Lakeith Lynn Washington v. United States

Petitioner Lakeith Lynn Washington was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) to 180 months of imprisonment, despite the fact that the indictment never charged, no jury ever found, and he never admitted that he incurred three qualifying convictions committed on separate occasions. Although this conviction was initially affirmed by the court of appeals, this Court granted Petitioner’s prior petition for certiorari, vacated the prior opinion of the court of appeals, and remanded the case to the court of appeals for reconsideration in light of Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024). On remand, however, the court of appeals applied the harmless error test from Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 25 (1999), and again affirmed. Mr. Washington asks whether, as several courts of appeal have held, all Apprendi errors including Erlinger violations should be treated as trial errors subject to the harmless-error test from Neder, or, whether, as the Third Circuit has held, at least some Apprendi errors should be treated as sentencing errors and evaluated under the harmless-error test from Parker v. Dugger, 498 U.S. 308 (1991)?