Is a different-occasions finding under the Armed Career Criminal Act confined to matters essential to the fact of a prior conviction?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) sentencing enhancement, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), requires a finding that predicate offenses were “committed on occasions different from one another.” But the Sixth Amendment generally forbids a judge to find facts that increase statutory penalties, with a lone, narrow exception for the fact of a prior conviction—under this Court’s ACCA decisions, only what a prior jury necessarily found or a prior plea necessarily admitted. The courts of appeals do not recognize the same limitation on the differentoccasions inquiry, noting that this Court has not specifically addressed it. Mr. Carter asks the Court to grant certiorari to decide this question: Is a different-occasions finding, like other ACCA determinations about prior convictions, confined to matters essential to the fact of a prior conviction?