Whether due process requires that the comparison of elements of a prior conviction from a foreign state for sentencing enhancement purposes encompass not just the names applied to the elements but also the respective judicial interpretation of those elements

QUESTION PRESENTED A year after he was discharged from the Army with a disability pension following brain, spinal, and psychological injuries from a scud missel attack while serving in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Eduardo Rodriguez suffered a criminal conviction in New York which the California trial court treated as a prior “strike” conviction, resulting in the doubling of his base prison sentence and excluding him from the Veteran’s Court program. The trial court declined to exercise its discretion to disregard the prior conviction before trial, predicted it was unlikely to do so at sentencing if Rodriguez were convicted, but expressly acknowledged he would be required to disregard the prior conviction if the New York conviction did not contain all the same elements as its California counterpart. Although California and New York courts diverge in their interpretations of the two different statutes, trial counsel never objected on the ground that they were not categorical matches. Where the state courts did not adjudicate whether trial counsel’s performance was deficient (which was concededly deficient if there was a viable objection) and the state courts applied an erroneous (and more rigorous) standard when assessing prejudice, the question presented is: When a State uses a categorical approach for comparing the elements of the two criminal provisions before using the prior conviction of a foreign State ii as the basis for a sentencing enhancement, whether due process requires that the comparison encompass not just the names applied to the elements but also the respective judicial interpretation of those elements?