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 provision’s 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, “otherwise”—which 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...
Thank you very much. The dissent is interesting and I can understand that point of view too.