United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 21-3879 ___________________________ United States of America lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee v. Donte Kent lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids ____________ Submitted: May 10, 2022 Filed: August 10, 2022 ____________ Before ERICKSON, MELLOY, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. ____________ MELLOY, Circuit Judge. Donte Kent pleaded guilty to possessing a controlled substance with intent to distribute and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court1 determined 1 The Honorable C.J. Williams, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Iowa. that Mr. Kent was a career offender under § 4B1.1 of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines because he had at least two prior convictions for crimes of violence or controlled substance offenses. Because we find that Mr. Kent’s conviction for interference with official acts inflicting bodily injury constitutes a crime of violence, we affirm. I. Section 4B1.1 provides for higher base offense levels for certain defendants who have at least two prior felony convictions for crimes of violence or controlled substance offenses. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1(a). As relevant here, a federal or state offense is a crime of violence if it is punishable by more than one year of imprisonment and “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another” (the “force clause”). U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a). To determine if a crime satisfies the force clause, we apply the categorical approach. United States v. Roman, 917 F.3d 1043, 1045–46 (8th Cir. 2019). Under the categorical approach, we look to the elements of the crime, as listed in the statute, rather than the acts a defendant committed to satisfy those elements. United States v. Schneider, 905 F.3d 1088, 1090 (8th Cir. 2018). “Elements” are those “things the prosecution must prove to sustain a conviction.” Id. (quoting Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. 500, 504 (2016)). If the elements of a crime can only be satisfied by conduct involving physical force, that crime is a crime of violence. Id. But “[i]f any—even the least culpable—of the acts criminalized do not entail that kind of force, the statute of conviction does not categorically match the federal standard” and the crime is not a crime of violence. Borden v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 1817, 1822 (2021) (Kagan, J., plurality opinion). Our analysis is more complicated when we are confronted with a statute that lists elements in the alternative. See Mathis, 579 U.S. at 505. These statutes—called “divisible” statutes— define multiple crimes. Id. In a case where a defendant has committed a crime under a divisible statute, we must first determine which crime he -2- committed by identifying which set of elements he satisfied. Id. This is called the “modified categorical approach.” Under the modified categorical approach, we “look[] to a limited class of documents (for example, the indictment, jury instructions, or plea agreement and colloquy) to determine what crime, with what elements, …
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