United States v. Reyes, No. 10-1400-cr (2d Cir. August 29, 2012) (Katzmann, Wesley, CJJ, Underhill, DJ) (per curiam)
Closing the question left open by United States v. Rosa, 507 F.3d 142, 156 (2d Cir. 2007), this per curiam opinion concludes that it was plain error for the district court to rely solely on the presentence report’s uncontested description of a prior offense in determining whether the defendant was a career offender, where the statute of conviction described some offenses that met the definition of crime of violence and some that did not. Even where the defendant does not contest the PSR’s factual description of the prior offense, the “modified categorical approach” still requires more. The PSR, after all, described only what the defendant did, not what he was convicted of. The circuit accordingly vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing to give the government the “opportunity to introduce evidence demonstrating that” the prior conviction was indeed for a crime of violence.
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