US v. Lightfoot: In 2000, Lightfoot was convicted of bank robbery and a firearm offense after having been previously convicted of the same offense in Virginia and Michigan state courts. As a result, Lightfoot was sentenced to a mandatory life term under the “three strikes” provision of 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c), plus a consecutive life sentence for the firearm offense. After Johnson was decided in 2015, Lightfoot filed a §2255 motion arguing that the Michigan bank robbery conviction was no longer a “serious violent felony” under either the enumerated offense clause or force clause. The district court disagreed and denied the motion.
On appeal, a divided Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of Lightfoot’s §2255 motion. The court first concluded that the Michigan robbery statute was divisible and that Lightfoot had been convicted of the version of the offense known as “assaultive bank robbery.” The court then concluded that the offense fell under the enumerated offense clause because it shared the “essence of robbery in the federal statutes.” It rejected Lightfoot’s argument that because the offense could be committed by “confinement” it was not sufficiently similar to federal bank robbery, concluding that Michigan law showed that “confinement requires force or intimidation, just like all the other assaultive acts listed in the robbery statute.” The court noted that Lightfoot “has not identified any case where confinement without force or fear was the basis of an assaultive bank robbery conviction” under Michigan law.
Judge Benjamin dissented, arguing that Michigan assaultive bank robbery “in its lease culpable form, can be accomplished without the use or threat of physical force.”
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