Preview of Sykes, the Supreme Court’s Latest ACCA Case

The Supreme Court will hear argument on January 12 in Sykes v. United States, the latest entry in its recent series of cases on the Armed Career Criminal Act.  This case may provide a good opportunity for the Court to clarify what state of mind is required for a prior conviction to trigger the ACCA’s fifteen-year mandatory minimum.  (For background on the ACCA, see my posts here, here, and here.)

The Court created the state-of-mind problem in Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137 (2008), which held that a prior conviction does not count as a “violent felony” under the ACCA unless the crime was “purposeful, violent, and aggressive.”  This is a rather mysterious phrase.  Although the word “purposeful” is a familiar culpability term, it is not clear what “violent” and “aggressive” are meant to connote in this context.  And even “purposeful” has some ambiguity, as any law student who has ever wrestled with the elusive distinction between “general intent” and “specific intent” will tell you.

Begay itself indicated that DUI does not satisfy the PVA test because DUI is a strict liability offense.  This teaches that some culpability is indeed required for an offense to count as a “violent felony,” but Begay provided little guidance beyond that.

Then came Chambers v. United States, 129 S. Ct. 687 (2009).  

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Recommended Legal Writing Reads from Judge Easterbrook

This past October, as a Judicial Intern at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, I had the pleasure of attending an informal, reoccurring brown bag lunch held among the court’s clerks. We gathered in a conference room down the hall from the Dirksen Federal Building’s second-floor cafeteria to hear this session’s guest speaker—Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook—lecture informally on legal writing. The judge shared some of his experiences (e.g., his decision-making process*) and his must-read books for legal writers.

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Convicted of Drug Distribution, Sentenced for Homicide

Just in time for exam-writing law professors comes the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Krieger (No. 09-1333) — a case that has just that sort of counter-intuitive, “it can’t be right” flavor that makes great testing fodder.  Among other things, the case illustrates the odd place we have ended up in our jurisprudence on procedural rights at sentencing under Apprendi v. New Jersey and Harris v. United States.

Here’s what happened.  Jennifer Krieger was prescribed fentanyl, a powerful opioid, to help her with severe back pain.  She gave some of the drug to her friend Jennifer Curry for recreational use.  Curry misused the fentanyl, as well as a variety of other substances, and died the next day.  Krieger was then indicted for distributing fentanyl with death resulting.  That’s when things got really weird. 

It turns out that the government’s main witness, the medical examiner who concluded that Curry died of fentanyl toxicity, had some serious legal problems of his own and fled the country. 

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