| The Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant's sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and unlawful possession of a firearm as a previously convicted felon. The district court concluded that defendant was subject to an enhanced sentence for the firearm conviction under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) because he had sustained at least three prior convictions for a "serious drug offense." The prior convictions at issue arose from charges that defendant sold drugs in Missouri on three occasions in 1996. The court concluded that defendant's collateral attack on the Missouri convictions was foreclosed by Custis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485, 487 (1994), which held that a defendant has no right to collaterally attack prior convictions in the course of his federal sentencing proceeding. The court also concluded that, even assuming for the sake of analysis that defendant's offenses of conviction required only a mental state of recklessness, the district court did not plainly err by counting them as serious drug offenses under the ACCA. Therefore, the district court did not commit plain error by ruling that defendant's convictions in Missouri were qualifying predicate offenses. |
