[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 23-10280 Non-Argument Calendar ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus SANCHEZ MARQUITTE HICKS,

Defendant-Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cr-00074-TWT-LTW-1 ____________________ USCA11 Case: 23-10280 Document: 30-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2024 Page: 2 of 14

2 Opinion of the Court 23-10280

Before NEWSOM, ANDERSON, and HULL, Circuit Judges. HULL, Circuit Judge: After pleading guilty, Sanchez Hicks appeals his sentence of 96 months’ imprisonment for two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon. On appeal, Hicks argues that his two prior Georgia convictions for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon do not qualify as a “crime of violence” under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2), which references the crime-of-violence definition in U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a), and thus the district court erred in calculating his base offense level. In United States v. Morales-Alonso, 878 F.3d 1311, 1313-20 (11th Cir. 2018), this Court held that a Georgia conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon qualifies as a “crime of violence” under U.S.S.G. § 2L1.2, which uses a crime-of-violence definition contained in its commentary. The Morales-Alonso Court held that Georgia’s aggravated assault with a deadly weapon crime contains substantially the same elements as generic aggravated assault. Id. at 1317, 1320. Both § 4B1.2(a) and § 2L1.2’s commentary contain enumerated offenses clauses that use materially identical language to define a “crime of violence” as a list of offenses, and “aggravated assault” appears in both lists. For the reasons explained herein, we conclude that Hicks’s challenge to his base offense level fails. USCA11 Case: 23-10280 Document: 30-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2024 Page: 3 of 14

23-10280 Opinion of the Court 3

I. BACKGROUND A grand jury indicted Hicks on two counts of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). Count One charged that Hicks possessed a firearm on May 26, 2017, and Count Two charged that he possessed a firearm on January 25, 2019. Hicks entered a non-negotiated plea of guilty to both counts. At sentencing, Hicks did not dispute that he had two Georgia aggravated assault convictions from 2009 and 2015. The 2009 conviction was for assaulting two persons “with a deadly weapon, to wit: a handgun” by shooting them. The 2015 conviction was for “an assault upon [a] person . . . with a handgun” during an attempted armed robbery. Given these two Georgia aggravated assault convictions, the presentence investigation report (“PSI”) recommended a base offense level of 24 pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(2). Under § 2K2.1(a)(2), a base offense level of 24 applies when the defendant committed his firearm offense after two felony convictions for a “crime of violence” as defi