United States v. Ratcliff

In United States v. Ratcliff, No. 24-30192 (5th Cir. Feb. 26, 2025) (unpublished), the Fifth Circuit vacated the defendant’s sentence for possessing a machinegun in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) because there was insufficient proof that his possession of the gun facilitated his possession of a stolen vehicle.

Background: Officers responded to a report of multiple armed people at an apartment complex. Once there, they arrested one man they saw carrying a rifle. They then located Ratcliff sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, and they ordered him to move to their patrol car. As Ratcliff entered their car, officers saw him remove a Glock Switch from his pocket and drop it. (A Glock Switch is “a conversion device that allows a pistol to function in the manner of an automatic weapon by enabling it to shoot more than one shot . . . by single function of the trigger.”).

Officers also found three pistols in the first vehicle, where Ratcliff had been sitting when they arrived. One of those guns had a Glock Switch equipped. The officers also learned that the vehicle had been reported stolen a month earlier.

Ratcliff pled guilty to possession of a machinegun, and the Probation Department prepared a series of Presentence Investigation Reports (“PSRs”) to assist the court in sentencing. In the first three version of the PSR, the Probation Department concluded that there was a “lack of strong evidence to establish that Ratcliff possessed the firearms to facilitate his illegal possession of the stolen vehicle.” But in the fourth version, Probation changed positions and recommended a four-level enhancement under USSG § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B), but it never indicated a reason to believe the firearms facilitated possession of the stolen vehicle.

At sentencing, the court adopted the final PSR, including the four-level enhancement. It specified that Ratcliff “had the potential for facilitating his illegal possession of the stolen vehicle by the fact of having the firearms on board with him in a stolen vehicle.”

Holding: “Without evidence that Ratcliff used or possessed a firearm to facilitate his possession of the stolen vehicle, the offense-level increase under § 2K2.1(b)(6)(B) is not sustainable.”

To justify that enhancement, the Government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that “the firearm ‘facilitated, or had the potential of facilitating’ another felony offense and that the defendant used or possessed the firearm in connection with that offense.” United States v. Coleman, 609 F.3d 699, 708 (5th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting United States v. Anderson, 559 F.3d 348, 357 (5th Cir. 2009)).

Here, the court relied on its recent decision in United States v. Henry, 119 F.4th 429 (5th Cir. 2024). There, too, the court rejected application of the enhancement because “other than mere proximity, there was a ‘lack of a finding of facilitation connecting [the defendant’s] possession of the gun to his possession of the car’” (quoting Henry, 119 F.4th at 436). In both cases, simultaneous possession of a firearm and a stolen vehicle was insufficient to support the enhancement.

For those reasons, the court vacated Ratcliff’s sentence and remanded the case for resentencing.