Sentencing — ACCA

Listen to this article

U.S. Supreme Court

Criminal

Sentencing — ACCA

The modified categorical approach under the Armed Career Criminal Act does not apply to statutes that contain a single, indivisible set of elements.

This Court’s caselaw all but resolves this case. In Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, and Shepard v. United States, 544 U. S. 13, the Court approved the use of a modified categorical approach in a “narrow range of cases” in which a divisible statute, listing potential offense elements in the alternative, renders opaque which element played a part in the defendant’s conviction. Because a sentencing court cannot tell, simply by looking at a divisible statute, which version of the offense a defendant was convicted of, the court is permitted to consult extra-statutory documents—but only to assess whether the defendant was convicted of the particular “statutory definition” that corresponds to the generic offense. Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U. S. 29, and Johnson v. United States, 559 U. S. 133, also emphasized this elements-based rationale for the modified categorical approach. That approach plays no role here, where the dispute does not concern alternative elements but a simple discrepancy between generic burglary and §459.

Because generic unlawful entry is not an element, or an alternative element of, §459, a conviction under that statute is never for generic burglary. Descamps’ ACCA enhancement was therefore improper.

466 Fed. Appx. 563, reversed.

11-9540 Descamps v. U.S.

Kagan, J.; Kennedy, J., concurring; Thomas, J., concurring; Alito, J., dissenting.