Opinion · Supreme Court of the United States

Chambers v. United States

555 U.S. 122

Type
Opinion
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Date
2009-01-13
Topic
general

How later courts describe this case

  • holding that the Illinois crime of failure to report for imprisonment is not a violent felony for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act
  • holding that failure to report to prison under Illinois law is not a violent felony under ACCA
  • holding that failure to report for penal confinement is not a violent felony under ACCA
  • holding that a conviction under Illinois' failure to report for penal confinement statute is not a ''violent felony'' under the residual clause of the ACCA
  • holding that the crime of failing to report for confinement is not a “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)
  • holding that Illinois failure to report to a probation officer is not a "violent felony” under the ACCA
  • holding that passively failing to report for service of a criminal sentence is not a “violent felony”
  • holding that although there were “various kinds of failure to report” under the relevant statute, failure to report “constitut[ed] a single category”

Citator

Chambers v. United States has been questioned or limited by later authorities: relies on overruled authority: 18 U.S.C. § 924 (held unconstitutional by United States v. Davis). Read them before relying on it. 628 later decisions cite it.

Authority status
caution
Cited by
628 opinions

Headnotes

  1. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Categorical Approach For purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act's definitions, it is the generic crime that counts, not how the crime was committed on a particular occasion; courts must therefore examine the generic crime rather than the facts underlying the defendant's specific prior conviction. 555 U.S. 122, 125 (citing Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 602 (1990); Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 16–17 (2005))
  2. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Categorical Approach In applying the categorical approach, a court must choose the right category, and where a state statute places together in a single section several different kinds of behavior whose underlying conduct differs significantly, the court must treat those behaviors as separate crimes for ACCA purposes. 555 U.S. 122, 125–126 (citing Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 16–17 (2005); Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 598 (1990))
  3. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Violent Felony — Escape and Failure to Report A state statute that separately lists escape from a penal institution and failure to report to a penal institution, places them in different felony classes of different degrees of seriousness, and describes behaviors of differing aggressiveness, contains at least two separate crimes for ACCA purposes; failure to report is not the same crime as escape. 555 U.S. 122, 126–127
  4. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Violent Felony — Failure to Report Because the various statutory phrases describing failure to report or to return to penal confinement describe roughly similar forms of behavior characterized by a failure to present oneself for detention on a specified occasion, a court may treat them together as constituting a single category. 555 U.S. 122, 127 (citing James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 207–209 (2007))
  5. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Violent Felony — Residual Clause A crime of failure to report for penal confinement, which amounts to a form of inaction rather than purposeful, violent, and aggressive conduct, does not involve conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another within the meaning of ACCA's residual clause. 555 U.S. 122, 127–128 (citing Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137 (2008))
  6. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Violent Felony — Risk Assessment In determining whether a crime presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another, the relevant question is whether an offender convicted of that crime is significantly more likely than others to attack or physically resist an apprehender; an offender's aversion to penal custody is beside the point. 555 U.S. 122, 128–129
  7. Criminal Law & Procedure — Armed Career Criminal Act — Violent Felony — Risk Assessment Empirical evidence that none of 160 federal failure-to-report cases over a two-year period involved violence, and that only three instances of violence appeared in state and federal cases over a thirty-year period, shows only a statistically insignificant risk of physical violence and supports the conclusion that failure to report does not present a serious potential risk of physical injury. 555 U.S. 122, 129–130