Chauncey Williams v. United States ( 2019 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEC 24 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
CHAUNCEY L. WILLIAMS, No. 17-35279
Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. Nos. 3:16-cv-05559-BHS
3:11-cr-05505-BHS-1
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, MEMORANDUM*
Respondent-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Washington
Benjamin H. Settle, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted December 10, 2019
Seattle, Washington
Before: McKEOWN and CHRISTEN, Circuit Judges, and HARPOOL,** District
Judge.
Chauncey Williams appeals the district court’s denial of his habeas petition
under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, in which he sought to vacate his 18 U.S.C.
§ 924(c)(1)(A)(ii) conviction for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable M. Douglas Harpool, United States District Judge for
the Western District of Missouri, sitting by designation.
of violence. The parties are familiar with the facts, so we need not repeat them
here. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2253, and we deny the petition.
We review de novo the denial of a § 2255 motion. United States v. Chacon-
Palomares, 208 F.3d 1157, 1158 (9th Cir. 2000). The burden is on Williams to
establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, that his “sentence was imposed in
violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a).
Williams argues his conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) is unconstitutional
after Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), which invalidated the
residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutionally vague.
Even assuming, without deciding, that Williams can overcome the procedural
hurdles implicated by United States v. Blackstone, 903 F.3d 1020, 1026-28
(9th Cir. 2018), Williams’s petition fails on its merits.
The question is whether Williams’s armed postal robbery conviction under
18 U.S.C. § 2114(a) was categorized as a crime of violence under the residual
clause or the elements clause of § 924(c)(3). To assist in this inquiry, we apply a
modified categorical approach. “The modified categorical approach allows courts
to look beyond the statutory text to a limited set of documents to determine the
elements of the . . . offense of which the defendant was convicted when some
alternative elements of the . . . crime would match the federal, generic crime, and
other alternative elements would not.” Rendon v. Holder, 764 F.3d 1077, 1083 (9th
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Cir. 2014). We may apply the modified categorical approach only where a statute
has a divisible structure. Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2249 (2016). A
statute is divisible when it contains “multiple, alternative elements of functionally
separate crimes,” as opposed to alternative means of committing the same crime.
Rendon, 764 F.3d at 1084-85. The divisibility of a statute can generally be
determined on its face. Mathis, 136 S. Ct. at 2256.
The parties agree § 2114(a) is divisible into a standard offense and an
aggravated offense under Mathis. We conclude the aggravated offense of §
2114(a) is further divisible into three specific aggravated offenses: wounding a
person having custody of United States mail, money, or other property of the
United States; placing that person’s life in jeopardy by use of a dangerous weapon;
and committing the crime after a prior
§ 2114(a) conviction. 18 U.S.C. § 2114(a).
Because the statute is divisible, we turn to the Shepard documents to
determine the specific offense of Williams’s conviction. See generally United
States v. Shelby, 939 F.3d 975, 980 (9th Cir. 2019). The jury instructions make
clear Williams was convicted under the “life in jeopardy” subclause because
“while committing the robbery, [Williams] jeopardized the life of the person
described in the indictment by using a dangerous weapon.”
We next consider whether that subclause qualifies as a crime of violence
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under the elements clause of § 924(c)(3). Under the elements clause, a “crime of
violence” is defined as a felony that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or
threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.” 18
U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A).
Physical force, as it appears in the similarly-worded elements clause of the
Armed Career Criminal Act, means “violent physical force—‘that is, force capable
of causing physical pain or injury to another person.’” United States v. Gutierrez,
876 F.3d 1254, 1256 (9th Cir. 2017) (quoting Curtis Johnson v. United States, 559
U.S. 133, 140 (2010)). The force required for common law robbery meets this
definition. Stokeling v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 544, 551 (2019). At common law,
“[i]f an act physically overcame a victim’s resistance, ‘however slight’ that
resistance might be, it necessarily constituted violence,” and hence amounted to
robbery. Id. at 550 (citation omitted).
Armed postal robbery as committed under the life in jeopardy subclause is a
crime of violence. The subclause expressly requires the use of a dangerous weapon
that “puts [the victim’s] life in jeopardy.” § 2114(a). We have recognized that
“[p]utting life in jeopardy . . . requires a holdup involving the use of a dangerous
weapon actually so used during the robbery that the life of the person being robbed
is placed in an objective state of danger.” United States v. Coulter, 474 F.2d 1004,
1005 (9th Cir. 1973) (internal quotation omitted). Using a firearm or other deadly
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weapon to place a victim’s life in danger during a robbery involves a threatened
use of physical force within the meaning of Curtis Johnson.
Because Williams’s conviction under § 2114(a) constitutes a crime of
violence under the elements clause of § 924(c)(3), both Johnson and United States
v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 2319 (2019), are inapplicable to Williams’s conviction and do
not provide a remedy.
PETITION DENIED.
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