Ninth Circuit: Marroquin v. Garland

 

Given the identical punishments, the structure of the statute tends to suggest that the two proscribed acts are two means of committing the same offense, rather than two distinct offenses, and no caselaw or charging documents in the present case indicate a certainty to the contrary.  Intervening higher authority allows the present panel to overrule a circuit decision to the contrary that was based entirely on the statute's phasing in the disjunctive.  As the offense is more broad than the generic crime, the law is not a valid immigration predicate aggravated felony.


DISSENT:


Under the state's law, principals and accessories after the fact are mutually exclusive roles that inherently require different elements of proof.  Charging document establishes that petitioner was convicted as a principal.



https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/08/18/18-72922.pdf