The Seventh Circuit has vacated a felon-in-possession sentence enhanced based on a prior Indiana conspiracy-to-commit-armed-robbery conviction, holding that Indiana's conspiracy statute, which permits conviction even where the only other "conspirator" is an undercover agent, sweeps more broadly than the generic conspiracy offense incorporated into the Sentencing Guidelines' definition of a crime of violence.
Resolving a question left open in its earlier decision in United States v. Pemberton, the Court held that the generic meaning of "conspiring" must be assessed as of 1989, when the Sentencing Commission first added inchoate offenses to the crime-of-violence definition, and that federal law, a majority of states, and contemporaneous legal dictionaries all required a genuine, bilateral agreement at that time despite the Model Penal Code's earlier shift toward a unilateral approach. Because Indiana's statute does not require a genuine co-conspirator, the defendant's conviction cannot serve as a Guidelines crime-of-violence predicate.
The full text of United States v. Lloyd can be found here: https://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/OpinionsWeb/processWebInputExternal.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2026/D08-12/C:25-1967:J:Taibleson:aut:T:fnOp:N:3590005:S:0