⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Sixth Circuit hears Justin Bobo’s appeal from a federal gun sentence. Bobo pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm after a felony conviction. At sentencing, the district court counted an earlier Tennessee robbery conviction toward treating him as an armed career criminal. His appeal challenges that classification, not his admission of possessing the gun. The Armed Career Criminal Act imposes a minimum fifteen-year prison term for unlawful firearm possession when a person has three qualifying prior convictions committed on different occasions. The issue here is its definition of a violent felony, which includes an offense requiring the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against another person. Actual injury is not required by that language. Tennessee defines robbery as taking property from another person by violence or by putting that person in fear. In Mitchell, the Sixth Circuit held that both alternatives meet the federal force requirement. Bobo relies on a later Tennessee Supreme Court decision, State versus Curry. Applying a different state firearms law, Curry required a jury to determine whether a particular robbery was actually committed by violence. The question is whether that decision changes the state-law understanding on which Mitchell relied. You will hear the categorical approach: comparing the legal elements of the prior offense with the federal definition, rather than retrying the old incident. A limited variation permits specified court records, often called Shepard documents, to identify which alternative offense a conviction involved. It is not an unrestricted inquiry into the defendant’s conduct. Tennessee later added robbery to its state firearms statute’s list of crimes of violence, effective July first, twenty twenty-five. That changed the state list, not the federal act. The lawyers disagree about what Curry and that amendment mean for Bobo’s sentence.

United States v. Justin Bobo (No. 26-5145) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, argued October 22, 2026.