Supreme Court finds snatching a necklace qualifies as violent felony

WASHINGTON >> Purse snatching and pickpocketing can amount to violent felonies for purposes of a federal law, the Supreme Court ruled today in a 5-4 decision featuring unusual alliances.

The case concerned the Armed Career Criminal Act, a federal law that is a kind of three-strikes statute. It requires mandatory 15-year sentences for people convicted of possessing firearms if they have earlier been found guilty of three violent felonies or serious drug charges.

Figuring out what qualifies as one of those earlier offenses is not always easy. Today’s decision considered a part of the law that defined violent felonies to include offenses involving the use or threat of physical force. The question in the case was whether minimal force, as in a purse snatching, is enough.

In analyzing whether given crimes qualify as violent felonies under the federal law, the Supreme Court does not look to what the defendant actually did. Rather, it considers whether the crime — in this case, robbery under Florida law — covers conduct that does not qualify as a violent felony.

The case involved Denard Stokeling, who pleaded guilty to possessing a gun after burglarizing the Tongue & Cheek restaurant in Miami Beach, where he worked. After he was identified based on surveillance video and witness statements, police found a gun in his backpack. He was prosecuted on federal gun charges.

Stokeling had three earlier convictions, and prosecutors invoked the sentencing law to argue he should serve a much longer prison term than the one the gun charge would ordinarily have warranted.

Stokeling objected, saying that one of his convictions, for robbery in Florida state court arising from a snatched necklace, did not amount to a violent felony. That meant, he said, that he should face only a maximum sentence of 10 years rather than a minimum sentence of 15 years.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said Stokeling’s robbery conviction counted as a violent felony for purposes of the federal law. The Florida law required proof the victim resisted, he wrote, and that was enough.

“The force necessary to overcome a victim’s physical resistance is inherently ‘violent,’” Thomas wrote.

“This is true because robbery that must overpower a victim’s will — even a feeble or weak-willed victim — necessarily involves a physical confrontation and struggle,” Thomas wrote. “The altercation need not cause pain or injury or even be prolonged; it is the physical contest between the criminal and the victim that is itself ‘capable of causing physical pain or injury.’”

The quoted phrase came from a 2010 decision, Johnson v. United States, that concluded that convictions under Florida’s battery statute did not qualify as violent felonies for purposes of the federal sentencing law.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who generally votes with the court’s liberal wing in closely divided cases, joined the majority opinion today, as did Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying the majority opinion could not be reconciled with the 2010 decision or the reality of how little force is required to be convicted of robbery under the Florida law.

“A pickpocket who attempts to pull free after the victim catches his arm” qualifies, she wrote. “A thief who grabs a bag from a victim’s shoulder also commits Florida robbery, so long as the victim instinctively holds on to the bag’s strap for a moment.”

Sotomayor added that locking up such offenders for long periods does not advance public safety. “Under Florida law, ‘robbers’ can be glorified pickpockets, shoplifters and purse snatchers,” she wrote.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the dissent in the case, Stokeling v. United States, No. 17-5554, as did Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

Had the court ruled for Stokeling, Thomas wrote, convictions under at least 31 state robbery laws would have become ineligible to serve as qualifying offenses under the federal sentencing law.

Sotomayor questioned the accuracy of that statement and said earlier decisions from the court had already substantially narrowed the scope of the sentencing law. “The majority, fearful for the camel, errs in blaming the most recent straw,” she wrote.