Posted on 06/24/2019 2:33:49 PM PDT by Red Badger
Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with the Supreme Court’s liberal wing to strike down a federal criminal law as unconstitutionally vague Monday. The law at issue involved additional penalties for offenders who use guns to commit “crimes of violence.” Monday’s decision is the second time that Gorsuch has delivered the fifth vote with the liberals to strike down a law on vagueness grounds.
Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc to deal victory for criminal defendants Monday, striking down a federal law that punishes gun crimes as unconstitutionally vague.
The law at issue authorizes heightened penalties for individuals who use firearms to a commit a “crime of violence.” In dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned the decision would undermine public safety.
“Only the people’s elected representatives in Congress have the power to write new federal criminal laws,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “And when Congress exercises that power, it has to write statutes that give ordinary people fair warning about what the law demands of them.”
“Vague laws transgress both of those constitutional requirements,” Gorsuch added. “They hand off the legislature’s responsibility for defining criminal behavior to unelected prosecutors and judges, and they leave people with no sure way to know what consequences will attach to their conduct.”
Monday’s case involved defendants Maurice Davis and Andre Glover, who were charged and convicted with robbery and conspiracy arising from a string of gas station robberies in Texas in June 2014. Prosecutors also charged the pair under the heightened penalty law because they brandished a short-barreled shotgun in the course of those robberies.
The Supreme Court said Monday that the definition of “crime of violence” was too ill-defined to be constitutional. Under the heightened penalty law, a crime of violence is any offense that “by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used.”
When deciding whether an offense “involves a substantial risk” of force under the heightened penalty law, the courts do not look to the specific facts of the crime before them. Instead, they must estimate whether violence is likely in the ordinary commission of that crime. That kind of analysis, called the “categorical approach,” has been called unpredictable and arbitrary in closely related contexts, Gorsuch noted.
Defending the law before the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued the heightened penalty law does not mandate the categorical approach and can be read to allow a fact-specific evaluation. Though Gorsuch agreed that might cure any vagueness problems, he said the law clearly requires the categorical approach.
“The statute simply cannot support the government’s newly minted case-specific theory,” Gorsuch wrote.
He will be fine with me as long as he votes our way on the gerrymandering and census question decisions. Those are intensely important.
*One judicial CONservative shuffles on over to the lib side as needed.
I think I’m okay with this decision. It is not unlike a “hate crime” charge. It seems arbitrary and vague. Perhaps this will lead to abolition of ridiculous “hate crime” add-on charges.
It seems to me that Gorsuch got this one right, but the other eight all voted based on the outcome, i.e. pro-prosecution or pro-defense.
How do you see this as “the lib side”?
Gorsuch voted for the Constitution.
Having said that, in the specifics of this case, the victims of said crimes would have been fully justified in using deadly force based on the perceived threat (even if the shotgun wasn't loaded and was at best, a club). The effect of the shotgun was to communicate an imminent, deadly threat and in my mind, there's nothing vague about that being a crime of violence.
I wonder what effect this will have on state laws?
Many states have similar laws............
Thank you. It’s just as I was thinking. A crime is a crime, regardless of method or motivation.
He is correct here. “crimes of violence” is incredibly vague.
When a law is vague it is easy to misapply. I’m ok with this
Precisely
Lawyers shouldn’t write laws.............
In the view of some, that's not a "conservative" thing to do.
I actually like this one.
One tool or another, it’s the deed that gets my attention.
Except hockey sticks. Using hockey sticks for anything other than hockey should get you dragged behind the Zamboni for the entire Stanley Cup playoffs.
Trying to see this as a “win” for Libs.
The extra penalty for nebulous “crimes of violence” does sound vague. It will be applied to self-defense in what gets labeled a “hate crime”. What could be more “violent” than “hate”?
I don’t know why this decision broke as it did, but this law sounded like another cheap swipe at the 2nd Ammendment.
I actually agree with his reasoning. Vague laws provide too much opportunity for the State to heap penalties on people whom the State dislikes. Like us.
He has voted this way on another case, and so has SCOTUS, throwing out a vaguely written law. We have so many problems with Congress writing a vague law, then turning it over to regulators, prosecutors and judges, so,that people have no idea how many laws the violate every day.
He’s right and certain enhancement crimes like “Hate” are stupid and up to inventions of word salad...
Sounds likesound reasoning...what happened to the other conservatives?
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