Page:Denard Stokeling v. United States.pdf/22

Rh “[a]ny degree of force suffices to convert larceny into a robbery,” McCloud, 335 So. 2d, at 258–and thus making robbers out of thieves who use minimal force–Florida expands its law beyond the line that Johnson drew. The least culpable conduct proscribed by Fla. Stat. §812.13 does not entail “physical force,” §924(e)(2)(B)(i), as this Court properly construed that phrase in Johnson.

The purpose underlying the ACCA confirms that a robbery statute that sweeps as broadly as Florida’s does not qualify as an ACCA predicate.

As noted above, the ACCA prescribes a 15-year mandatory-minimum prison term for anyone convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm so long as that person has three qualifying past convictions. In Begay v. United States, 553 U. S. 137 (2008), this Court explained that, “[a]s suggested by its title, the Armed Career Criminal Act focuses upon the special danger created when a particular type of offender–a violent criminal or drug trafficker–possesses a gun.” Id., at 146. The ACCA, that is to say, does not look to past crimes simply to get a sense of whether a particular defendant is generally a recidivist; rather, it looks to past crimes to determine specifically “the kind or degree of danger the offender would pose were he to possess a gun.” Ibid.

Begay considered whether a New Mexico felony conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) qualified as an ACCA predicate under the now-defunct residual clause. See id., at 141–142. Felony DUI, the Court explained, did not fit with the types of crimes that Congress was trying to capture, because while it “reveal[ed] a degree of callousness toward risk,” it did not “show an increased likelihood that the offender is the kind of person who might deliberately point [a] gun and pull the trigger.” Id., at 146. The Court had “no reason to believe that