United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-2278 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SERGIO GAMEZ, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division. No. 2:19-cr-00114-JD-JEM-1 — Jon E. DeGuilio, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED APRIL 11, 2023 — DECIDED JANUARY 2, 2024 ____________________

Before SCUDDER, ST. EVE, and LEE, Circuit Judges. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Sergio Gamez challenges the 15- year mandatory minimum federal sentence he received under the Armed Career Criminal Act, which applies to persons with three or more violent felonies who are convicted of pos- sessing a firearm as a felon. We previously certified this case to the Indiana Supreme Court for guidance on the elements of Indiana arson—one of Gamez’s prior felony convictions. The state’s supreme court declined to address the certified 2 No. 22-2278 question, requiring us to now resolve whether a conviction under Indiana’s 2002 arson statute constitutes a “violent fel- ony” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Concluding that the answer is no, we return the case to the district court for resentencing. I

With this being our second time addressing Gamez’s ap- peal, only an abbreviated summary of the facts is necessary. Anyone interested in the full background can find it in our prior opinion. See United States v. Gamez, 77 F.4th 594 (7th Cir. 2023). In June 2021, Sergio Gamez pleaded guilty to unlawfully possessing a firearm as a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). At the time, Gamez had three prior felony convic- tions under Indiana law: two for robbery and one for aiding and abetting arson. At sentencing, the question was whether Gamez’s three prior felony convictions triggered the sentencing enhance- ment under § 924(e) of the Armed Career Criminal Act, com- monly shorthanded as ACCA. By its terms, § 924(e) requires a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence for defendants con- victed of violating § 922(g)(1) after committing three or more “violent felon[ies] … on occasions different from one an- other.” Id. § 924(e)(1). The government viewed each of Gamez’s prior convictions as a qualifying violent felony. Gamez objected, focusing on his prior conviction for aid- ing and abetting arson and arguing that Indiana’s arson stat- ute criminalized too broad a range of conduct for his offense to qualify as a violent felony within the meaning of § 924(e)’s sentencing enhancement. The district court agreed with the No. 22-2278 3 government and sentenced Gamez to the 15-year mandatory minimum. On appeal, the parties renewed their respective positions on whether Gamez’s Indiana arson conviction qualified as a predicate violent felony under § 924(e). We found the ques- tion difficult and decided to seek guidance from the Indiana Supreme Court. See Gamez, 77 F.4th at 602–03. We therefore certified the following question: Indiana law states that arson occurs when a per- son “knowingly or intentionally damages” cer- tain property “by means of fire, explosive, or destructive device.” Ind. Code § 35-43-1-1(a). Indiana case law, however, has stated that the corpus delicti of arson “consists of the burning of the property in question and a criminal agency as a cause of that burning.” Williams v. State, 837 N.E.2d 615, 618 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005); see also Simmons v. State, 234 Ind. 489, 129 N.E.2d 121, 123 (1955). Under Indiana law, need the state p