United States v. Stacy Haynes


In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 17-3657 STACY M. HAYNES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. Nos. 16-4106, 4:96-CR-40034-JBM-1 — Joe Billy McDade, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED JULY 6, 2018 — DECIDED AUGUST 29, 2019 ____________________ Before SYKES, HAMILTON, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Petitioner-appellant Stacy Haynes challenges three of his convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which imposes steep penalties on a defendant who uses a firearm during a “crime of violence.” Those convictions are based on Haynes’ three convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a)(2), which required proof, among other things, that he committed or attempted to commit a “crime of violence.” The crimes of violence that form the basis of Haynes’ 2 No. 17-3657 § 1952(a)(2) convictions were three armed robberies in viola- tion of the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, which is a crime of violence for purposes of § 924(c). United States v. Fox, 878 F.3d 574, 579 (7th Cir. 2017). The issue in this appeal is whether the different crimes in this nested set of charges—§ 1951 nested inside § 1952(a)(2) nested inside § 924(c)—can support the § 924(c) convictions. The district court upheld Haynes’ § 924(c) convictions be- cause the indictment and jury instructions, taken together, re- quired jurors to find each element of the Hobbs Act rob- beries—crimes of violence—at the center of the nested charg- ing scheme. Haynes v. United States, 237 F. Supp. 3d 816 (C.D. Ill. 2017). Haynes appeals, arguing both that § 1952(a)(2) is not “divisible” and that the jury did not necessarily find him guilty of the underlying Hobbs Act robberies. We agree with the district court and affirm its judgment. I. Factual and Procedural Background In Samuel Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2016), the Supreme Court held that the “residual clause” in the defini- tion of “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B), was unconstitutionally vague. Earlier, in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), the Court adopted the so-called “categorical method” to determine whether prior convictions could serve as predicate offenses under the Armed Career Criminal Act. In the wake of Johnson, federal courts have been applying the Court’s reasoning and methods to a kaleidoscopic variety of individual cases—ap- plying similar statutory and Sentencing Guideline definitions of violent crimes to predicate convictions under a host of fed- eral and state offenses arising in a wide variety of procedural postures. No. 17-3657 3 This appeal presents a particularly intricate variation on the Johnson and Taylor themes. This case began with a one- man crime wave in early 1996. In just a few weeks, Haynes robbed six stores at gunpoint in the Quad Cities region. Three robberies were in Illinois and three were in Iowa, which af- fected the government’s charging decisions and set the stage for the legal issues we address here. The indictment ...

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