Higdon v. United States

Higdon pled guilty as a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 15 years in prison as an armed career criminal based in part on a 1984 North Carolina conviction for discharging a firearm into an occupied structure. The offense requires an application of force to an occupied structure, but not to the occupants themselves. Higdon did not appeal but moved to set aside his sentence after the Supreme Court invalidated the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause. The Sixth Circuit reversed, finding that the offense was not a “violent felony” under the Act's remaining provisions because it does not involve the use “of physical force against the person of another,” 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(2)(B)(i). Under the North Carolina statute, the projectile can miss the structure’s occupants altogether—with no physical force applied to the person of anyone—and yet the shooting can satisfy all the elements of the offense. The elements might satisfy a requirement that the defendant act recklessly, but that requirement is separate from the one that the force be used “against the person of another.” View "Higdon v. United States" on Justia Law