Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2019

United States v. Davis

588 U.S. 445 | 139 S. Ct. 2319 | 2019 U.S. LEXIS 4210 | 204 L. Ed. 2d 757

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Takeaway

In short, Davis held that § 924(c)’s residual clause required the same categorical ordinary-case analysis invalidated in Johnson and Dimaya, so the clause is void for vagueness; courts may not save it by rewriting it as a case-specific criminal rule.

Background

Maurice Davis and Andre Glover committed a series of armed gas-station robberies in Texas. A jury convicted them of Hobbs Act robberies, conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery, and related offenses; Davis was also convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The Government additionally obtained two convictions against each man under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), based on their brandishing of a short-barreled shotgun during the robberies and the robbery conspiracy. Those § 924(c) convictions added mandatory consecutive sentences totaling 35 years for each defendant.

Section 924(c) imposes additional penalties for using, carrying, or possessing a firearm in connection with a “crime of violence” or drug-trafficking crime. Its definition of “crime of violence” includes an elements clause, § 924(c)(3)(A), and a residual clause, § 924(c)(3)(B), covering a felony that “by its nature, involves a substantial risk” that physical force may be used during the offense.

The Fifth Circuit initially rejected the defendants’ vagueness challenge. After the Supreme Court remanded in light of Sessions v. Dimaya, however, the Fifth Circuit held § 924(c)(3)(B) unconstitutionally vague. It sustained one § 924(c) conviction based on substantive Hobbs Act robbery under the elements clause, but vacated the conviction based on conspiracy because that predicate depended on the residual clause. The Supreme Court granted review to resolve a circuit conflict over the residual clause’s constitutionality.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether § 924(c)(3)(B) calls for a categorical inquiry into an offense’s ordinary nature or a case-specific inquiry into the defendant’s actual conduct.

Holding

The statute requires the categorical approach, not a case-specific examination of the defendant’s actual conduct.

Reasoning

The Court began with the text. Section 924(c)(3) uses “offense” in both its elements clause and its residual clause. Everyone agreed that “offense” refers to a generic offense in the elements clause, and the ordinary presumption is that the same term has the same meaning throughout the provision. Nothing in the residual clause overcame that presumption.

The phrase “by its nature” confirms the categorical reading. In ordinary usage, an offense’s nature means its normal, inherent, or characteristic features—not the facts of one particular commission. Thus, the clause asks whether the offense ordinarily entails a substantial risk that force will be used, rather than whether these defendants’ particular conduct created such a risk.

The statute’s context reinforced that conclusion. Section 924(c)(3)(B) is materially identical to 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), which Leocal v. Ashcroft had unanimously interpreted to require the categorical approach. Giving identical language in closely related federal criminal statutes radically different meanings would create arbitrary and incoherent results across the criminal code.

The history of the provisions pointed the same way. Congress originally used § 16’s definition of “crime of violence” in § 924(c), and later copied § 16(b)’s residual-clause language nearly word for word into § 924(c)(3)(B). When Congress amended § 924(c) in 1986, it acted against the understanding that § 16(b) used a categorical approach and did not signal an intention to change that method.

A case-specific construction would also substantially undo Congress’s decision to limit § 924(c) predicates to crimes of violence. If juries could consider the manner in which a felony was committed, especially where a firearm was used, many otherwise nonviolent federal felonies could become § 924(c) predicates.

Issue #2

Whether § 924(c)(3)(B), interpreted categorically, is unconstitutionally vague.

Holding

Yes. Section 924(c)(3)(B)’s residual clause is unconstitutionally vague.

Reasoning

The void-for-vagueness doctrine rests on due process and separation-of-powers principles. A criminal law must provide ordinary people fair notice of prohibited conduct, and Congress—not prosecutors, judges, or juries—must define the conduct that carries criminal punishment.

Under the categorical approach, courts must imagine the “ordinary case” of a generic offense and estimate whether that imagined case presents a sufficiently substantial risk that force may be used. Johnson v. United States invalidated a similarly structured residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act, and Sessions v. Dimaya invalidated § 16(b) for the same reason.

The Government conceded that, if § 924(c)(3)(B) requires this categorical ordinary-case inquiry, the clause cannot survive Johnson and Dimaya. Because the Court held that the statute’s text does require that inquiry, the residual clause was invalid.

The Court stressed that its ruling did not disturb the § 924(c) elements clause or the statute’s application to drug-trafficking crimes. Nor did it decide the defendants’ ultimate resentencing; the Fifth Circuit was to address on remand whether they were entitled to full resentencing after the invalid conviction was removed.

Issue #3

Whether constitutional avoidance permits the Court to adopt the Government’s case-specific interpretation to preserve § 924(c)(3)(B).

Holding

No. Constitutional avoidance cannot justify adopting a strained, more expansive reading of a criminal statute to save it from invalidity.

Reasoning

Constitutional avoidance applies when a statute has two fair alternative constructions. The Government’s case-specific reading was not a fair reading in light of the text, context, and history of § 924(c)(3)(B). Courts may not rewrite a statute under the guise of interpretation.

The Government’s proposed reading would expand criminal liability by reaching categorically nonviolent felonies committed in violent ways. The Court found no precedent using avoidance to broaden a criminal statute in that manner.

Using avoidance to impose punishment not clearly authorized by Congress would conflict with fair-notice and separation-of-powers principles. It would also clash with the rule of lenity, which requires unresolved ambiguity about a criminal statute’s reach to be resolved in the defendant’s favor rather than used to enlarge punishment.

Congress remained free to enact a clearly worded, case-specific risk provision, to enumerate qualifying offenses, or to use another constitutional method of defining violent predicates. But selecting among those policy choices is Congress’s task, not the Court’s.

Dissents

Justice Kavanaugh

Reasoning

Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito and by the Chief Justice except as to Part II-C, argued that § 924(c)(3)(B) should be read to require a conduct-specific inquiry. In his view, the residual clause asks whether the actual defendant’s conduct during the currently charged offense created a substantial risk that force would be used. That is a conventional jury question, not an inquiry into an imagined “ordinary case.”

The dissent emphasized that Johnson and Dimaya involved prior convictions. In that setting, the categorical approach avoids relitigating stale convictions and prevents judges from making factual findings that could increase punishment in violation of the Sixth Amendment. Those concerns do not apply to § 924(c), where the defendant’s present conduct is charged, proved to a jury, or admitted in a guilty plea.

On the text, the dissent read “offense” as capable of having different referents in the two clauses: generic elements in § 924(c)(3)(A), but the defendant’s actual conduct in § 924(c)(3)(B). It argued that phrases such as “involves” and “in the course of committing the offense” naturally direct attention to what actually happened, and that a categorical reading makes the residual clause needlessly duplicative of the elements clause.

Justice Kavanaugh also invoked the constitutional-avoidance canon. At minimum, he reasoned, a case-specific construction was fairly possible and would avoid a constitutional defect. He rejected the majority’s view that avoidance cannot be used here because the conduct-specific approach might broaden the statute in some applications; each approach would cover some cases the other would not.

Finally, the dissent warned that invalidating the residual clause would prevent § 924(c) prosecutions for some defendants who used firearms in seriously violent real-world crimes and could unsettle many existing convictions. Those consequences could not control the legal analysis, the dissent acknowledged, but in its view they underscored the need to adopt the statute’s constitutional, conduct-specific reading.