United States v. Holloway

HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

Under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), a person convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm who also has three previous convictions for a “violent felony” is sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years in prison. The two appeals before us raise a recurring issue: whether a federal court may conclude that a conviction under Massachusetts’s simple assault and battery statute qualifies as a violent felony under the ACCA, § 924(e)(2)(B)(i), merely because the state indictment used the boilerplate language “did assault and beat.” 1

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