v.
Stanley Silva
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 19-1082
___________________________
United States of America
lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee
v.
Stanley William Silva
lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Western District of Missouri - Springfield
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Submitted: November 12, 2019
Filed: December 13, 2019
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Before SHEPHERD, GRASZ, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
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KOBES, Circuit Judge.
Stanley William Silva pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm as a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The district court1 found he was a career Circuit Court Order, dated February 15, 2000, entering judgment against him on a guilty plea of “Burglary & Larceny,” and “sentenc[ing him] to serve a term of twenty- five (25) years” in prison, suspending 15 years. Second, an indictment, dated October 25, 1999, to which he pleaded “guilty as charged,” charging him with “willfully, feloniously and burglariously break[ing] and enter[ing] a certain dwelling . . . with the felonious and burglarious intent to take, steal, and carry away [] goods, chattels and personal property . . . .” Third, a notice of criminal disposition to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, dated February 24, 2000, recording a single conviction for “Burglary & Larceny.” No document references the statute of conviction.
[*994]The district court did not commit clear error in deciding that Silva was convicted for violating § 97-17-23. The indictment tracks the language of that statute by describing his crime as breaking into a dwelling, not one of the other structures listed in § 97-17-33(1) and the judgment notes that he pleaded “guilty as charged” in the indictment. Plus, his 25-year sentence is only possible under § 97-17-23.
Although Silva has not offered any other explanation for his conviction and sentence, he argues against “reasoning backward” in this way. Specifically, Silva claims that determining the statute of conviction based on the sentence and language in the indictment and plea does not comport with “‘Taylor’s demand for certainty’ when determining whether a defendant was convicted of a generic offense.” Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2257 (2016) (quoting Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 21 (2005)). However, the “demand for certainty” refers to our need to be certain, when applying the modified categorical approach, that a given conviction represents a finding that a defendant committed the generic version of a crime. The modified categorical approach is separate from the factual inquiry into the statutory basis of a conviction that is at issue here. Twiggs, 678 F.3d at 676. In this context, we affirm if the district court did not clearly err, even though records may not establish the statute of conviction “with complete clarity.” Id. at 675.
[*995]The documents reviewed by the district court show that Silva broke into a dwelling and committed the crime of larceny. That conduct is criminalized by Miss. Code § 97-17-23. The elements of § 97-17-23 describe the generic offense of burglary. Therefore, the district court correctly classified Silva as a career offender and his sentence is affirmed. ______________________________
[*996]