By Samuel D. Gilleran and Nicholas T. Pappayliou
Background
On August 22, 2018, the Fourth Circuit decided United States v. Hodge,[1] clarifying whether the government may ask a district court to designate a conviction as an Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) predicate conviction, when that conviction was not so designated during the initial sentencing. In 2011, Garnett Hodge pleaded guilty to possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm as a felon.[2] Because of his prior convictions, Mr. Hodge was eligible for a “sentence enhancement” under the ACCA.[3] The ACCA states that a person convicted of possession of a firearm as a felon, who also has three prior “violent felony” or “serious drug offense” convictions, must receive a mandatory minimum of fifteen years in prison.[4] Mr. Hodge’s Presentence Investigation Report (“PSR”) designated exactly three qualifying, or ACCA predicate, convictions: a July 1992 felony drug possession with intent to distribute, a July 1998 felony drug possession with intent to distribute, and three counts of misdemeanor reckless endangerment in 1998.[5] The drug possession felonies qualified as “serious drug offense[s],” and – at the time – the misdemeanor reckless endangerment qualified as a “violent felony.”[6] But another section of Mr. Hodge’s PSR, labeled “criminal history,” enumerated seven additional convictions.[7] One of those convictions, a March 1992 felony cocaine possession with attempt to distribute, could have been designated in the PSR as an ACCA predicate conviction, as it was identical to the other cocaine possession charges that were so designated.[8] But, for some reason, the Probation Office that prepared the PSR failed to designate the March 1992 felony as a qualifying predicate conviction, and the Government did not object to the Probation Office’s failure to so designate that conviction.[9]
After his plea, Mr. Hodge was sentenced to 188 months of imprisonment on the cocaine charge and 204 months of imprisonment on the firearm charge, running concurrently.[10] In 2014, Mr. Hodge filed his first motion to vacate his sentence in district court, but it was dismissed as untimely.[11] In 2015, however, the United States Supreme Court “substantially narrowed” the ACCA’s definition of a “violent felony” in Johnson v. United States[12] (referred to as Johnson II).[13] Specifically, Johnson II struck down the ACCA’s “residual clause,” which classified “conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another” as a “violent felony” for purposes of sentence enhancement.[14] The Supreme Court then declared in Welch v. United States[15] that Johnson II would apply “retroactively on collateral review.”[16] Pursuant to those rulings, the Fourth Circuit gave Mr. Hodge permission to file another motion to vacate his sentence.[17]
The Parties’ Arguments and the District Court’s Ruling
Mr. Hodge asserted that his reckless endangerment conviction was only an ACCA predicate conviction because of the now-unconstitutional residual clause.[18] Because the reckless endangerment conviction no longer qualified as an ACCA predicate conviction, he only had two predicate convictions and the mandatory minimum of fifteen years did not apply.[19]
The Government agreed with Mr. Hodge that the reckless endangerment conviction no longer qualified as an ACCA predicate conviction, and it initially recommended to the district court that Mr. Hodge be resentenced.[20] But ten days after filing papers agreeing with Mr. Hodge, the Government evidently discovered the March 1992 drug conviction could have served as a predicate conviction, if it had been so designated.[21] The Government therefore chose to argue that Mr. Hodge had four predicate convictions, and that the failure to designate the March 1992 conviction on the PSR notwithstanding, that conviction could be substituted for the reckless endangerment conviction that no longer qualified as an ACCA predicate.[22] In order to excuse its failure to object to the Probation Office’s non-designation of the March 1992 conviction, the Government claimed that it would have been superfluous to designate more than three convictions.[23]
The district court sided with the Government and denied Mr. Hodge’s motion, ruling that courts “should ordinarily examine the defendant’s entire criminal record” when evaluating eligibility for ACCA sentence enhancement.[24] The district court pointed to Mr. Hodge’s three convictions that could have been listed as ACCA predicates, although only two were so listed.[25] In the district court’s view, because Mr. Hodge had the requisite three predicate convictions, it was of no consequence that the Government had failed to designate one of them in the PSR.[26] Mr. Hodge then appealed to the Fourth Circuit, asking whether the Government would indeed be permitted to substitute the “potential ACCA predicate conviction that was listed in [Mr. Hodge’s] PSR but never designated nor relied upon as an ACCA predicate.”[27]
The Fourth Circuit’s Holding
Chief Judge Gregory, writing for the court, held that the Government was not permitted to substitute the undesignated potential ACCA predicate conviction for the conviction that no longer qualified.[28] The Government could not substitute the undesignated conviction because it “failed to provide Hodge with sufficient notice of its intent to use this conviction to support an ACCA enhancement.”[29] Defendants are entitled to “adequate notice of . . . the convictions that may support [an ACCA] enhancement,”[30] so that they may “contest the validity or applicability of the prior convictions upon which [the] statutory sentencing enhancement is based.”[31] Applying the canon of expressio unius est exlusio alterius, the Government had indicated “an intentional exclusion” of the March 1992 conviction because the PSR expressly identified the three other convictions as ACCA predicates.[32] And because the Probation Office did not designate the March 1992 conviction as an ACCA predicate and the Government did not object to that failure, if Mr. Hodge had wanted to challenge “the validity or applicability” of that conviction, he himself would have had to draw attention to it, an anomaly that the court said “would undermine the adversarial process.”[33]
The court rejected the Government’s contention that designating more than three predicate convictions would have been superfluous by noting that “the U.S. Probation Office often designates more than three convictions as ACCA predicates,”[34] and the Government’s inclusion of two convictions for felony possession of cocaine with intent to distribute but exclusion of the third conviction for the same crime militated the conclusion that the “exclusion was deliberate.”[35]
The court also noted that when a defendant fails to timely contest the designation of a crime as an ACCA predicate, the issue is waived on collateral review.[36] In the court’s view, it is only fair to require the Government to meet the same standard.[37] Citing a recent case in the First Circuit, the court recognized that “it is unfair to allow parties to surprise one another with new argument that they did not make at the appropriate procedural juncture.”[38] In Mr. Hodge’s case, “the appropriate procedural juncture” was at sentencing.[39] If the Government ever wanted to rely on the March 1992 conviction, it should have objected to the PSR “during the sentencing proceedings.”[40] Because of the unfairness that the opposite rule would work on the defendant, the court held “that the Government must identify all convictions it wishes to use to support a defendant’s ACCA sentence enhancement at the time of sentencing.”[41]
This decision comports with the Eleventh Circuit’s holding in Bryant v. Warden, FCC Coleman–Medium.[42] In that similar situation, a defendant had three designated ACCA predicate convictions, but a change in the law left one of those designations invalid; meanwhile, the Government urged that court to substitute a previously undesignated burglary conviction as the necessary third ACCA predicate conviction.[43] The Eleventh Circuit refused to do so, relying on the Government’s failure to object to the district court’s non-designation of that conviction as a predicate conviction.[44] Similarly, in United States v. Petite,[45] the Eleventh Circuit flatly stated, “The government cannot offer for the first time on appeal a new predicate conviction in support of an enhanced ACCA sentence. The argument should have been made prior to or during sentencing. . . .”[46]
Conclusion
When the Government fails to designate a potential ACCA predicate conviction as such, it may not then seek it so designated in later proceedings to support an ACCA enhancement.[47] The Fourth Circuit therefore reversed the district court’s denial of Mr. Hodge’s motion to vacate his sentence and remanded for resentencing.[48] As of this writing, the resentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.
[1] 902 F.3d 420 (4th Cir. 2018).
[2] Id. at 423.
[3] Id.
[4] Id. at 423–24.
[5] Id. at 424.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id. at 424–25.
[9] Id. at 426.
[10] Id. at 424.
[11] Id.
[12] 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015).
[13] Hodge, 902 F.3d at 424–25.
[14] Id. at 425.
[15] 136 S. Ct. 1257 (2016).
[16] Hodge, 902 F.3d at 425.
[17] Id. at 424.
[18] Id. at 425.
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Id.
[23] Id. at 428 n.4.
[24] Hodge v. United States, No. 1:16-CV-781, 2016 WL 7480397, at *3 (M.D.N.C. Dec. 29, 2016).
[25] Id. at *2.
[26] Id.
[27] Hodge, 902 F.3d at 426.
[28] Id. at 427.
[29] Id.
[30] Id. (quoting United States v. O’Neal, 180 F.3d 115, 125–26 (4th Cir. 1999)).
[31] Id. (quoting United States v. Moore, 208 F.3d 411, 414 (2d Cir. 2000)).
[32] Id. at 427–28.
[33] Id. at 428.
[34] Id. at 428 n.4.
[35] Id. at 428.
[36] Id. at 429.
[37] Id.
[38] Id. (quoting United States v. Fernandez-Jorge, 894 F.3d 36, 54 n.16 (1st Cir. 2018)).
[39] Id.
[40] Id.
[41] Id. at 430.
[42] 738 F.3d 1253, 1256–57 (11th Cir. 2013), overruled on other grounds by McCarthan v. Dir. of Goodwill Indus.-Suncoast, Inc., 851 F.3d 1076 (11th Cir. 2017).
[43] Id. at 1279.
[44] Id.
[45] 703 F.3d 1290 (11th Cir. 2013), abrogated on other grounds by Johnson II, 135 S. Ct. 2551.
[46] Id. at 1292 n.2.
[47] Hodge, 902 F.3d at 430.
[48] Id. at 432.
