Eighth Circuit Says Minnesota Third-Degree Murder Counts As Guidelines Crime Of Violence

What happened

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the sentence of Dymond Rene Hayden on Monday, rejecting his argument that a Minnesota third-degree murder conviction should not count as a crime of violence under the federal sentencing guidelines.

The published per curiam opinion held that Minnesota third-degree murder falls within the guidelines' enumerated-offenses clause because it qualifies as generic murder. That ruling preserved the district court's guideline calculation for Hayden's conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Hayden pleaded guilty to violating the federal felon-in-possession statute and challenged his sentence on appeal. The district court treated his 2012 Minnesota third-degree murder conviction as a crime of violence, which set his base offense level at 20 under the firearms guideline; without a qualifying prior conviction, the base offense level would have been 14.

The appellate panel said the guidelines define a crime of violence to include offenses that either satisfy the force clause or match one of several enumerated offenses, including murder. Because the clauses are disjunctive, the court began and ended its analysis with the enumerated-offenses clause.

To decide what counts as murder, the panel adopted the Third Circuit's definition of generic murder from United States v. Marrero, joining several other circuits that have used that formulation. Under that definition, generic murder includes causing death intentionally, during a dangerous felony, or through conduct showing reckless and depraved indifference to serious dangers to human life.

Minnesota third-degree murder substantially corresponds to that definition, the court said, because both the state offense and generic murder cover what is commonly called depraved-heart murder, or causing death through extreme recklessness. The Minnesota statute reaches a person who causes another's death through an eminently dangerous act evincing a depraved mind and disregard for human life.

Because the Minnesota offense qualified as generic murder under the enumerated-offenses clause, the panel said the district court correctly calculated Hayden's guideline range. The court therefore did not decide whether the offense would also qualify under the force clause.