Federal law mandates a 15-year minimum sentence for illegal firearms possession when the defendant has three prior convictions for drugs or violent felonies.
The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 on May 23 in favor of the federal government in a case about how sentences under a federal three-strikes gun law should be imposed on defendants previously convicted of violent felonies or major drug offenses.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in Brown v. United States, which was consolidated with Jackson v. United States. The vote did not break down along traditional conservative versus liberal ideological lines, with one liberal justice joining the majority and a conservative justice siding with dissenters.
Federal law prohibits convicted felons from possessing firearms.
The often-litigated Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) was enacted in 1984 in response to concerns that a small number of repeat offenders were committing a disproportionate number of crimes.
The law requires that a 15-year minimum sentence be imposed on people found guilty of illegally possessing a firearm who have three or more prior convictions for “a serious drug offense” or violent felonies such as burglary “committed on occasions different from one another.”
The prior convictions are called predicate offenses.
A violent felony is defined by the statute as one that necessarily involves “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.”
The issue was whether sentencing under the ACCA should take into account the laws in effect when defendants committed the prior offenses or the laws in effect at the time that the defendants used a gun in a new offense qualifying under the statute.
Effect of the Ruling
For some defendants, their drug convictions and firearms convictions are separated by many years.
The new ruling is likely to hurt some defendants while helping others. This is because the drug laws that trigger enhancement under the ACCA are frequently amended, and in the process, those laws can become either more or less advantageous to defendants.
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