Cleaning Up the ACCA Mess
David Holman has a helpful new article exploring the mess that has become the Armed Career Criminal Act jurisprudence in the wake of Begay v. United States. (I’ve blogged about this unfolding jurisprudence several times, e.g., here and here.) The ACCA, of course, imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum for felons in possession of a firearm who have three or more prior convictions for a “violent felony” or a serious drug offense. It is the definition of “violent felony” that has occasioned so much litigation and so many unsatisfying judicial decisions over the past couple of years. I’m glad to see David’s article because I think legal scholars have not been paying nearly enough attention to recent developments in this important area of federal criminal law.
I think David is correct to trace the jurisprudential difficulties to the tension between two lines of Supreme Court decisions.