Conrad Blair pled guilty in 1991 to four counts of
first-degree felony robbery in violation of Pennsylvania law. His conviction on each count was entered on
the same day. In his subsequent federal
prosecution, the issue was whether this record triggered a mandatory minimum
15-year sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). That sentence is required when the defendant
has “three previous convictions … for a … violent felony … committed on
occasions different from one another.”
Blair first contended that the plea documents from his 1991
case left open the possibility that none of the counts could be deemed an ACCA
predicate because he could have been convicted under 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. §
3701(a)(1)(iii), which provides that a person is guilty of robbery if, in the
course of committing a theft, he “commits or threatens to commit any felony of
the first or second degree…” Since not all
felonies of the first or second degree involve violence, this variety of
Pennsylvania robbery would not be a “violent felony” within the meaning of ACCA. The Court rejected this argument based on a
line at the bottom of each charging document labeled “felony
committed or threatened,” on which appeared in Blair’s case the words “aggravated
assault.” Reading “each charging
document and guilty plea as a whole,” the Court concluded that these materials made
it “clear” that Blair admitted to a robbery whose elements constituted a
violent felony.
The Court also rejected Blair’s argument that the charging
and plea documents could not be relied upon to conclude that each of the 1991 robbery
counts was for an offense committed on a different occasion. Although the charging documents stated that
the alleged robberies had been committed on three different dates, Blair
submitted that this specification could not be consulted for purposes of the
ACCA enhancement because the dates were not integral to any particular element of the offense. Accordingly, it could not be said that the
commission of any robbery on the specified date was necessarily found by the
court in adjudging Blair guilty as charged. See Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at
2288 (“[T]he only facts the court can be sure [were admitted or found by the
jury] are those constituting elements of the offense — as distinct from
amplifying but legally extraneous circumstances.”). That being so, Blair argued, the dates were
not properly consulted in application of the “modified categorical approach”
expounded in Descamps.
The Third Circuit rejected this argument under Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523
U.S. 224 (1998), which held that “the fact of a prior conviction” is exempt from the usual rule that any fact essential to greater punishment must be charged in the indictment and found by the jury on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Almendarez-Torres, the Court instructed,
“has not been narrowed and remains the law.…
Descamps and [Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct.
2151 (2013)] do nothing to restrict the established exception under Almendarez-Torres that allows judges to consider
prior convictions.” Stating that “the
date of an offense is integral to the fact of a prior conviction,” the Court
held that the question of whether predicates were committed on “different
occasions” is subject to determination by a judge based on factual matter in
the charging documents. In Blair’s case,
the listing of different dates, victims, and locations for the separate robbery
counts was sufficient to support the conclusion that the predicates were
committed on different occasions.
