U.S. Supreme Court 06-13-11
by: Grapkoch • June 12, 2011 • no comments
Read the full article for details about the following new cases:
- "Failure to Stop" as a Violent Felony Under the ACCA
- "Cocaine Base" and "Crack" Cocaine under the ADAA
I skipped the updates last Thursday morning, as I was out of town. Two opinions were issued, although both involved the construction of federal statutes. So, in case you missed the June 9th opinions and you're still interested at this point, here's a recap:
"Failure to Stop" as a Violent Felony Under the ACCA
In Sykes v. United States, the defendant had asked the Court to determine whether using a vehicle while knowingly or intentionally fleeing from a law enforcement officer after being ordered to stop constitutes a "violent felony" under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Unfortunately for him, the Court said yes.
In so holding, the Court first clarifies that this case requires the Court to ask whether the Indiana statute at issue falls within the ACCA's residual clause (is it an an offense that "otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another."). It then reiterates that the "categorial approach" to the ACCA residual clause inquiry looks to the statute rather than the conduct of conviction.
Moving from those basic principles, the Court next rejects defendant's proposition that "Begay and Chambers require ACCA predicates to be purposeful, violent, and aggressive in ways that vehicle flight is not." Rather, the relevant inquiry is one of risk, and that risk is measured, in part, by analogy to the listed ACCA offenses. Thus, although Begay focused on the mental state, "Begay involved a crime akin to strict liability, negligence, and recklessness crimes; and the purposeful, violent, and aggressive formulation was used in that case to explain the result."
Finally, the Court concludes that "[r]isk of violence is inherent to vehicle flight. Between the confrontations that initiate and terminate the incident, the intervening pursuit creates high risks of crashes. It presents more certain risk as a categorical matter than burglary." A bunch of statistics and stuff are cited to support this conclusion, but I'll let you get into that on your own if you so desire.
More information on Sykes v. United States can be found at the SCOTUSblog case page, available here.
"Cocaine Base" and "Crack" Cocaine under the ADAA
In DePierre v. United States, the defendant asked the Court to determine whether 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)'s mandatory minimum sentence provision for offenses involving "cocaine base" encompasses every form of cocaine that is classified chemically as a base or whether the term "cocaine base" is limited to "crack" cocaine. The Court holds that it is the former.
For starters, the Court notes that "[a]s a matter of chemistry, cocaine is an alkaloid with the molecular formula C17H21NO4." Ha! That's the Court's way of saying that, unless you really want try to follow along with some serious statutory construction, it's best to just give up now and take our word for it.
The fact of the matter is that the statutory text is poorly drafted, and no reading offered by either the defendant or the government was fully satisfying to the Court. However, after reviewing all of the possibilities and their attendant flaws, the Court simply concludes that "[w]e agree with the Government that the most natural reading of the term 'cocaine base' is 'cocaine in its base form'-i.e., C17H21NO4, the molecule found in crack cocaine, freebase, and coca paste." Any attempt to summarize this opinion beyond that simple proposition would be fruitless.
More information on DePierre v. United States can be found at the SCOTUSblog case page, available here.
