Paul W. Grimm, United States District Judge.
This Memorandum Opinion supplements my ruling on the bench at a December 17, 2015, hearing. Defendant Tiffany Renee Edmundson had moved to dismiss Count 2, using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, and vacate her guilty plea. Subsequently, Edmundson withdrew her motion to withdraw the guilty plea but persisted in her motion to dismiss the firearm count. I ruled that Edmundson's plea to conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery did not meet the requirements in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A) and that 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B) is void for vagueness.
On February 11, 2013, Defendant Tiffany Renee Edmundson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce by robbery ("Hobbs Act Conspiracy"), 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a), and one count of using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence ("Firearm Offense"), 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3). See Plea Agr., ECF No. 21. Her sentencing was delayed for reasons unrelated to the issues raised in the pending dispute. On August 17, 2015, Edmundson filed a Motion to Dismiss Count Two and to Vacate Guilty Plea on Said Count. Def.'s Mot., ECF No. 38. The Government filed an opposition. Opp'n, ECF No. 46. The Office of the Public Defender requested, ECF No. 49, and was granted, ECF No. 52, permission to file an amicus brief, Amicus Br., ECF No. 53, and supplement, Amicus Suppl., ECF No. 54.
A hearing was held on December 17, 2015. At the beginning of the hearing, Edmundson withdrew her motion to withdraw her guilty plea to the Firearm Offense but persisted in her motion to dismiss that count for the reasons asserted in her motion. I ruled that Edmundson's plea to Hobbs Act Conspiracy did not meet the § 924(c) force clause and that the § 924(c) residual clause is void for vagueness under Johnson. I then ordered the parties to brief the issue of whether my determinations that the neither the § 924(c) force clause nor the § 924(c) residual clause applied required me to dismiss Count 2 prior to sentencing. This Memorandum Opinion supplements my ruling from the bench.
18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii) provides that a person convicted of using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a "crime of violence" must be sentenced to a minimum term of imprisonment of seven years, to run consecutively to any other sentence imposed. A crime of violence is defined under the § 924(c) force clause as any felony that "has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another," § 924(c)(3)(A), or alternatively under the § 924(c) residual clause as any felony "that by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense," § 924(c)(3)(B).
18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) defines Hobbs Act Conspiracy as follows:
(emphasis added). The Government and Edmundson agree that, unlike the general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371 — where the essential elements include a requirement that the conspirators "do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy" — the statutory definition of Hobbs Act Conspiracy does not expressly require as an element the commission of an overt act. The parties have not cited, nor has my own research revealed, any authority that Hobbs Act Conspiracy (as opposed to robbery under the Hobbs Act) constitutes a crime of violence under the § 924(c) force clause, which is unsurprising considering the fact that this clause only focuses on the elements of an offense to determine whether it meets the definition of a crime of violence, and it is undisputed that Hobbs Act Conspiracy can be committed even without the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.
The § 924(c) residual clause defines a crime of violence to include a felony "that by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense." In Johnson, the Supreme Court recently held that imposing an enhanced sentence under the ACC residual clause violated due process because it was impermissibly vague. See Johnson, 135 S.Ct. at 2557. Although similar to the § 924(c) residual clause, the ACC residual clause has obvious differences. It defines a "violent felony" as "burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives or otherwise involves conduct that represents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another." 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii).
Justice Scalia, writing for the Court, pointed out that the ACC residual clause, unlike the ACC force clause, directs a court to focus not on the elements of the predicate offense, but instead
Johnson, 135 S.Ct. at 2557 (alterations in original). He concluded that "the indeterminacy of the wide-ranging inquiry required by the residual clause both denies fair notice to defendants and invites arbitrary enforcement by judges," and that "[i]ncreasing a defendant's sentence under the clause denies due process." Id. Importantly, Justice Scalia explained that
Id. at 2557-58. Thus, the ACC residual clause was unconstitutionally vague because it involved a double-helping of indeterminacy. See id. First, there was indeterminacy in the court's estimate of how to evaluate the degree of risk posed by a crime, unmoored from its elements or the actual conduct committed by the defendant in a particular case. Additionally, it added a second level of indeterminacy by creating uncertainty about "how much risk" it takes for the crime to be a violent felony.
Edmundson and amicus counsel argue that the § 924(c) residual clause suffers from the identical double-indeterminacy flaw and therefore is unconstitutionally vague as well. See Def.'s Mot. 8; Amicus Br. 5. The Government disagrees and argues that the § 924(c) residual clause is different in an essential way from the ACC residual clause. See Opp'n 20-22. The latter includes a list of four comparator offenses (burglary, arson, extortion, or crimes that involve use of explosives) that the court must evaluate in trying to assess the requisite risk of physical injury the predicate offense involves. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). The Government argues that, in the absence of these confusing comparators, the clause would not be impermissibly vague. See Opp'n 22-23. Because the § 924(c) residual clause does not include these same comparator offenses (or any others), the Government argues that it is free from the indeterminacy that doomed the ACC residual clause. Id.
A careful reading of Johnson shows that the Government is mistaken. It was the requirement that the court engage in the abstract evaluation of the kind of conduct the predicate offense involved in the "ordinary case," see Johnson, 135 S.Ct. at 2557, as opposed to evaluating the actual conduct of the defendant or the elements of the offense that created the vagueness, not the listing of confusing comparators the court was to consider in doing so. To be sure, including the four comparator crimes compounded the indeterminacy, see id. at 2558, but they made an already impermissibly vague definition worse. They were not the sole cause in fact of the vagueness.
The § 924(c) residual clause suffers from exactly the same double indeterminacy as the ACC residual clause because it requires the court to evaluate the offense "by its nature," not by its elements (as both the § 924(c) force clause and ACC force clause do) and not by the defendant's actual conduct when committing the predicate offense. As with the ACC residual clause, the § 924(c) residual clause requires the court to imagine what the "ordinary case" of the predicate crime involves in the abstract (level one indeterminacy) and then to engage in conjecture about whether the amount of risk the ordinary case involves constitutes a "substantial risk" that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the predicate offense (level two indeterminacy). This is exactly the same dual indeterminacy that was fatal to the ACC residual clause. The fact that the language in the ACC was made even worse by the additional presence of the four listed crimes does not save the § 924(c) residual clause from impermissible vagueness.
Id. (third, fourth, and fifth alterations in original) (internal citations omitted). Significantly, while Justice Scalia first referred to the "confusing list" of comparator offenses contained in the ACC residual clause as an example of how it is impermissibly vague, this was not the most important reason why this was so. Rather, and "more importantly," most of the federal and state laws cited by the dissent were not unconstitutionally vague under the standard announced in Johnson because they required the court to measure "substantial risk" against "real-world conduct," as opposed to the abstract "ordinary case" manifestation of the predicate offense, divorced from its statutory elements or the defendant's actual conduct when the offense was committed.
All that is needed to see the essential difference between laws that are and are not unconstitutionally vague under Johnson is to compare the § 924(c) residual clause — which requires the court to imagine the risk imposed by the predicate offense "by its nature," a judicial abstraction of the "ordinary case" of the offense — with an example or two from the list of federal laws cited by the dissent that Justice Scalia said would not be unconstitutionally vague. One such statute is 18 U.S.C. § 1365(a), which states, relevantly "`[w]hoever, with reckless disregard for the risk that another person will be placed in danger of death or bodily injury under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to such risk, tampers with any consumer product....'" See Supp. Br. for the United States, at *2a, Johnson, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 192 L.Ed.2d 569) (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 1365(a)) (emphasis added). Another example is 18 U.S.C. § 1365(c)(1), which states, relevantly "`[w]hoever knowingly communicates false information that a consumer product has been tainted, ... and if such tainting, had it occurred, would create a risk of death or bodily injury to another person....'" See id. at *2a-2b (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 1365(c)(1)) (emphasis added). A third example is 18 U.S.C. § 2118(e)(3) which provides that "`the term `significant bodily injury' means bodily injury which involves risk of death, significant physical pain, protracted and obvious disfigurement, or a protracted loss or impairment of the
Each of these examples involves a qualitative measurement of risk by a court looking to actual "real-world conduct," not by use of a judicial abstraction of what the "ordinary example" of an offense would involve, disassociated from actual acts that occurred. And each of these examples illustrates a law that Justice Scalia observed would not run the risk of being unconstitutionally vague. In contrast, the § 924(c) residual clause demonstrates exactly the type of double indeterminacy that Justice Scalia said was the primary reason why the ACC residual clause was unconstitutionally vague; this result is not changed by the absence in the § 924(c) residual clause of the four "confusing examples" of comparator statutes present in the ACC residual clause.
Finally, I note that the Ninth Circuit recently reached a similar result when, in light of Johnson, it examined 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F) and 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), which defined "crime of violence" for purposes of determining whether the petitioner was a removable alien as "any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense." Dimaya v. Lynch, 803 F.3d 1110, 1112 (9th Cir.2015). This is the exact same language found in the § 924(c) residual clause. The Ninth Circuit determined that the statute combined "indeterminacy about how to measure the risk posed by [the predicate] crime with indeterminacy about how much risk it takes for the crime to qualify as `a crime of violence,'" id. at 1117 (quoting Johnson, 135 S.Ct. at 2558), concluding:
Id. at 1119. Because I agree with the analysis employed by the Ninth Circuit in its review of a statute containing identical language to the § 924(c) residual clause, and based on the foregoing discussion of Johnson, I conclude that the § 924(c) residual clause, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B), also is unconstitutionally vague.
Having concluded that Edmundson's plea to the predicate offense of Hobbs Act Conspiracy does not meet the definition of a "crime of violence" for purposes of imposing an enhanced sentence for Count 2 under 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(ii), 924(c)(3)(A), and 924(c)(3)(B), I have asked the parties to research the issue of whether, notwithstanding her having withdrawn her motion to withdraw her plea of guilty to Count 2 of the indictment, I must nonetheless dismiss this count because there is no legally permissible ground for sentencing her under it. I have set sentencing to take place on January 13, 2016. At that time I will issue my ruling with respect to this issue.
