Month: July 2019

On January 15, 2019, the Supreme Court decided Stokeling v. United States, a case considering whether Florida’s robbery law, which requires victim resistance that is then overcome by the physical force of the offender, qualifies as a “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).
ACCA imposes a 15-year mandatory minimum prison sentence on any federal firearms offender who has three or more convictions for a “violent” felony or serious drug offense. In determining whether any given predicate felony conviction qualifies as “violent,” federal courts typically apply a “categorical” approach that looks only to the elements of the predicate offense and not the underlying facts. If the elements include “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another,” the conviction qualifies as a violent felony. The issue here was whether Stokeling’s Florida conviction for robbery categorically qualified as a violent felony for ACCA purposes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that it did.
By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit. In an opinion delivered by Justice Thomas, the Supreme Court held that ACCA’s elements clause encompasses a robbery offense that, like Florida’s law, requires the criminal physically to overcome the victim’s resistance. Justice Thomas’s majority opinion was joined by Justices Breyer, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which the Chief Justice and Justices Ginsburg and Kagan joined.
To discuss the case, we have Luke Milligan, Professor of Law at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law.