate offenses, such that a sentence enhancement was therefore improper. The trial judge disagreed; he adopted the recommendation of the PSR and sentenced Herrold to 211 months in prison, including the ACCA enhancement. The judge observed, however, that Herrold had made "forceful arguments" that the enhancement should not apply, and he requested guidance from our court on the question. Without the enhancement, Herrold faces a statutory maximum of ten years 3 -the enhancement added at least 91 months to his sentence and subjected him to a statutory minimum of fifteen years. 4

We considered Herrold's arguments on direct appeal and affirmed his sentence on the basis of circuit precedent. 5 The Supreme Court vacated our judgment and remanded for renewed consideration in light of Mathis v. United States , --- U.S. ----, 136 S.Ct. 2243 , 195 L.Ed.2d 604 (2016). 6 On remand, Herrold argued that Mathis forecloses the possibility that his two Texas burglary convictions can serve as ACCA predicates. 7 We affirmed his sentence once again, this time on the basis of an earlier post- Mathis decision, United States v. Uribe , 838 F.3d 667 (5th Cir. 2016). 8 We now reconsider this argument en banc and, in doing so, revisit Uribe and its progeny as well.

I.

The ACCA enhances the sentences of defendants with at least three previous convictions for certain crimes. Not all convictions trigger the enhancement-the ACCA specifies that a previous conviction must be for a "violent felony" or a "serious drug offense" for it to count as an ACCA predicate. 9 "Violent felony," the sole category under which Herrold's burglary convictions could plausibly fall, is defined in part by reference to other crimes, and the ACCA tells us that "burglary, arson, [and] extortion" fit the bill. 10

That said, "burglary" is confined to a federal definition of "generic burglary" unbound by a state's decision to label criminal conduct by that term. 11 The fact that two of Herrold's convictions arose under a provision of Texas's burglary statute, Texas Penal Code § 30.02(a)(1), is therefore not dispositive. Labels aside, we must determine whether Texas's burglary statute sweeps more broadly in its application than the generic form of burglary encoded in the ACCA. Only then may we decide whether Herrold's convictions qualify as "violent felonies" that trigger an accompanying federal sentence enhancement.

II.

Texas's burglary statute, Texas Penal Code § 30.02(a), reads:

A person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner, the person:
(1) enters a habitation, or a building (or any portion of a building) not then open to the public, with intent to commit a felony, theft, or an assault; or

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Bluebook (online)
883 F.3d 517, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-michael-herrold-ca5-2018.