CRIMINAL DEFENSE: Quarles v. United States (2019) - When must intent start with "Remaining In Burglary"?

Hi, James Polk here with Apex Law Service. www.ApexLawService.com is our website and we do outsourced paralegal work in the criminal defense arena for Attorneys who hire us to find Clients who need to defend themselves against criminal charges. If you’re a Client and you need to hire an Attorney you can hire us first and then what we do is we do paralegal hours at a lower rate than most Law Firms. We charge $150 an hour whereas most Law Firms charge up to $280 dollars an hour. The Attorneys charge $300 to $350 an hour depending on if it’s the main Attorney or an Associate Attorney.

In VERY short (lol), intent for remaining in burglary does not have to be formulated before or at the moment of remaining in, but can be formulated at any point while remaining in. The basic issue is that though Common Law Burglary had a requirement for there to be simultaneous or preformulated intent to commit a crime inside of the dwelling place of another while breaking in at night, Generic Burglary has not in all Jurisdictions Statutorily included the preformulated or simultaneously formulated intent requirement. Formulation of intent to commit a crime once inside the dwelling place of another is sufficient for the prima facie intent requirement for Generic Burglary. Quarles v. United States answers the question about intent based on an analysis of the sentencing element with respect to prior convictions in an ACCA (Armed Career Criminal Act) analysis of a current sentencing case where Quarles was convicted of being a “Felon in Possession of a Firearm”. I packed a lot into this paragraph. I will unpack and explain below.

One main part of the reasoning in the Supreme Court decision is the fact that the creating of the crime of “remaining in” burglary was done to close a loophole of a sort with respect to the entry component of Burglary. Burglary is categorically a “Violent Crime” as per the 1986 ACCA, even if no assaultive crime occurs inside the building. The reason is that there is a high probability of a violent confrontation upon discovery of the perpetrator regardless of whether the intent to commit a crime was preformulated before the B&E, simultaneously formulated contemporaneously along with the B&E, or formulated once inside whether through B&E or remaining in. So, the inclusion of Burglary by the Congress in a category of “Violent Crimes” is used by the Supreme Court as the reason for why the intent could be formulated after the B&E or after the remaining in. It simply does not make sense that the Congress would categorize Burglary as a Violent Crime covered under the ACCA, but then write the ACCA in a way so as to not include the different State Burglary Statutes.

Though a valiant effort on part of the Appellant’s Counsel, the argument that the crime of remaining in burglary did not count as a violent crime for the purposes of ACCA Sentencing because of the ex-post facto formulation of intent after the initial remaining in is simply just not the Statutory Intent of Congress. This was a unanimous Supreme Court decision and much of the dicta along with the opinions expressed by the different justices has to do with the societal reasoning behind WHY burglary is considered a violent crime.

The links below are links to synopsis and full copies of the Supreme Court Case:

We look forward to helping you go through this very touchy situation and we look forward to getting you all the way through and helping you move on with your life out and past this situation. Thank you for tuning in to www.ApexLawService.com.

Regards,

James F. Polk

Senior Administrative Coordinating Paralegal for Apex Law Service

657-234-2232