No. 24-1130 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v. QUINTIN T. FERGUSON, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division. No. 3:21CR30 — Damon R. Leichty, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED FEBRUARY 4, 2025 — DECIDED MARCH 17, 2025 ____________________

Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and PRYOR, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Quintin Ferguson was sen- tenced to 240 months’ imprisonment for violating 18 U.S.C. §844(i). The district court treated him as a career offender un- der U.S.S.G. §4B1.1(a) after concluding that §844(i) is a “crime of violence”. Classification as a career offender is appropriate only if the current conviction and at least two prior convic- tions are for felony drug offenses or crimes of violence. 2 No. 24-1130 Guideline 4B1.2(a)(2) specifies that “arson” is a “crime of vio- lence”. In this appeal Ferguson denies that a violation of §844(i) counts as “arson” for the purpose of §4B1.2(a)(2). Section 844(i) provides: Whoever maliciously damages or destroys, or aGempts to damage or destroy, by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other real or personal property used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign com- merce shall be imprisoned for not less than 5 years and not more than 20 years, fined under this title, or both; and if personal injury results to any person, including any public safety officer perform- ing duties as a direct or proximate result of conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be imprisoned for not less than 7 years and not more than 40 years, fined under this title, or both; and if death results to any person, including any public safety officer perform- ing duties as a direct or proximate result of conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall also be subject to imprisonment for any term of years, or to the death penalty or to life imprisonment. Maliciously destroying a building or vehicle by fire or explo- sives sounds like arson, but Ferguson says that it is not be- cause §844(i) does not require proof that a defendant who burned his own property did so to collect insurance. The parties agree that “arson” means generic arson rather than any particular variant. Observing that the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code §220.1 (1962), limits its definition, if the defendant owned the torched property, to acts designed to bilk insurers, Ferguson insists that §844(i) therefore departs from generic arson and cannot be treated as a crime of vio- lence under §4B1.2(a)(2). The Sentencing Guidelines do not define “arson” as that term is used in §4B1.2—though Appendix A to the Guidelines directs violations of §844(i) to be sentenced under U.S.S.G. No. 24-1130 3 §2K1.4, which bears the caption “Arson; Property Damage by Use of Explosives”. What is more, 18 U.S.C. §3295 treats §844(i) as an “arson offense”. Perhaps these cross-references suffice to call the §844(i) crime “arson.” The parties’ shared assumption that we must ask whether §844(i) deserves the label “generic arson” comes from the way the Supreme Court has treated the word “burglary” in 18 U.S.C. §924(e), the Armed Career Criminal Act, which classi- fies burglary as a crime of violence for some sentencing pur- poses. See Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990). The Jus- tices noted that §924(e) does not define “burglary” and con- cluded that it was necessary to devise a generic definition. The cross-reference from Appendix A in the Guidelines may make tha