On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a law regarding crimes committed with a firearm for being vague. In a 5-4 decision, Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the Court’s four liberal justices, and Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the court.
Gorsuch boiled the case down to a simple idea. “In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all.”
Two Texas men went on a string of robberies in June of 2014, robbing four gas stations on four different days. They stole thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes from each gas station and almost $10,000 cash from one but no shots were fired. Their crime spree ended with a high-speed police chase.
The relevance here is that they used a sawed-off shotgun in the robberies. Apparently, they each brandished the weapon. According to Title 18 of the US Code § 924, using certain weapons in a robbery, including sawed-off shotguns, yields a minimum sentence of ten years, and an additional 25 years for repeat violations. The defendants, Maurice Davis and Andre Glover, were facing 35 years each on this charge alone because using the gun at multiple robberies was seen as a repeat violation (the law has since been amended to stipulate that the repeat violation must come after a conviction). After sentencing, and including all their charges, Glover got 41 years in prison, and Davis got more than 50 years. They could have received life sentences for using the short shotgun in their robberies.
Davis and Glover appealed to the court on the grounds that the law was too vague when it described what is considered a “crime of violence.” § 924 (c)(3) reads says the crime must be a felony and:
(A) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or
18 U. S. C. § 924 (c)(3)
(B) that by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”
The defendants claim that the B portion is unconstitutionally vague was upheld by the Court.
“Vague laws contravene the ‘first essential of due process of law’ that statutes must give people ‘of common intelligence’ fair notice of what the law demands of them,” Gorsuch wrote.
He continues to explain that the vague laws try to turn over the responsibility for lawmaking to the court, the judicial branches of government, but that job belongs in the legislative branches.
“Vague statutes threaten to hand responsibility for defining crimes to relatively unaccountable police, prosecutors, and judges,” Gorsuch wrote, “eroding the people’s ability to oversee the creation of the laws they are expected to abide.”
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Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion and expressed that the law the Court was striking against has been upheld for 33-years and that this action oversteps the role of the Court.
“A decision to strike down a 33-year-old, often-prosecuted federal criminal law because it is all of a sudden unconstitutionally vague is an extraordinary event in this Court. The Constitution’s separation of powers authorizes this Court to declare Acts of Congress unconstitutional. That is an awesome power. We exercise that power of judicial review in justiciable cases to, among other things, ensure that Congress acts within constitutional limits and abides by the separation of powers. But when we overstep our role in the name of enforcing limits on Congress, we do not uphold the separation of powers, we transgress the separation of powers.”
Justice Kavanaugh continued on and quoted Judge William Pryor of the Eleventh Circuit.
“How ‘did we ever reach the point where’ we ‘must debate whether a carjacking in which an assailant struck a 13-year-old girl in the mouth with a baseball bat and a cohort fired an AK–47 at her family is a crime of violence? It’s nuts.’”
Davis and Glover will be re-sentenced.
Interestingly, Gorsuch was appointed by President Trump in 2017, and this is the third time during the current term when he has sided with the more liberal justices for a 5-4 decision.
Considering the never ceasing interpretation of a Constitution written 240 years ago, all laws must be vague.
Gorsuch is correct here. As Americans our number one priority has always got to be the jealous guardianship of our liberty. Goofy laws like this are an open invitation to hand those liberties over to unaccountable power hungry bureaucrats. The legislature has been derelict for decades. The result is evident in out of control bureaucracies, courts and executive branches.
‘first essential of due process of law’ that statutes must give people ‘of common intelligence’ fair notice of what the law demands of them,” Gorsuch wrote.
I hope this standard is applied to the abominable “red flag” laws that are popping up everywhere. Fat chance…
Great point, fat chance of applying that legal standard to legal firearm owners.
There aren’t enough good people left to take our country back…… but that’s because good have mistakenly believed that you can peacefully resolve situations that, in actuality, need sudden, final and, if necessary, violent solution. The bad who live among us, or more accurately, whom we live among, are a disease. We can’t negotiate or compromise with a disease. We must totally eradicate it. Our failure to do so has caused our inevitable demise as a country. The Democrats are traitors, the Republicans are cowards and the rest of the parties are jokes. The truth is that politicians are not interested in the welfare of the people over whom they wield power but in feathering their own nests. That is why they hate the man who is rocking the boat, Donald Trump. But it doesn’t matter, now. It is too late. All we can do is apologize to those good ones we leave behind and ask for their forgiveness. They have a hell of a road ahead to travel.
OK. We’ll just shoot them next time. Happy?
The justice system in this country is terrible. The prison industry, and it is an industry, is barbaric. Any revision to the system that feeds that disgusting industry is a positive thing regardless of the political bent of the reformers.
Yeah a kindly grandma who lets her grandson hide drugs in her house gets 20 years in federal prison while a vicious mugger in a log-jammed jurisdiction plea bargains to 1 year in county. I’ll agree our system is f’d up.
OTOH somebody who goes around with a NFA-banned weapon doing armed robberies deserves a fairly stiff sentence (35 years is a bit much if nobody got shot) AND they need to be sterilized prior to release. People that stupid as well as prone to violent crime should not be reproducing.
Mike Judge. Idiocracy 2:13.
Banned weapons? What amendment says that guns or anything for sale can be banned?
Better read the 2nd AMENDMENT in its entirety again my misguided friend !