ACCA Violation.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Steven Dotson v. United States of America

Case No.: 18-1701

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and BARRETT and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: ACCA Violation

The Presentence Investigation Report on Steven Dotson listed six prior felony convictions, three of which the Probation Office identified as qualifying him for the enhanced mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years' imprisonment under the Armed Career Criminal Act. The PSR was silent on whether any of Dotson's other three convictions so qualified, and nobody raised the question at sentencing. The district court agreed with the Probation Office and sentenced Dotson as a career offender to 188 months (15 years and 8 months).

What happened during Dotson's present appeal frames the issue now before us. Our decision in D.D.B. meant that Dotson's 2007 Indiana attempted robbery conviction (#3) no longer qualifies as an ACCA predicate. From there, however, the government points to our decision in United States v. Perry, 862 F.3d 620 (7th Cir. 2017), where we held that Indiana burglary qualifies as a violent felony under ACCA, and urges us to rely uponor, more accurately, to substituteDotson's 1993 Indiana burglary conviction (#4) to sustain his sentence as an armed career criminal. The government's requests and reasoning are straightforward: with the Indiana attempted robbery conviction (#3) out because of D.D.B. but the burglary conviction (#4) remaining a violent felony, Dotson still has three qualifying predicates (#1, #2, and #4) and remains an armed career criminal.

Not before now have we considered...