United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 17-1080 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. LUIS LÓPEZ, Defendant, Appellant. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. Richard G. Stearns, U.S. District Judge] Before Torruella, Lipez, and Thompson, Circuit Judges. James L. Sultan, with whom Kerry A. Haberlin and Rankin & Sultan were on brief, for appellant. Mark T. Quinlivan, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom William D. Weinreb, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee. May 16, 2018 THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. We have before us a case of déjà vu: an all too familiar argument that we have rejected in at least three prior decisions. Not to beat a dead horse, but today, adhering to our precedent, we necessarily reject the argument once more. Luis López pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession with intent to distribute heroin. The Probation Office for the District of Massachusetts (the "Probation Office") determined that López was subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years imprisonment under the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA") because he had previously been convicted of at least three qualifying ACCA predicate offenses. Before us, López challenges the sufficiency of his prior convictions to serve as ACCA predicates, alleging that direction from the Supreme Court requires us to revisit existing First Circuit precedent. We find no intervening law that alters the validity of our prior decisions concerning ACCA predicate offenses and thus affirm his sentence. A. Getting Our Factual Bearings We won't dwell on the circumstances leading to López's most recent arrest and convictions because they are undisputed. López's objections focus instead on five prior Massachusetts convictions identified by the Probation Office that qualify as "serious drug offense[s]" or "violent feloni[es]" as defined by ACCA. Our recitation of the facts therefore follows López's lead - 2 - and only briefly addresses the circumstances leading to his most recent convictions. We then shift gears, focusing primarily on the Probation Office's presentence report ("PSR") and the district court's subsequent sentencing determination. 1. López's Most Recent Criminal Convictions The New Bedford, Massachusetts police department executed a search warrant on López's girlfriend's residence on December 31, 2014, following an investigation indicating that López was selling heroin at the house. Although López initially denied the presence of anything illegal, he eventually told the officers he was hiding heroin and a pistol. Officers found three individually packaged bags of heroin and several Percocet pills in López's jeans pocket, in addition to four grams of heroin elsewhere in the house. Police also recovered a loaded Glock 9mm with sixteen rounds of ammunition in the magazine. The pistol was traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and was determined to have been reported stolen in North Carolina three months earlier. On March 17, 2016, a federal grand jury in the District of Massachusetts returned an indictment charging López with being a felon in possession of a firearm in ...
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