In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-3664
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
A LBERT D. B URNETT,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Illinois.
No. 3:09CR30032-001-GPM—G. Patrick Murphy, Judge.
A RGUED M AY 4, 2011—D ECIDED JUNE 6, 2011
Before E ASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and F LAUM and
S YKES, Circuit Judges.
E ASTERBROOK, Chief Judge. Albert Burnett is a violent
man. He has been convicted five times of aggressive
felonies—murder, attempted murder (twice), aggravated
battery, and domestic battery—and several times of
other offenses, including twice possessing firearms
made unlawful by his status as a felon. Judges and
parole officials in Illinois have been remarkably lenient.
2 No. 10-3664
Burnett served less than four years of his sentence for
murder, a crime he committed while on parole from the
two convictions for attempted murder, before being
released again on parole. In April 2009 Burnett par-
ticipated in a shootout in Alton, Illinois. This time he
was prosecuted in federal court, where he pleaded
guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm. 18 U.S.C.
§922(g)(1). The prosecutor asked the district court to
sentence Burnett as an armed career criminal under
§924(e), which carries a 15-year minimum term. This
subsection applies to a person who commits a firearms
offense and has three previous convictions for violent
felonies or serious drug offenses.
Burnett has five prior convictions of crimes that have
violence as an element of the offense. But the district
court concluded that four of the five do not count because,
when Burnett’s parole supervision on his murder and
aggravated battery convictions expired, state officials
sent him letters saying that his civil rights to vote and
hold office had been restored automatically under Illinois
law. These letters did not tell Burnett that Illinois
does not restore to felons the right to possess fire-
arms. The omission of that information led us to hold
in Buchmeier v. United States, 581 F.3d 561 (7th Cir. 2009)
(en banc), that a letter identical to the two Illinois sent
Burnett meant that the conviction to which the letter
referred no longer counts as a violent felony. Buchmeier
interpreted §921(a)(20), which provides, among other
things, that “[w]hat constitutes a conviction of such a
crime shall be determined in accordance with the law of
the jurisdiction in which the proceedings were held. Any
No. 10-3664 3
conviction which has been expunged, or set aside or
for which a person has been pardoned or has had civil
rights restored shall not be considered a conviction
for purposes of this chapter, unless such pardon, ex-
pungement, or restoration of civil rights expressly
provides that the person may not ship, transport,
possess, or receive firearms.”
The United States contended in the district court that,
although Illinois twice sent Burnett the same letter it sent
Buchmeier, the record does not establish that Burnett
received or read the letter either time. Burnett could not
produce copies, and he does not remember whether
he received the letter (or read it, if he got it). Illinois
sends these letters by ordinary mail, so receipt could not
be documented by Burnett’s signature or that of a rela-
tive. (Illinois must have sent the letters to his mother’s
address, the only one it had on file for him.) Buchmeier
described §921(a)(20) as an anti-mousetrapping rule,
designed to ensure that persons who have been told that
all civil rights have been restored are not taken by
surprise when the statute books contain reservations
(such as a ban on possessing firearms) omitted from the
communication. 581 F.3d at 566–67. This implies, the
prosecutor contended, that only a person who can
show that he received, read, and understood a mislead-
ingly incomplete communication from the state can
take advantage of the “unless” clause in §921(a)(20).
The district court concluded, however, that §921(a)(20)
establishes an objective rule—one that depends on the
content of the communication—rather than a subjective
4 No. 10-3664
rule that depends on the extent of a recipient’s
(mis)understanding. This knocked out the murder and
aggravated battery convictions. The court also con-
cluded that the letter Burnett received when his parole
from the murder conviction expired applies to the two
earlier convictions for attempted murder as well. This
left only one qualifying conviction for a violent felony.
That is enough to support a felon-in-possession convic-
tion under §922(g) but not enough for a recidivist en-
hancement. The district court sentenced Burnett to 120
months’ imprisonment, the statutory maximum under
§922(g)(1) but 60 months below the minimum term pre-
scribed by the Armed Career Criminal Act. The United
States has appealed.
We agree with the district court that §921(a)(20) sets an
objective standard. Nothing in the statutory language
asks what a person believes. The statute asks only what
a document contains. If the document says that civil
rights have been restored but omits a firearms qualifica-
tion, then the conviction no longer counts as a violent
felony. Buchmeier used the anti-mousetrapping lan-
guage to summarize the reason why Congress wrote
§921(a)(20) to require the firearms reservation to be in
the communication—rather than, say, requiring the felon
to search the whole of state law to discover what rights
he enjoyed. But the reasons behind a statute differ from
the contents of a statute. Congress implemented its goal
by language that turns entirely on the content of the
communication. Buchmeier held that the effect of a com-
munication does not depend on state law as a whole,
and we add today that the effect also does not depend
No. 10-3664 5
on whether the recipient reads or understands the com-
munication. Section 921(a)(20) directs us to the four
corners of the document, and there we stop.
The prosecutor’s second argument is stronger, however.
The letters that the Illinois Department of Corrections
sent to Burnett begin by stating that the addressee com-
pleted his sentence (or his parole, if any) on a particular
date, and that on that date “your obligation to the De-
partment ceases.” The letter then says that the rights
to vote and hold office under the Constitution of the
State of Illinois have been restored. The inclusion of a
date that ties the letter to a single sentence implies that
rights have been restored with respect to the convictions
underlying that sentence only. This would be clear if
Burnett had been convicted of two murders and had
been pardoned for only one; the other conviction
would remain, with whatever civil disabilities it carried.
We do not see why a letter should be treated differ-
ently. Illinois makes the restoration of (some) civil
rights automatic when a sentence has been fully served.
That is a conviction-by-conviction process, and a letter
telling the ex-prisoner about this logically also applies
conviction-by-conviction.
Burnett replies (and the district judge concluded) that
the date in the letter links it to all convictions being
served at one time, rather than to a particular conviction.
That is a possible reading, we suppose. The letter in-
cludes a date but does not mention the crime. It does
not say “your parole following your conviction for
murder expired on” a particular date. It says instead that
6 No. 10-3664
“you have completed the maximum of your sentence as
of” a given date. A person who had been serving concur-
rent sentences might read the singular “sentence” to
designate the whole custodial term, and then the anti-
mousetrapping concern that we discussed in Buchmeier
implies that the letter covers all of the crimes that led to
the concurrent sentence. This understanding would be
consistent with Illinois law, too: the expiration of multiple
sentences on a single date automatically restores civil
rights with respect to all of those convictions. But that is
not remotely Burnett’s situation.
Burnett stabbed a man in the back on March 8, 1988, and
was convicted of attempted murder. He beat a man with
a pipe on May 9, 1988, and was convicted of a second
attempted murder. He was sentenced for both crimes
on August 18, 1988, to concurrent terms of six years’
imprisonment, from which he was paroled on March 17,
1992. He killed a man on July 8, 1992. His parole on the
two attempted-murder convictions was revoked that
October, placing him back in prison. He was later con-
victed of murder. In January 1994 his maximum impris-
onment on revocation of parole ended; from then on
his custody was supported only by the sentence he re-
ceived for the murder conviction. He was paroled from
the murder conviction in April 1997, and that term of
parole expired in April 1999. That’s when the Depart-
ment of Corrections sent him the letter saying that his
civil rights had been restored.
As an objective matter, a letter that refers to the expira-
tion of a sentence in April 1999 must have been dealing
No. 10-3664 7
with the murder conviction alone; by then the end of
Burnett’s custody following the revocation of his parole
lay more than five years in the past. It may well be
that Illinois refrained from sending Burnett letters in
January 1994 about his attempted-murder convictions
because the ongoing custody for the murder conviction
meant that he could not vote or hold public office. But
it does not matter why Illinois failed to send letters in
January 1994; this appeal concerns the effect of the letter
it did send in April 1999. That letter, linked as it was to
the expiration of his parole on the murder conviction,
has an effect limited to the murder conviction. Likewise
the letter that Burnett received in 2002, when his sen-
tence for aggravated battery expired, covers that crime
alone.
This means that Burnett has three countable convic-
tions for violent felonies: two attempted murders and one
domestic battery. He must be resentenced under §924(e)
as an armed career criminal.
We cannot close, however, without remarking on
the continuing difficulties that Illinois seems to be ex-
periencing in informing its ex-prisoners which civil
rights they hold, and which they do not. Buchmeier dis-
cusses several of the problems in the letter that the De-
partment of Corrections used from the early 1990s
through March 2004, the form sent to both Buchmeier
and Burnett. That form misstates the civil rights that
have been restored (despite what the letter says, the
right to vote is not automatically restored to ex-prisoners),
fails to alert ex-prisoners that they cannot run for mayor
8 No. 10-3664
and other offices not created directly by the Constitution
of Illinois, and omits the vital firearms reservation. As
this case shows, the form letter also is ambiguous about
the scope of its application. By including a date, but
omitting any mention of which convictions the letter
covers, the communication could be read to restore civil
rights for all former felonies—and, though we have
held that it does not have this effect, it does restore civil
rights for all crimes that led to concurrent sentences
ending on the date specified in the letter. (That was the
situation in Buchmeier itself.)
Illinois changed its form letter in March 2004, and it sent
the modified form to Burnett when his supervision for
domestic battery ended. The revised letter omitted any
reference to the right to vote. This meant that the letter
did not tell the ex-prisoner that he now enjoys the “big
three” civil rights (to vote, hold public office, and serve
on juries), which took it outside the scope of §921(a)(20).
As we discuss in Buchmeier, Illinois does not deprive
felons of the right to serve on juries, so only voting
and public offices can be restored or withheld. 581 F.3d
at 564. Unless a communication says that both of those
rights have been restored, however, omission of a fire-
arms reservation does not cancel the conviction’s status
as a violent felony. The March 2004 form’s omission of
any reference to voting must be why Burnett has not
denied that his conviction for domestic battery is a
violent felony. Still, the 2004 version remained mis-
leading because it did not distinguish constitutional from
statutory offices, did not contain a firearms reservation,
and did not say which convictions it covered.
No. 10-3664 9
After this court decided Buchmeier, Illinois altered the
letter again. Since September 2009 the Department of
Corrections has sent letters that do not refer to the right
to vote and do tell ex-prisoners that they are forbidden
to possess firearms. That’s a big improvement—but
problems remain, because even the September 2009
version of the form letter does not distinguish constitu-
tional from statutory offices. Worse, it begins by
referring to the date on which a term of confinement or
supervision ended but does not specify which convic-
tion or convictions it covers. Illinois can and should do
better to notify ex-prisoners which civil rights have
been restored on which convictions, while ensuring that
they know that their convictions disqualify them from
possessing firearms.
R EVERSED AND REMANDED FOR RESENTENCING
6-6-11