Background

• Harrison filed a successive 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion challenging his ACCA-enhanced sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)).
• The ACCA enhancement required three prior “violent felony” predicates; one relied on Harrison’s Washington second-degree assault conviction (Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.36.021(1)(e)).
• Harrison argued that Washington’s second-degree assault statute is overbroad and indivisible, so his conviction cannot categorically qualify as an ACCA “violent felony.”
• The government conceded the statute is overbroad because its least culpable means (intentional unlawful touching to commit a felony) need not involve force capable of causing physical pain or injury.
• The Ninth Circuit found the statute also indivisible (it lists alternative means of committing the offense), so Descamps and Mathis require negating categorical treatment.
• Because the conviction does not qualify as a violent felony, the court held Harrison lacked the third ACCA predicate, reversed the denial of his successive § 2255 motion, and ordered immediate release (he already served more than the non-enhanced 10-year maximum).

Issues

Key Cases Cited

• Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016) (explains divisibility inquiry and limits of the categorical approach)
• Descamps v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (2013) (requires categorical comparison when statute is indivisible)
• Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133 (2010) (defines ACCA's "physical force" as force capable of causing pain or injury)
• State v. Smith, 154 P.3d 873 (Wash. 2007) (Washington decision characterizing criminal assault as an alternative-means crime)