Denard Stokeling v. United States

by the Supreme Court of the United States

Note: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

STOKELING v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 17–5554. Argued October 9, 2018–Decided January 15, 2019

Petitioner Stokeling pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm and ammunition after having been convicted of a felony, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(1). Based on Stokeling’s prior criminal history, the probation office recommended the mandatory minimum 15-year prison term that the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) provides for §922(g) violators who have three previous convictions “for a violent felony,” §924(e). As relevant here, Stokeling objected that his prior Florida robbery conviction was not a “violent felony,” which ACCA defines, in relevant part, as “any crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another,” §924(e)(2)(B)(i). The District Court held that Stokeling’s actions during the robbery did not justify an ACCA sentence enhancement, but the Eleventh Circuit reversed.

Held:

1. ACCA’s elements clause encompasses a robbery offense that requires the defendant to overcome the victim’s resistance. Pp. 3–12.

(a) As originally enacted, ACCA prescribed a sentence enhancement for certain individuals with three prior convictions “for robbery or burglary,” 18 U. S. C. App. §1202(a) (1982 ed., Supp. II), and defined robbery as an unlawful taking “by force or violence,” §1202(c)(8)–a clear reference to common-law robbery, which required a level of “force” or “violence” sufficient to overcome the resistance of the victim, however slight. When Congress amended ACCA two years later, it replaced the enumerated crimes with the elements clause, an expanded enumerated offenses clause, and the now-defunct residual clause. The new elements clause extended ACCA to cover any offense that has as an element “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force,” §924(e)(2)(B)(i) (emphasis added). By replacing robbery with a clause that has “force” as its touchstone, Congress retained the same common-law definition that undergirded the definition of robbery in the original ACCA. This understanding is buttressed by the then widely accepted definitions of robbery among the States, a significant majority of which defined nonaggravated robbery as requiring a degree of force sufficient only to overcome a victim’s resistance. Under Stokeling’s reading, many of those state robbery statutes would not qualify as ACCA predicates. But federal criminal statutes should not be construed in ways that would render them inapplicable in many States. Pp. 3–8.

(b) This understanding of “physical force” comports with Johnson v. United States, 559 U. S. 133. The force necessary for misdemeanor battery addressed in Johnson does not require resistance or even physical aversion on the part of the victim. Rather, the “slightest offensive touching” would qualify. Id., at 139. It is thus different in kind from the force necessary to overcome resistance by a victim, which is inherently “violent” in the sense contemplated by Johnson and “suggest[s] a degree of power that would not be satisfied by the merest touching.” Ibid. Johnson did not purport, as Stokeling suggests, to establish a force threshold so high as to exclude even robbery from ACCA’s scope. Pp. 8–10.

(c) Stokeling’s suggested definition of “physical force”–force “reasonably expected to cause pain or injury”–is inconsistent with the degree of force necessary to commit robbery at common law. Moreover, the Court declined to adopt this standard in Johnson. Stokeling’s proposal would prove exceedingly difficult to apply, would impose yet another indeterminable line-drawing exercise on the lower courts, and is not supported by United States v. Castleman, 572 U. S. 157. Pp. 10–12.

2. Robbery under Florida law qualifies as an ACCA-predicate offense under the elements clause. The term “physical force” in ACCA encompasses the degree of force necessary to commit common-law robbery. And the Florida Supreme Court has made clear that the robbery statute requires “resistance by the victim that is overcome by the physical force of the offender.” Robinson v. State, 692 So. 2d 883, 886. Pp. 12–13.

684 Fed. Appx. 870, affirmed.

Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Breyer, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg and Kagan, JJ., joined.