US v. Cornette: Cornette was convicted of being a felon in
possession of a firearm and sentenced under the provisions of the Armed Career
Criminal Act. Among the prior convictions that provided a basis for his ACCA
designation was a 1976 conviction in Georgia for burglary and a 1986 North
Carolina conviction for possession with intent to deliver a controlled
substance. Cornette was sentenced to 220 months. After Johnson, he filed a 2255 motion arguing that those two prior convictions
no longer served as ACCA predicates. The district court denied the motion.
On appeal the Fourth Circuit reversed
the denial of Cornette’s 2255 motion. To begin, it rejected the Government’s
arguments on a pair of procedural issues. First, the court rejected the
Government’s argument that Cornette couldn’t prove his ACCA designation came
about because of the application of the now-unconstitutional residual clause,
restating a holding from a prior case that if there’s any doubt as to whether
the residual clause applied the benefit of the doubt went to the defendant.
Second, the court held that the waiver Cornette agreed to as part of his guilty
plea did not preclude his 2255 challenge because if he no longer qualified
under ACCA the district court lacked the authority to impose a sentence greater
than 120 months. Then the court examined each of the two priors and agreed with
Cornette that they no longer qualified as ACCA predicates. As to the Georgia
burglary, the court held that the statute was not divisible and was broader
than the generic definition of burglary (even after Stitt), based largely on the fact that the Georgia Supreme Court
didn’t narrow the definition of offense until just after Cornette was
convicted. As to the North Carolina drug offense, the court held that under Simmons Cornette was not subject to a
potential sentence of greater than 10 years in prison and therefore it could
not be an ACCA predicate.
Congrats to the Defender office in WD NC on the win!
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