Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
A jury convicted Keelon Jmar Senegal on eight counts arising from a bank robbery and its coverup. For two felon-in-possession counts, the district court applied the Armed Career Criminal Act based on Senegal’s prior cocaine-trafficking conviction and two Texas robbery convictions. It imposed concurrent 360-month sentences on those counts, along with sentences on the other counts that included two consecutive life terms.
After Johnson v. United States invalidated ACCA’s residual clause, Senegal pursued successive relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The Fifth Circuit initially concluded that the sentencing court more likely than not had relied on the residual clause, but deemed the error harmless under circuit precedent treating part of the Texas robbery statute as satisfying ACCA’s elements clause. Later Texas and Fifth Circuit decisions established that the Texas robbery statute was indivisible and undermined that harmless-error analysis. The Fifth Circuit recalled its mandate, appointed counsel, and reheard the case.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit held that Senegal’s ACCA-enhanced sentences on Counts 4SS and 8SS were unconstitutional. The legal landscape at the time of sentencing showed that the district court more likely than not relied on ACCA’s invalid residual clause, and the intervening decisions concerning Texas robbery left no alternative basis for finding that error harmless.
The majority declined to apply the concurrent-sentence doctrine or entertain the government’s procedural-default defense, which the government had not raised in the district court. It also declined Senegal’s request for a full resentencing under the sentencing-package doctrine because he had not shown that the challenged sentences were interdependent with the sentences on his other counts. The court therefore vacated only the sentences on Counts 4SS and 8SS and remanded for resentencing solely on those counts. Judge Willett dissented, reasoning that the court should have considered the government’s forfeited procedural-default defense and affirmed the denial of relief.
Key Takeaways
- An ACCA sentence cannot stand when the sentencing court more likely than not relied on the residual clause invalidated by Johnson and no valid alternative predicate makes the error harmless.
- After Texas clarified that robbery by threat and robbery by injury are alternative methods of committing one indivisible offense, prior Fifth Circuit precedent treating the statute as divisible no longer supported Senegal’s enhancements.
- Relief was limited to the two ACCA-enhanced counts because Senegal did not establish that those sentences were interdependent with his remaining sentences, including two consecutive life terms.
Why It Matters
The decision shows that intervening state-court interpretations of a predicate statute can eliminate an earlier harmless-error rationale and reopen the path to Johnson relief. It also illustrates the Fifth Circuit’s discretion to decline a procedural-default defense first raised on appeal.
At the same time, the limited remand underscores that successfully challenging some sentences in a multicount case does not automatically entitle a defendant to wholesale resentencing. The defendant must show that the affected and unaffected sentences formed an interdependent sentencing package.