{"id":13602,"date":"2011-06-06T15:41:11","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T20:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=13602"},"modified":"2011-06-06T15:41:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T20:41:11","slug":"scotus-rules-that-current-penalties-do-not-govern-whether-prior-conviction-is-acca-predicate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2011\/06\/scotus-rules-that-current-penalties-do-not-govern-whether-prior-conviction-is-acca-predicate\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Rules That Current Penalties Do Not Govern Whether Prior Conviction Is ACCA Predicate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I continue to be mystified by the Supreme Court\u2019s jurisprudence on the Armed Career Criminal Act.\u00a0 The Court has been remarkably active in taking ACCA cases in recent years, but I\u2019m hard-pressed to see much\u00a0coherence in the outcomes.\u00a0 On the one hand, there is the Begay <\/em>line of cases, which have substantially narrowed the definition of \u201cviolent felonies\u201d that can be used as a predicate for the ACCA fifteen-year mandatory minimum.\u00a0 (For background, see my post here<\/span><\/a>.)\u00a0 Yet, there are plenty of other ACCA cases \u2013\u00a0many involving short, unanimous decisions, as if the underlying legal issues were entirely unproblematic \u00a0\u2013 that adopt\u00a0unnecessarily\u00a0expansive<\/em> interpretations of the ACCA triggering language.<\/p>\n

Count the Court\u2019s decision today in McNeill v. United States<\/em> <\/a>(No. 10-5258) in the latter category.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the background on McNeill<\/em> from an earlier post<\/span><\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

McNeill was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He had two prior convictions for violent felonies. In order to get a third ACCA predicate, the government pointed to McNeill\u2019s drug trafficking convictions in North Carolina in 1992 and 1995. At the time he committed those offenses, North Carolina law specified a maximum sentence of ten years for each. Thus, at first blush, the convictions seem to fall pretty clearly within the ACCA\u2019s definition of \u201cserious drug offense\u201d: \u201can offense under State law . . . for which a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more is prescribed by law.\u201d<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the catch: North Carolina changed its sentencing law, and the crimes for which McNeill was convicted now carry a maximum of only 25 months in prison. If McNeill did today exactly what he did before, the resulting convictions would plainly not count as ACCA predicates.<\/p>\n

The change-in-law problem has produced a circuit split, which the Supreme Court will now presumably resolve.<\/p>\n

McNeill relies on the use of the present tense in the statutory definition of \u201cserious drug offense\u201d: \u201cten years or more is prescribed.\u201d He also argues that the ACCA was intended to defer to state legislative judgments regarding offense severity \u2014 the North Carolina legislature now apparently believes that McNeill\u2019s crimes were not all that serious, and federal courts applying the ACCA should respect that judgment.<\/p>\n

On the other hand \u2014 and the Fourth Circuit seemed to think this was crucial in rejecting McNeill\u2019s arguments \u2014 the legislature did not make the reduced penalties retroactively applicable to conduct committed before the effective date of the sentencing reform law. Because McNeill\u2019s convictions were based on things he did before the effective date, he would apparently be subject to the same ten-year maximum even if he was just being prosecuted now for what he did in the 1990\u2019s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Supreme Court affirmed McNeill\u2019s ACCA sentence, but adopted a slightly different approach than the Fourth Circuit, holding that the sentencing scheme on the date of the earlier conviction governs without regard even to later retroactive<\/em> changes in the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Justice Thomas, writing for a unanimous Court, treated the question as a simple matter of \u201cplain text\u201d:<\/p>\n

The statute requires the court to determine whether a \u201cprevious conviction\u201d was for a serious drug offense.\u00a0 The only way to answer this backward-looking question is to consult the law that applied at the time of the conviction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the \u201conly way\u201d to interpret the statute?\u00a0 How can it be that easy when both the Second and the Fourth Circuits interpreted it differently?<\/p>\n

The Court\u00a0further reasoned that its \u201cnatural reading of ACCA also avoids the absurd results that would follow from consulting current state law to define a previous offense.\u201d\u00a0 The Court seemed particularly concerned that, under McNeill\u2019s interpretation,\u00a0a prior conviction\u00a0might \u201cdisappear\u201d for ACCA purposes if a state\u00a0\u201dreformulates its criminal statutes in a way that prevents precise translation of the old conviction into the new statutes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But \u201ctranslation\u201d difficulties \u2014 deciding which state-law offenses fit into the federal-law definitions of \u201cviolent felony\u201d and \u201cserious drug offense\u201d \u2014 are endemic\u00a0to the ACCA regime, and the case law draws arbitrary distinctions all the time between what counts and what doesn\u2019t count.\u00a0 Against the backdrop of a poorly conceived and drafted statute and an incoherent body of precedent, \u201cabsurdity\u201d hardly seems an appropriate interpretive criterion.<\/p>\n

When we decide that a prior conviction counts as an ACCA predicate, we are functionally punishing the defendant a second time in federal court for the earlier state conviction.\u00a0 In this context, it may be especially appealing to look to the rule of lenity \u2014 the principle that statutory ambiguities are resolved in favor of the defendant \u2014 as a way to sort out the many uncertainties that arise in applying the ACCA.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Life Sentences Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I continue to be mystified by the Supreme Court\u2019s jurisprudence on the Armed Career Criminal Act.\u00a0 The Court has been remarkably active in taking ACCA cases in recent years, but I\u2019m hard-pressed to see much\u00a0coherence in the outcomes.\u00a0 On the one hand, there is the Begay line of cases, which have substantially narrowed the definition 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