Today, the Fourth Circuit held in favor of a defendant in a case involving whether an offense can be deemed an ACCA predicate. The opinion in United States v. Harcum, No. 07-4890 (Decided November 17, 2009) is available here.
First, some background on ACCA:
The Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) requires defendants to serve a mandatory minimum fifteen-year prison sentence if they have been convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm and have had three previous convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses. (The offenses also must have been committed on separate occasions.)
ACCA defines a “violent felony” as (1) a crime punishable by more than one year imprisonment (except for state misdemeanor offenses carrying a maximum penalty of two years – those don’t count) (2) that has as an element “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.”
Given the severe mandatory minimum at stake for defendants potentially subject to ACCA, a court’s determination of whether an offense qualifies as a predicate is often a hotly contested issue. Courts can engage in two types of analysis to determine whether a conviction is an ACCA predicate: First, courts determine whether the elements of given crime, on the books, qualify an offense as a serious drug offense or a violent felony under ACCA. Second, if a court is unable to determine whether an offense qualifies as an ACCA predicate by examining the statutory language of the count of conviction, a court may be entitled to examine underlying charging documents and jury instructions.
Without going in to too much detail, a sentencing court cannot look to just any type of underlying document to determine whether an offense is an ACCA predicate, but only to “the statutory definition, charging document, written plea agreement, transcript of plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding by the trial judge to which the defendant assented.”
This second type of analysis – dubbed the “modified categorical” approach – underlies the problems addressed in Harcum.
Here’s what happened:
Harcum had previously been convicted of second degree assault in Maryland state court. In Maryland, second degree assault is a misdemeanor, but one that carries a maximum sentence of imprisonment of 10 years. In Maryland, the statutory definition for second degree assault prohibits a person from “commit[ting] an assault.” By itself, this definition is insufficient to qualify an offense as an ACCA predicate.
Before his conviction for second degree assault, the defendant had been charged in the district court with second degree assault, and the statement of charges filed in district court contained facts that would have made the offense, if he had been convicted, an ACCA predicate.
At the defendant’s federal sentencing, the government argued that the statement of charges that had been filed in the district court corresponded to the charge that the defendant had pled guilty to in the circuit court. As such, the government argued, the conviction for second degree assault was an ACCA predicate. The sentencing court agreed.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit held that because the statement of charges was never incorporated into the Information (that the defendant pled guilty to), there was not enough information for the sentencing court to conclude that the offense was an ACCA predicate. The Fourth Circuit recognized that in Maryland, a statement of charges may be supplanted by the filing of a criminal information – as it was in Harcum’s case.
What is worth noting is that the crime described in the Information that the defendant pled guilty to seemed to be the same crime as laid out in the statement of charges – the dates and the offenses were the same. The Fourth Circuit, however, said that this could have been a coincidence, and was not sufficient to rely upon to qualify the offense for ACCA.”Mere similarities in such documents . . . fail to explicitly incorporate their contents, and they do not authorize a sentencing court to bypass the “court of conviction” requirement” of the Supreme Court in Shepard and Taylor, two cases dealing with ACCA predicate offenses.
Congratulations are owed to Sapna Mirchandani and (probably) Paresh Patel for this victory.
Posted by Brennan Sullivan and McKenna
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Voir Dire is Not Foolproof, But Gives Meaning to Constitutional Rights
Edwin Wright v. State of Maryland, No. 6, September Term, 2009.
The opinion is available here (pdf).
While “voir dire is not a foolproof process,” . . . “it is better that we should use an overabundance of caution, and assume that the judicial system as a whole is better served by a more careful process. . . . Certainly, that is not too high a price to pay to give meaning to a right guaranteed by our Constitution.”
In an opinion filed November 16, 2009, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals, and remanded the case for a new trial. At issue before the Court was whether a trial court in Baltimore City had abused its discretion by conducting voir dire by way of posing a roster of questions in quick succession.
During jury selection, the trial court conducted a voir dire of a fifty-person venire panel. (Voir dire is the process that trial courts and attorneys use to question prospective jurors and determine whether they could be fair and impartial.) The trial court conducted the voir dire by posing a litany of seventeen questions to the panel. After the questions were read, each juror was asked to approach the bench and state whether they had information to provide in response to the questions posed.
Counsel for the defendant objected to this methodology of voir dire, and argued that the jurors would be unable to remember all of the questions posed so as to fairly respond to them by the time they approached the judge. At trial, the defendant was convicted, and on appeal his conviction was affirmed in the Court of Special Appeals.
In the Court of Appeals, the petitioner argued that the trial court’s method of conducting voir dire failed to reasonably ensure that the court received accurate responses to its questions. The Court of Appeals agreed, and held that the trial court abused its discretion by conducting voir dire in this “cursory” and “unduly limited” manner.
The right to a fair and impartial jury is guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Maryland Declaration of Rights. The essential purpose of voir dire in a criminal case is to ensure that this right is protected. While trial courts have broad discretion in the way they conduct voir dire, an appellate court will not defer to a lower court’s judgment when the voir dire method employed by the court “fails to probe juror biases effectively.”
The Court of Appeals took care to note that the questioning part of the voir dire process took about five minutes and thirty seconds. In addition, some of the jurors who were ultimately selected for the jury approached to answer the questions nearly one hour after the questions had been read. “Information presented in the courtroom is most accessible when divided into small, discrete segments.” By failing to allow jurors time to absorb the questions that were being posed to them, the Court of Appeals held, the trial court limited the jurors’ opportunity to provide accurate information to the court.
“An incomplete voir dire necessarily means an incomplete investigation into potential juror biases, which in turn leads to the very real possibility that the venire members failed to disclose relevant information.”
Posted by Brennan Sullivan and McKenna
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Court of Appeals of Maryland Finds No Bad Faith, Reverses Circuit Court's Dismissal of Second Indictment
Posted by Brennan Sullivan and McKenna
State v. Huntley, Record No. 157 (Court of Appeals of Maryland, Sept. Term, 2008)
In an opinion filed November 12, 2009, the Court of Appeals of Maryland held that Mr. Huntley’s right to be tried within 180 days (pursuant to Md. Rule 4-271 (a) (1) and State v. Hicks, 285 Md. 310 (1979)) was not violated where, after the circuit court denied its motion to amend the indictment, the State “nol prossed” and re-indicted the case.
Mr. Huntley was indicted for child sexual abuse. The parties appeared for trial one day before the Hicks deadline. The State, proffering that it had just recently learned that the offense dates set forth in the indictment were incorrect, moved to amend the dates on the indictment. The circuit court denied the request.
The State therefore entered the charges nolle prosequi and re-indicted the defendant outside of the original “Hicks date.” Mr. Huntley filed a motion to dismiss the second indictment, arguing that the re-indictment violated Hicks and Rule 4-271. The circuit court granted the motion and the State appealed. The Court of Appeals took certiorari on the issue from the Court of Special Appeals.
Citing Curley v. State, 299 Md. 449 (1984), the Court noted that a nolle prosequi and re-indictment of a defendant does not implicate Hicks unless its purpose or its necessary effect “is to circumvent the statute and rule governing time limits for trial…” The Court went on to hold that, where the State “nol prosses” an indictment because its motion to amend the indictment was denied, Curley, Hicks, and Md. Rule 4-271 do not require dismissal of the subsequent indictment unless the State proceeded in bad faith. Finding the record devoid of bad faith, the Court reversed and remanded the case to the circuit court to determine whether the State had proceeded in bad faith.
Chief Judge Bell and Judge Greene dissented to the opinion, essentially arguing that, because the State had other options (e.g., asking the administrative judge for a postponement) and didn’t exercise them, bad faith on the part of the State was apparent from the record.
State v. Huntley, Record No. 157 (Court of Appeals of Maryland, Sept. Term, 2008)
In an opinion filed November 12, 2009, the Court of Appeals of Maryland held that Mr. Huntley’s right to be tried within 180 days (pursuant to Md. Rule 4-271 (a) (1) and State v. Hicks, 285 Md. 310 (1979)) was not violated where, after the circuit court denied its motion to amend the indictment, the State “nol prossed” and re-indicted the case.
Mr. Huntley was indicted for child sexual abuse. The parties appeared for trial one day before the Hicks deadline. The State, proffering that it had just recently learned that the offense dates set forth in the indictment were incorrect, moved to amend the dates on the indictment. The circuit court denied the request.
The State therefore entered the charges nolle prosequi and re-indicted the defendant outside of the original “Hicks date.” Mr. Huntley filed a motion to dismiss the second indictment, arguing that the re-indictment violated Hicks and Rule 4-271. The circuit court granted the motion and the State appealed. The Court of Appeals took certiorari on the issue from the Court of Special Appeals.
Citing Curley v. State, 299 Md. 449 (1984), the Court noted that a nolle prosequi and re-indictment of a defendant does not implicate Hicks unless its purpose or its necessary effect “is to circumvent the statute and rule governing time limits for trial…” The Court went on to hold that, where the State “nol prosses” an indictment because its motion to amend the indictment was denied, Curley, Hicks, and Md. Rule 4-271 do not require dismissal of the subsequent indictment unless the State proceeded in bad faith. Finding the record devoid of bad faith, the Court reversed and remanded the case to the circuit court to determine whether the State had proceeded in bad faith.
Chief Judge Bell and Judge Greene dissented to the opinion, essentially arguing that, because the State had other options (e.g., asking the administrative judge for a postponement) and didn’t exercise them, bad faith on the part of the State was apparent from the record.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
For now at least, the Court of Special Appeals finds no Second Amendment protection against Maryland's firearm regulations.
Williams v. State of Maryland, Record No. 01999, (Court of Special Appeals, Sept. Term, 2008)
In an opinion filed October 30, 2009, the Court of Special Appeals held that – for now at least - Maryland’s prohibition on transportation of a handgun (Md. Crim. Law Code Ann. § 4-203) is not subject to Second Amendment analysis and therefore does not violate a defendant’s right to keep and bear arms under the United States Constitution.
The crux of the opinion (authored by Judge Matricciani) is simply that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) does not apply to the states. Moreover, the Maryland Constitution contains no “corollary of the federal constitutional right codified in the Second Amendment.”
Therefore, according to the holding, the argument that carried the day in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) is of no avail against Maryland’s statute regulating firearms. As the Court of Special Appeals noted, the United States Supreme Court has recently taken up this very question in McDonald v. City of Chicago, No. 08-1521 (September 30, 2009) and is likely to decide it by June or July, 2010.
In the meantime, the Court of Special Appeals held, “Until the Supreme Court rules definitively on incorporation of the Second Amendment, we must assume, without deciding, that it has not been incorporated.”
Posted by Brennan Sullivan and McKenna
In an opinion filed October 30, 2009, the Court of Special Appeals held that – for now at least - Maryland’s prohibition on transportation of a handgun (Md. Crim. Law Code Ann. § 4-203) is not subject to Second Amendment analysis and therefore does not violate a defendant’s right to keep and bear arms under the United States Constitution.
The crux of the opinion (authored by Judge Matricciani) is simply that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) does not apply to the states. Moreover, the Maryland Constitution contains no “corollary of the federal constitutional right codified in the Second Amendment.”
Therefore, according to the holding, the argument that carried the day in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) is of no avail against Maryland’s statute regulating firearms. As the Court of Special Appeals noted, the United States Supreme Court has recently taken up this very question in McDonald v. City of Chicago, No. 08-1521 (September 30, 2009) and is likely to decide it by June or July, 2010.
In the meantime, the Court of Special Appeals held, “Until the Supreme Court rules definitively on incorporation of the Second Amendment, we must assume, without deciding, that it has not been incorporated.”
Posted by Brennan Sullivan and McKenna
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