US v. Brown: In 2019, Brown sold a gun to an undercover officer, after having sustained several felony conviction. After pleading guilty, the probation officer recommended Brown be sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act because of three prior North Carolina robbery convictions. Brown objected, arguing that sentencing him under ACCA would violate his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. Specifically, he argued that even if the facts of his prior convictions could be found by the court at sentencing, the determination that they were committed on different occasions was a factual issue that a jury should resolved. The district court disagreed and imposed the mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Brown’s sentence. The parties agreed that the Fourth Circuit’s 2005 decision in Thompson had already resolved this matter, holding that the separate occasions analysis was properly done by the sentencing court. Brown argued that a series of Supreme Court decisions since then, including the recent decision in Wooden, had fatally undermined that decision and required a different result. The court disagreed. For the most part, the court recognized that the cases relied upon by Brown did not address the separate occasions analysis directly. As for Wooden, there the Supreme Court specifically declined to address the Sixth Amendment issue, as it had only been raised by amici, not Wooden himself.
Judge Heytens concurred in the judgment, noting that the panel was bound by a prior decision of the Fourth Circuit, but suggesting that en banc review might lead to a different result.
Note that a petition for rehearing en banc is currently pending.
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