Perry v. United States

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge.

Eight years into a lengthy prison term, petitioner Gregory T. Perry sought to invalidate his 2007 sentence for a drug offense as unconstitutional. Perry was sentenced as a career offender under the Sentencing Guidelines. Until 2016, the career offender guideline, U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a), used a definition of a “crime of violence” that included a “residual clause” that mirrored the “violent felony” definition in the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B). In 2015, the Supreme Court struck down the statutory residual clause as unconstitutionally vague.…