United States v. Patrie, No. 14-2576 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseWitnesses reported seeing Patrie burglarizing his stepmother’s house. Officers executed a search warrant on Patrie’s residence and seized several firearms, including one that matched a gun stolen from a 70-year-old retiree who was murdered in 2012 when a burglar broke into his home and shot as he lay in bed. After learning of the connection, officers executed a second search warrant on Patrie’s residence and found additional guns, including two sawed-off shotguns. Patrie pled guilty to being a felon in possession of firearms, 18 U.S.C. 922(g), and to possession of sawed-off shotguns, 26 U.S.C. 5861(d). The district court found that Patrie had committed first degree murder and thus that it would be appropriate to apply the cross-reference for murder and that Patrie was an armed career criminal, and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. Patrie did not challenge the determination that he killed the man with the sawed-off shotgun or its determination that the most analogous offense for this killing was first degree murder. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, rejecting arguments that the court erred in applying the cross reference for murder and in determining he was an armed career criminal, and engaged in impermissible judicial fact-finding when determining that he was an armed career criminal.
Court Description: Shepherd, Author, with Riley, Chief Judge, and Loken, Circuit Judge] Criminal case - Sentencing. Where the district court found by a preponderance of the evidence at the sentencing hearing that during a burglary defendant had murdered the home owner with the shotgun seized from defendant's home, the district court did not err in applying a cross reference for murder to defendant's felon in possession charge; the district court did not err in determining defendant's Iowa second-degree burglary convictions were violent felonies for purposes of sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act; under this Circuit's precedents, the district court did not violate defendant's Sixth Amendment rights when it determined that he was a career offender.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on October 14, 2016.
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