Shabazz v. United States

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The Second Circuit denied a petition for rehearing of its prior decision concluding that petitioner's prior convictions for robbery under Con. Gen. Stat. 53a‐133 qualified as predicates under the Force Clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984 (ACCA), and reinstating his original ACCA sentence.The court held that petitioner misread Villanueva v. United States, 893 F.3d 123 (2d Cir. 2018). While petitioner was correct that in Villanueva the court remanded for resentencing, rather than direct the district court to reimpose the original sentence that had impermissibly relied on the ACCA's now‐defunct residual clause, the court neither ruled nor suggested that the latter course would have been impermissible, much less ruled that future courts in similar circumstances should follow the same course. Therefore, the decision to remand for resentencing was discretionary. The court also held that petitioner misconstrued Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476 (2011), nor was petitioner correct that a sentencing court's reliance on the ACCA's residual clause, later determined to be unconstitutional, would be a structural error not susceptible to harmless error analysis. Petitioner's remaining arguments were unpersuasive. View "Shabazz v. United States" on Justia Law