United States v. Slade, No. 16-30150 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit vacated defendant's sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. In this case, the district court treated defendant's prior conviction under Washington's second-degree assault statute, Revised Code of Washington section 9A.36.021, as a crime of violence under the Sentencing Guidelines. State court documents from the prior conviction demonstrated that defendant had pleaded guilty to violating section 9A.36.021(1)(c), assault with a deadly weapon. The panel held that this case was controlled by its recent decision in United States v. Robinson, 869 F.3d 933 (9th Cir. 2017), in which the panel held that section 9A.36.021 is not a crime of violence under the Sentencing Guidelines. The panel explained that section 9A.36.021 criminalizes conduct that does not meet the generic federal definition of crime of violence and was not divisible. The panel concluded that United States v. Jennen, 596 F.3d 594 (9th Cir. 2010), was overruled. Accordingly, the court remanded for resentencing.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel vacated a sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm, and remanded for resentencing, in a case in which the district court treated the defendant’s prior conviction under Washington’s second-degree assault statute, Revised Code of Washington section 9A.36.021, as a “crime of violence” under the United States Sentencing Guidelines. The panel held that United States v. Jennen, 596 F.3d 594 (9th Cir. 2010), in which this court affirmed a sentence when the district court had treated a prior conviction under section 9A.36.021(1)(c) as a crime of violence, has been effectively overruled by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Descamps v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (2013), and Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016). Applying United States v. Robinson, 869 F.3d 933 (9th Cir. 2017), the panel wrote that section 9A.36.021 criminalizes conduct that does not meet the generic federal definition of crime of violence and is not divisible. The panel concluded that the district court therefore erred in applying the modified categorical approach and in determining that the defendant’s prior conviction constituted a crime of violence, which caused the district court to miscalculate the defendant’s base offense level and Guidelines range.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.