Evanson v. Attorney General of United States

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding courts should use the modified categorical approach “to determine which of the alternative elements was the actual basis for the underlying conviction”
• declaring that “[a] state marijuana conviction is therefore only equivalent to a federal drug felony if the offense involved payment or more than a small amount of marijuana”
• explaining that we only apply the modified categorical approach, rather than the formal categorical approach, when “[c]onfronted with a disjunctive statute of conviction ... .”
• explaining that under Pennsylvania law, a criminal information replaces a criminal complaint as charging document
• stating that “a court applying the modified categorical approach may only consider the charging document to the extent that the petitioner was actually convicted of the charges.”
• explaining that “the criminal information, as the relevant charging document, is an appropriate record to consider,” but “a court applying the modified categorical approach may only consider the charging document to the extent that the petitioner was actually convicted of the charges”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).