Descamps v. United States
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
The other citing opinions followed or applied Descamps, described its treatment of older precedent, rejected party arguments without limiting the decision, were vacated, or used nearby treatment language about unrelated authorities.
2,973 later cases cite Descamps v. United States; 249 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Descamps v. United States?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Limited
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The Eleventh Circuit confined Descamps to determining whether a conviction qualifies under the ACCA and held that it does not govern the separate-occasions inquiry.
United States v. Broomfield · Eleventh Circuit · filed
Broomfield’s argument that Descamps abrogated our precedent is unavailing. Descamps dealt only with whether a sentencing court may use the modified categorical approach to ascertain whether a conviction is a qualifying offense under the ACCA when the statute under which the defendant was convicted has a single, indivisible set of elements. Descamps, 570 U.S. at ___, 133 S. Ct. at 2283-93. Because Descamps does not address the separate-occasions inquiry, it does not overrule our precedent on that subject.
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The Eleventh Circuit held that Descamps could not open the Section 2241 savings-clause portal because it had not been made retroactive on collateral review.
Nipper v. Warden, FCC Coleman—Medium · Eleventh Circuit · filed
Nipper may not “open the portal” to a § 2241 petition based on Descamps. Neither the Supreme Court nor this Court has held that Descamps applies retroactively on collateral review. Beyond that, Descamps was decided in the context of a direct appeal, and the Supreme Court has not since applied it to a case on collateral review.
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The Fourth Circuit held that Descamps did not displace Almendarez-Torres or bar a sentencing court from determining the existence of qualifying prior convictions.
United States v. Doe · Fourth Circuit · filed
Descamps, however, does not aid Doe. First it was permissible for the district court to determine that he had the requisite prior convictions. In this regard, Descamps did not overrule Almendarez–Torres v. United States.
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The Fourth Circuit confined Descamps to identifying violent felonies under the ACCA categorical approach and placed the separate-occasions inquiry outside its rationale.
United States v. Span · Fourth Circuit · filed
The question of whether a defendant’s predicate convictions were committed on different occasions under the ACCA more likely involves an altogether separate assessment outside of the strictures of the Descamps rationale.
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The California Court of Appeal held that Descamps does not apply to judicial factfinding about eligibility for ameliorative resentencing under the Three Strikes Reform Act.
People v. Winn · California Court of Appeal, First District, Division Five · filed
As the appellate courts of this state have repeatedly ruled, however, Apprendi and Descamps do not apply to factual determinations affecting a petitioner’s eligibility for resentencing under the Reform Act, because section 1170.126 is not a sentence enhancing provision, but a sentence ameliorating provision that can only decrease a defendant’s sentence.
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The Eleventh Circuit held that Descamps did not displace precedent allowing Shepard documents to determine whether ACCA predicates occurred on different occasions.
United States v. Robinson · Eleventh Circuit · filed
And neither Descamps nor Johnson abrogated that holding, as those decisions concerned issues distinct from the different-occasions inquiry.
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The Fifth Circuit held that Descamps did not recognize a new right and therefore could not restart the one-year limitation period for an initial Section 2255 motion.
United States v. Morgan · Fifth Circuit · filed
We hold that Descamps did not restart the clock because, even though Morgan filed his motion within a year of Descamps, the right Morgan asserts was not newly recognized by Descamps.
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The Eleventh Circuit held that a Descamps-based challenge does not trigger Section 2255's one-year collateral-review limitation period.
Daniel v. United States · Eleventh Circuit · filed
In Beeman, which we decided after the district court denied Daniel’s second motion to vacate, we held that a claim based on Descamps does not trigger the one-year period of limitation, 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f), but that a claim based on Johnson does trigger the limitations period and is timely if brought within one year of the issuance of the opinion. ... Daniel’s challenge to his prior convictions for armed robbery serving as predicate offenses under the elements clause, which is a Descamps claim, was untimely.
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The Seventh Circuit held that Descamps could not supply the retroactively applicable Supreme Court rule required to open collateral review under Section 2255.
Sotelo v. United States · Seventh Circuit · filed
Because only the Supreme Court can declare which new rules of constitutional law are retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review in the second or successive habeas motion context, Mathis, Descamps, and Johnson 2010 cannot provide the foundation that satisfies the gatekeeping requirements for a § 2255(h)(2) motion.
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The Eastern District of California confined Descamps to ACCA statutory interpretation and declined to extend it to invalidate California judicial factfinding under the Sixth Amendment.
Hale v. Asuncion · E.D. Cal. · filed
Descamps, however, only “clarified application of the modified categorical approach in light of existing precedent.” ... “Descamps is a statutory interpretation case: It clarifies when certain crimes qualify as violent felonies under the ACCA [Armed Career Criminal Act], a congressional enactment.” ... Descamps did not “impose a new obligation nor did it break new ground” nor did it announce a new rule of constitutional law.
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The Western District of Virginia held that Descamps did not announce a retroactively applicable substantive change and therefore could not support savings-clause relief under Section 2241.
Smith v. Brecken · W.D. Va. · filed
Smith’s reliance on Descamps and Mathis is similarly misplaced. Neither of those decisions announced a retroactively applicable substantive change in the law.
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The California Court of Appeal declined to extend Descamps to bar using a prior juvenile adjudication to enhance an adult sentence.
People v. Arce · California Court of Appeal · filed
Defendant maintains that Nguyen was wrongly decided and has since been eroded by People v. Gallardo (2017) 4 Cal.5th 120, Mathis v. United States (2016) 136 S.Ct. 2243, and Descamps v. United States (2013) 570 U.S. 254. These cases have not overruled Nguyen or analyzed the propriety of a sentencing court’s use of a prior juvenile adjudication to increase a sentence in an adult criminal trial.
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The California Court of Appeal declined to extend Descamps to prohibit an adult sentence enhancement based on a prior juvenile adjudication.
People v. Sumlin · California Court of Appeal · filed
although Gallardo, Mathis, and Descamps all disapprove judicial factfinding by a sentencing court to determine whether the defendant suffered a qualifying prior conviction when that issue is unclear from the fact of the conviction itself, none of those cases calls into question Nguyen’s holding that a sentencing court may impose a sentence enhancement based on a prior juvenile adjudication, despite the lack of right to a jury trial in that proceeding
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The California Court of Appeal declined to extend Descamps to prohibit an adult sentence enhancement based on a prior juvenile adjudication.
People v. Rico · California Court of Appeal · filed
In 2016, after Mathis and Descamps were decided, the California Supreme Court addressed Nguyen, rejecting defendant’s argument that his juvenile adjudications were inadmissible as prior convictions under Apprendi and refusing to reconsider Nguyen. ... We agree with this analysis. Accordingly, we reject Smith’s contention that the trial court erred by using his juvenile adjudication to enhance his sentence.
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The California Court of Appeal declined to extend Descamps's ACCA elements-only rule to prevent a court from considering admitted facts when deciding whether a prior conviction was a strike under California law.
People v. Billie · California Court of Appeal · filed
Contrary to appellant’s claim, Descamps did not prohibit the trial court from looking beyond the elements of his prior offense in determining whether it constituted a strike under California law.
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The Eleventh Circuit declined to extend Descamps to the ACCA different-occasions inquiry.
United States v. Doctor · Eleventh Circuit · filed
In any event, Descamps and Mathis decided different issues. They held that a district court may not use Shepard documents in determining whether a prior conviction qualifies as a violent felony where that conviction was for violating an indivisible statute with a single set of nondisjunctive elements. See Descamps, 570 U.S. at 260; Mathis, 136 S. Ct. at 2253–54. Neither case was about whether prior convictions occurred on different occasions for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act.
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The Ninth Circuit held that Descamps would not apply retroactively in the gross-miscarriage-of-justice inquiry used for a collateral attack in removal proceedings.
Bonete-Lema v. Garland · Ninth Circuit · filed
Therefore, we do not apply Descamps retroactively to our “gross miscarriage of justice” inquiry.
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The Middle District of Florida declined to extend Descamps to the ACCA different-occasions inquiry and followed circuit law permitting review of Shepard documents for that inquiry.
Bargeron v. United States · M.D. Fla. · filed
Nor does Longoria obviously conflict with the United States Supreme Court’s holdings in Descamps, 133 S. Ct. 2276, and Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), neither of which addressed the ACCA’s different-occasions inquiry.
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The California Court of Appeal declined to extend Descamps to require a jury to determine the bare fact of a prior conviction used for a recidivist enhancement.
People v. Sims · California Court of Appeal · filed
Gallardo fully considered Apprendi, Descamps, and Mathis and nonetheless expressly reaffirmed the trial court may determine the fact of a prior conviction without infringing on the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights.
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The Eleventh Circuit declined to extend Descamps to the ACCA different-occasions inquiry.
United States v. Jones · Eleventh Circuit · filed
But “[n]either Descamps nor Mathis,” we explained, was “clearly on point as neither case deal[t] with the different-occasions inquiry.” Id. (citing Mathis, 136 S. Ct. at 2253 and Descamps, 570 U.S. at 257–58).
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The Seventh Circuit declined to extend Descamps to require a jury finding on whether ACCA predicates occurred on separate occasions.
United States v. Gamez · Seventh Circuit · filed
Gamez asks us to overrule Elliott in light of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. 254 (2013), Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. 500 (2016), and United States v. Wooden, 142 S. Ct. 1063 (2022), which he believes call Almendarez-Torres into question. We rejected an identical challenge to the separate occasions inquiry in a decision published after Gamez filed this appeal. In United States v. Hatley, we concluded that these same Supreme Court decisions had “not overruled or limited Almendarez-Torres,” and we recognized that other circuits agree.
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The Sixth Circuit expressly refused to extend Descamps's elements-means restriction to the ACCA different-occasions inquiry.
United States v. Schumaker · Sixth Circuit · filed
In Hennessee, we explicitly refused to import Descamps and Mathis’s elements-means distinction or elemental-facts restriction to our occasions-different analysis because “such a restriction would not make sense[.]”
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