United States v. Patterson
involves the defendant’s direct appeal and the government’s cross-appeal of the
district court’s sentencing decision.
Mr. Patterson was convicted in Ohio
state court of receiving stolen property and a traffic offense. The same
incident also resulted in a federal prosecution and conviction for being a
felon in possession of a firearm. The district court denied Mr. Patterson’s
motion to dismiss the firearm charge on double jeopardy grounds. The district
court, however, counted Mr. Patterson’s prior Ohio convictions for aggravated
robbery as crimes of violence under the Guidelines but not as violent felonies under
the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). The Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of
the motion to dismiss but reversed the district court’s sentencing decision
because the prior convictions met the requirements of the Guidelines and the ACCA.
The Sixth Circuit first noted that
dual prosecutions do not constitute double jeopardy because Ohio and the United
States are separate sovereigns and may prosecute a person under their separate
legal systems. Mr. Patterson, however, contended that the government acted in
“bad faith” because it should have notified him of its intention to file
federal charges when he was considering the State’s plea offer. The Sixth
Circuit explained that the record did not show that there was any federal
collaboration in the state prosecution. The federal government was not involved
in the state plea negotiations and the State did not promise Mr. Patterson that
he would not be subject to a federal prosecution. In the court’s view, there
was no evidence of bad faith. The court, however, did not reject Mr. Patterson’s
bad faith argument out of hand and the implication is that it could work in a different
situation.
The “heart” of the case, however, was
whether Mr. Patterson’s prior aggravated robbery convictions were predicate
offenses under the ACCA. The Sixth Circuit’s analysis focused on the ACCA’s
“elements clause” which describes a “violent felony” as an offense that “has as
an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against
the person of another.” See 18 U.S.C.
§ 924(e)(2)(B)(i). Using the categorical approach to determine whether the
“elements clause” encompassed aggravated robbery, the Sixth Circuit looked at
the statutory definition of the offense rather than the underlying facts. In
response to one of Mr. Patterson’s arguments, the court said it did not matter
that the Ohio statute did not include an element that matched the ACCA’s
elements clause word for word as long as the offense at issue required the
State to prove everything included in the elements clause.
Mr. Patterson also argued that Ohio
statute did not expressly require the use of force or that the use of a deadly
weapon must be against another’s person. The Sixth Circuit, however, determined
that the Ohio Supreme Court construed the statute as containing those elements.
As to Mr. Patterson’s argument that the statute would permit a conviction of
someone who robs a store while just happening to be carrying a weapon openly
(as Ohio law allows), the court said that as long as there was no reason to
think that the statute could be applied to someone who used “minimal actual
force” or did not threaten serious physical force against others, then “there
is every reason to treat it as a crime of violence.”
The Sixth Circuit concluded from the language
of the Ohio statute and state court decisions interpreting it that aggravated
robbery fell within the scope of the elements clause and was therefore a
violent felony. Thus, Mr. Patterson should have been sentenced as an armed
career criminal.
Mr. Patterson raised another issue
regarding his sentence. He contended that the district court committed error by
treating his conviction for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon as a crime
of violence when it calculated the base offense level under the Guidelines. The
Sixth Circuit noted that it used authority interpreting the ACCA’s elements
clause to interpret “the same phrase in the Guidelines.” That led the court to
conclude that the offense qualified as a crime of violence under the Guidelines.
The court also cited Beckles v. United
States, 137 S.Ct. 886 (2017) as a separate reason to reject Mr. Patterson’s
argument because aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon “would have qualified
as a crime of violence under the residual clause, which was still part of the Guidelines”
when he was sentenced.
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