United States v. Geozos, No. 17-35018 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's order denying defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion and remanded with instructions to vacate defendant's sentence. The district court sentenced defendant under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e), finding that defendant had five convictions that qualified as violent felonies. However, the district court failed to specify whether it found each of those convictions qualified under the residual clause of the statute, the force clause, or both. In this case, the panel held that defendant's new 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion relied on the rule announced in Johnson v. United States (Johnson II), 135 S. Ct. 2551, 2563 (2015), and thus he may bring his motion under one of the narrow exceptions to the bar on second or successive section 2255 motions. The panel also held that any reliance by the sentencing court on the now-invalidated residual clause of ACCA was not harmless, because at least three of his convictions did not qualify as violent felonies under any of the remaining valid ACCA clauses. Because defendant has already been in prison longer than the statutory maximum sentence for a non-ACCA-enhanced conviction under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), the district shall direct that defendant be released from custody immediately.
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