Third Circuit holds that Hobbs Act robbery is a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) even when the conviction rests on aiding and abetting or Pinkerton liability

In United States v. Stevens, Appeal No. 21-2044 (3d Cir. June 12, 2023), Appellant Stevens challenged his § 924(c) conviction on two grounds. First, relying on United States v. Nedley, 255 F.2d 350 (3d Cir. 1958), Appellant argued that his conviction for Hobbs Act robbery must be vacated because the District Court failed to charge the jury on two elements previously read into the statutory definition of Hobbs Act robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(1) - a specific intent to steal and a carrying away of the property. But those elements are absent from the Hobbs Act’s unambiguous statutory definition of “robbery,” and the Court acknowledged today that Nedley has been abrogated by intervening Supreme Court precedent. Therefore, the Court affirmed Stevens’s Hobbs Act robbery conviction. In addition, because Stevens’s robbery conviction qualified as a “crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) regardless of whether it was predicated on the Government’s aiding and abetting or its alternative Pinkerton conspiracy theory, the Court also affirmed his conviction for that offense.