Firearms – Sentencing – ACCA

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U.S. Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Firearms – Sentencing – ACCA

Where state court records do not show that the defendant was subject to a ten-year sentence on a drug conviction, it cannot be used to find the defendant an armed career criminal.

“But the Supreme Court’s decision in Rodriquez adds an evidentiary hurdle to our holding in Perkins. Rodriquez requires the government to provide evidence from the record that the defendant was in fact subject to the enhanced recidivist penalties that could elevate his sentence past the ten-year mark. 553 U.S. at 388–89. In imposing this additional requirement, the Supreme Court eliminated the possibility of a hypothetical approach in which a court could assume that a recidivist enhancement applied merely because it could apply. Therefore, under Rodriquez, if state court records do not demonstrate that Lockett actually faced the possibility of a recidivist enhancement, the 1990 convictions cannot be used as qualifying offenses under the ACCA.”

Reversed and Remanded.

13-2200 U.S. v. Lockett

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Feinerman, J., Bauer, J.

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