UNITED STATES оf America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Richard MATHIS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 14-2396.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted: Dec. 9, 2014. Filed: May 12, 2015.
Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied June 23, 2015.*
786 F.3d 1068
* Judge Kelly did not participate in the consideration or decision of this matter.
We need not decide whether, in the absence of the state statute, the police would still have been deemed “reasonable” in their treatment of Mucha, which is the key term in the Fourth Amendment itself. But we imagine that they would have been.
The judgment is reversed with instructions to dismiss the two officer defendants from the case.
Richard Mathis, Oxford, WI, pro se.
John P. Messina, Assistant, Federal Public Defender‘s Office, Des Moines, IA, for Defendant-Appellant.
Before LOKEN, BYE, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.
SMITH, Circuit Judge.
Richard Mathis was convicted for being a felon in possession of a firearm and received an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which applies to felons guilty of possession of a firearm who have three prior violent felony convictions. The district
I. Background
On February 15, 2013, a 15-year-old boy named K.G. went missing. While missing, the boy stayed at Mathis‘s house. K.G. alleged that, during this time, Mathis forcibly molested him. On February 25, 2013, police officers tracked K.G.‘s cell phone to Mathis‘s house. Mathis‘s girlfriend, who also stayed at the house, answered the door and told officеrs that Mathis was not home and that she did not know K.G.‘s whereabouts. She later admitted that she lied to the officers; in fact, Mathis, K.G., and two other young males were present in the house. Later that night, Mathis took K.G. to his grandmother‘s house. On March 3, 2013, K.G. disclosed Mathis‘s alleged sexual abuse to officers.
The officers obtained several warrants to search Mathis‘s residence. On March 8, 2013, they executed the warrants and found a loaded rifle and ammunition. The officers also found a cell phone with nearly 6,000 tеxt messages on it. Many of the messages were between Mathis and young males whom he had met on Meetme.com, the same social networking site through which K.G. had met Mathis. Several of the text messages were sexually explicit. These text messages showed that Mathis had traveled far to bring some of the young males whom he met on Meetme.com back to his residence. Additionally, a memory card was recovered during the search, which contained a picture of a nude underage mаle. Investigators also questioned Mathis‘s girlfriend. She admitted that she lied to officers on their February 25th visit. Mathis‘s girlfriend also stated that she believed that Mathis was having sexual intercourse with the boys whom he routinely brought to his house. One of the other victims, an 18-year-old male, told the officers that Mathis asked him about masturbation, asked him about the size of his genitals, and made several sexually explicit comments.
Police arrested Mathis on March 8, 2013, at his place of employment. While in custody, Mathis admitted thаt he owned the rifle and ammunition. Mathis also freely admitted that the officers might find child pornography on his computer and that he had visited websites to view and visit with young-looking homosexual males.
Mathis was indicted for one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of
At Mathis‘s sentencing hearing, the court first considered whether the ACCA (
As part of the supervised release, the court imposed special release conditions routinely applied to sex offenders. The court heard testimony from two law enforcement officers that detailed Mathis‘s interest in young males. In addition to the information pertaining to the instant offense, the officers also disclosed a similar investigation in 1990. Then, two missing young boys, after their recovery, told police that they had been staying in Mathis‘s trailer. Cоnsidering this testimony, even though Mathis had never been convicted of a sex crime, the court found that the conditions of supervised release were appropriate to protect the public from Mathis.
II. Discussion
Mathis argues on appeal that his prior convictions for second-degree burglary are not violent felonies under the ACCA. He also challenges the imposition of sex-offender-related special conditions of supervised release.2
A. Application of the ACCA
Mathis first argues that the district court erred by finding that the Iowa burglary statute was divisible and by applying the modified categorical approach to determine the nature of his convictions. This error, Mathis argues, led the district court to erroneously conclude that his five previous burglary convictions were violent felonies for ACCA purposes.
We review de novo whether a prior state-court conviction constitutes a violent felony for ACCA purposes. United States v. Pate, 754 F.3d 550, 553-54 (8th Cir.2014) (citation omitted). The ACCA enhances the sentences of those defendants found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm that have three previous convictions for “violent felon[ies].”
In the typical case, we use the “categorical approach” to determine whether prior convictions amount to violent felonies. See Descamps, 133 S.Ct. at 2283. This approach requires courts to “look only to the fact of conviction and the
There are a “narrow range of cases,” however, in which state statutes present the necessary elements for conviction in the alternative. See Descamps, 133 S.Ct. at 2283-84. These alternatives, as presented in the statute, lay out one set of elements that would fit within the generic crime and another set of elements that would not. See id.; see also United States v. Howard, 742 F.3d 1334, 1343 (11th Cir.2014). These divisible statutes can thus be divided into alternative elements, which may in some cases constitute violent felonies, but other times may not. When approaching divisible statutes, courts are allowed to go one step further than the categorical approach to apply the “modified categorical approach.” Descamps, 133 S.Ct. at 2283-84. This tool allows courts to examine certain documents (such as charging papers and jury instructions) to determine under which set of alternative elements the defеndant was convicted. Id. at 2284-86. Courts can then use their findings to properly determine whether prior convictions are violent felonies. Id. at 2284.
In Descamps, the Court attempted to clarify divisibility, but as Justice Kennedy observed, this “dichotomy between divisible and indivisible state criminal statutes is not all that clear.” Id. at 2293 (Kennedy, J., concurring). Applying Taylor, the Court proposed a hypothetical state burglary statute that otherwise conformed with generic burglary, but also swept more broadly by criminalizing the “entry of an automobile as well as a building.” Id. at 2284 (quoting Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602). The statute in Taylor was a divisible statute because it presented an alternative set of elements, one of which conformed with generic burglary—entry into a building—and one of which did not—entry into an automobile. When dealing with a divisible statute, courts can then use the modified categorical approach to glean from certain approved documents of which set of elements the defendant was prosecuted and found guilty.
The Court‘s hypothetical became reality in Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 125 S.Ct. 1254, 161 L.Ed.2d 205 (2005). Shepard dealt with the divisibility of a Massachusetts burglary statute that criminalized “entries into ‘boats and cars’ as wеll as buildings.” Descamps, 133 S.Ct. at 2284 (citing Shepard, 544 U.S. at 17); see also
Our court has also encountered state burglary statutes like the hypothetical in Taylor and the convicting statute in Shepard. In United States v. Bell, we used the modified categorical approach to determine which set of alternative elements the defendant was convicted for in his prior conviction under the Missouri second-degree burglary statute. 445 F.3d 1086, 1090-91 (8th Cir.2006). Under the Missouri statute, “a person commits second-degree burglary when he ‘knowingly enters unlawfully or knоwingly remains unlawfully in a building or inhabitable structure for the purpose of committing a crime therein.‘” Id. at 1090 (quoting
Shepard and Bell control the instant appeal. Mathis was previously convicted five times in Iowa for second-degree burglary in violation of
Any person, having the intent to commit a felony, assault or theft therein, who, having no right, license or privilege to do so, enters an occupied structure, such occupied structure not being open to the public, or who remains therein after it is closed to the public or after the person‘s right, license or privilege to be there has expired, or any person having such intent who breaks an occupied structure, commits burglary.
Thus, a conviction of burglary, at first glance, seems to fit within generic burglary of “unlawful or unprivileged entry intо, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime.” Taylor, 495 U.S. at 599. The Iowa statute, however, sweeps more broadly than generic burglary because the term “occupied structure” is defined elsewhere in the statute as:
[A]ny building, structure, appurtenances to buildings and structures, land, water or air vehicle, or similar place adapted for overnight accommodation of persons, or occupied by persons for the purpose of carrying on business or other activity therein, or for the storage or safekeeping of anything of value. Such a structure is an “occupied structure” whether or not a person is actually present.
Mathis argues against this conclusion by asserting that the convicting statute and definition of “occupied structure” do not present alternative elements, but instead simply present different types of occupied structures that can be burgled. Therefore, “[t]he jurors need not all agree on whether” he burgled a building, a boat, or a car, “because the actual statute requires the jury to find only” that he burgled an occupied structure. Descamps, 133 S.Ct. at 2290. This argument amounts to the means/elements distinction that was explicitly rejected in Descamps. Descamps held that the Court‘s decisions in Taylor, Shepard, and Johnson “rested on the explicit premise that the laws ‘contain[ed] statutory phrases that cover several different crimes,’ not several different methods of committing one offense.” Id. at 2285 n. 2 (alterations in original) (quoting Johnson, 559 U.S. at 144). The Court then instructed that
[w]hatever a statute lists (whether elements or means), the documents we approvеd in Taylor and Shepard would reflect the crime‘s elements. . . . When a state law is drafted in the alternative, the court merely resorts to the approved documents and compares the elements revealed there to those of the generic offense.
Id. (emphasis added). The Court‘s instruction clarifies the distinction between elements and means in analyzing potentially divisible statutes.6 In the present case, the term “occupied structure” reflects various places for unlawful entry that the statute criminalizes by providing a disjunctive list of buildings that can be burgled under the statute.7 Whether these amount to alternative elements or merely alternative means to fulfilling an element, the statute is divisible, and we must apply the modified categorical approach.
B. Sex-Offender-Related Special Conditions of Supervised Release
Mathis next argues that the district court abused its discretion by imposing special conditions reserved for sex offenders because the conditions result in a greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary to fulfill the goals outlined in
“[T]his court reviews the terms and conditions of supervised release for abuse of discretion. . . .” United States v. Schaefer, 675 F.3d 1122, 1125 (8th Cir. 2012) (citation omitted). Generally, “[a] district court has broad discretion to impose special conditions of supervised release, so long as each condition complies with the requirements set forth in
We have previously upheld special conditions of supervised release applied to sex offenders even when the underlying conviction was not for a sex offense. See United States v. Kelly, 625 F.3d 516, 519 (8th Cir.2010) (uphоlding sex-offender-related special conditions of supervised release for conviction of being a felon in possession of a firearm); United States v. Smart, 472 F.3d 556, 559 (8th Cir.2006) (same). Both Kelly and Smart, however, involved defendants that had previously been convicted of sex crimes. The question is, then, if Mathis‘s previous conduct justifies the imposition of the special conditions.
The district court heard extensive testimony from two law enforcement officers concerning allegations of sexual abuse made by K.G.—which happened contemporaneously with the charged offense—and allegations of sexual abuse made by two male children in 1990. In addition, the presentence investigation report (PSR) detailed instances where Mathis was found to have violated his parole for previous offenses on two different occasions regarding inappropriate behavior with young males. First, Mathis was arrested for conducting lascivious acts with a child in 1986; several individuals alleged Mathis exhibited inappropriate behavior towards their young male children in connection with this arrest. Second, Mathis‘s parole was revoked in 1989 when allegations surfaced that he performed fellatio on an 11-year-old boy. Mathis did not contest these portions of the PSR, allowing the district court to “accept [the] undisputed portion[s] ... as a finding of fact.” United States v. Lee, 570 F.3d 979, 982 (8th Cir.2009) (quotation and citation omitted). Further, sentencing courts are allowed to make “findings ... based on any information other than materially false information.” Schaefer, 675 F.3d at 1124.
Based on the wealth of evidence presented of Mathis‘s improper acts toward young males, we find no abuse of discretion in the district court‘s finding that sex-offender-related special conditions were appropriate to deter Mathis, to protect the public from Mathis, and to provide Mathis with correctional treatment. See
III. Conclusion
For the reasons stated, we affirm Mathis‘s sentence under the ACCA and the district court‘s imposition of sex-offender-related special conditions of supervised release.
LAVENSKI R. SMITH
CIRCUIT JUDGE
