United States v. Benton, No. 19-7471 (4th Cir. 2022)
Annotate this CaseThe Fourth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of defendant's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion seeking to vacate his sentence. The district court found that defendant qualified as an armed career criminal by relying on prior convictions that were not identified as predicates in defendant's presentence report and of which he had no notice at sentencing. The court concluded that the district court's finding was contrary to United States v. Hodge, 902 F.3d 420 (4th Cir. 2018), which held that the government cannot rely on collateral review on ACCA predicates that were not identified at sentencing, in order to preserve an enhancement that no longer can be sustained by the original predicates. Because there was a Hodge violation in this case, the court vacated defendant's 18 U.S.C. 922(g) sentence and remanded for resentencing.
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