Well their dissent concerns me because usually they keep the role of the SC first in their minds... rather than what they think the law SHOULD say. And that’s why I supported them. By the way, I think the drinking and driving laws are way out of control too so I’m not arguing from that perspective.
Here’s the statute the decision was interpreted against:
The Act defines a violent felony as any crime punishable
by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year that
(i) threatened use of physical force against the person of
another; or
(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of
explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents
a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.
Majority opinion was basically that (i) wasn’t violated and for (ii) the inclusion of the example crimes shows that the statute was only written to cover those and similar crimes. DUI, while having an inherent serious risk of potential injury, is too dissimilar from those crimes for the statute to apply. As they put it:
“we find that DUI falls outside the scope of clause (ii). It is simply too unlike the provisions listed examples for us to believe that Congress intended the provision to cover it.”
The dissent says this:
This interpretation cannot be squared with the text of the statute, which simply does not provide that an offense must be purposeful, violent, or aggressive in order to fall within the residual clause. Rather, after listing burglary, arson, extortion, and explosives offenses, the statute provides (in the residual clause) that an offense qualifies if it otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another. Therefore, offenses falling within the residual clause must be similar to the named offenses in one respect only: They must, “otherwisewhich is to say, in a different manner, ... involve conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another. Requiring that an offense must also be purposeful, violent, or aggressive amounts to adding new elements to the statute, but we ordinarily resist reading words or elements into a statute that do not appear on its face.
i.e., the inclusion of burglary, arson, etc., doesn’t limit crimes to those solely similar to them. They also made a big deal out of the fact that this guy had 12 (12!) DUIs...