Julius Augillard v. United States

Numerous provisions of federal law impose consequences based on prior state criminal convictions. To determine which state convictions constitute valid predicates, the Court has long used the categorical approach, comparing the elements of the state statute of conviction with the relevant federal standard. If the state offense is identical to (or narrower than) the federal standard, there is a categorical match, and the state offense can serve as a valid predicate. But if the state offense criminalizes conduct that falls outside the federal standard, the prior conviction is not a valid predicate under the categorical approach. Ten circuits hold that the statutory text itself can establish that a state offense is categorically broader than the relevant federal definition. The Fifth Circuit alone requires a defendant to identify an actual case in which the State prosecuted the broader conduct, statutory text notwithstanding. The question presented is: Whether, under the categorical approach, a defendant must always produce an actual case to demonstrate a state statute’s overbreadth, even when the state statute is facially broader than the federal standard.