Supreme Court overturned abusive twisting of law that added on 13 more years in prison

Discussion in 'Law & Justice' started by kazenatsu, Mar 9, 2022.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This is another example of a law that, while it sounds great and perfectly reasonable on the surface, is actually simply worded in such a way that it could be misused in a very much unfair way.

    In fact it is more complicated then that, because not only did a prosecutor successfully use the law in a situation where it was not obvious it should have been used, but the prosecutor also managed to convince a judge a jury to accept a totally asinine interpretation of the law. That is, not only is the law inherently flawed and unfair respecting individual rights, but on top of that the prosecutor was also to twist the meaning of words, making the law into something else.

    The Armed Career Criminal Act is a federal law that carries a minimum of 15 years in prison, with a maximum possible sentence of life if convicted. It applies if an individual has three prior convictions for violent felonies committed on separate occasions, and then later possesses a gun (without having had their right to own a gun restored). (The definition of violent felony includes a felony that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another)

    This could easily seem like a reasonable law. What they had in mind is a criminal who commits robbery three separate times using a gun. Each time that criminal put other people's lives at risk. So the idea is, if the criminal gets caught and is later found to have a gun after that, the criminal probably has that gun to be able to commit an armed robbery again.

    But for one thing, the law could also apply to other types of situations that are not like this.

    A man named William Dale Wooden broke into a storage facility with three friends. After breaking into the first unit, they broke through the drywall into the next unit, subsequently working their way across ten units. Wooden pleaded guilty to ten counts of burglary and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
    17 years later after the burglary had been committed, a police officer not knocked on the door of Wooden's mobile home. The officer was not in uniform and Wooden claims the officer did not even identify himself as law enforcement, but claimed to be looking for a fugitive wanted for misdemeanor theft before stepping into the home. Wooden claims the officer entered without consent, although the officer denies this. When the officer entered without a warrant he saw that Wooden had a rifle inside and arrested him for being a "felon in possession of a gun", which is a crime under both state law and federal law.

    The state of Georgia ended up deciding to drop the charges, but a federal prosecutor decided to prosecute instead. A jury convicted Wooden of the federal law that makes having been convicted in the past of a felony and possessing a gun illegal. The probation office at first recommended a prison sentence of between 21 to 27 months. But then the prosecutor had the idea to try to add on an enhancement charge under the Armed Career Criminal Act. This would guarantee that Wooden would have to spend 15 years in prison rather than 2 years.

    It is possible the prosecutor might have done this to take revenge on Wooden for demanding a jury trial and not just pleading guilty, the prosecutor may have believed the facts were obvious and Wooden was just wasting everyone's time and resources by choosing to have a jury trial.

    Wooden only had felony convictions on his record from the one burglary. But the prosecutor was able to convince the judge that the burglary actually constituted felonies on 10 "separate occasions", since 10 different units were broken into.
    A federal appeals court even agreed with the decision of the first judge.

    But after 6 years in prison, eventually the US Supreme Court overturned the enhancement conviction, in a unanimous decision. (Wooden v. United States, decided March 2022)
    Maybe Wooden just got lucky. It is rare for these type of petitions to get taken up by the Supreme Court.

    Supreme Court Judge Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for the court which asked "how an ordinary person might describe Wooden's ten burglaries". A person would say "Wooden burglarized ten units in a storage facility," not "On ten occasions, Wooden burglarized a unit in the facility."

    Judge Kagan also cited that Congress already rejected the alternative reading. In 1988, after a man named Samuel Petty was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act for robbing six people together during a single incident, lawmakers in Congress amended the law to clarify that they meant separate criminal episodes. So the prosecution's interpretation of the law in the Wooden case would be tantamount to a repeal of that amendment.

    Yet even though this prior precedent existed, apparently no one seemed to have noticed it until now, and so Wooden still ended up having to spend 6 years in prison instead of 2.

    (No, he cannot sue or get any compensation back for his extra time in prison, because other law he was convicted of, being a felon in possession of a firearm, still has a maximum possible sentence of 10 years. It is just that the sentencing guidelines recommend 2 years)

    But let's get to the point and talk about what this is really about. There are many people who are just looking for any excuse to put in a criminal in prison for as long as possible. The argument in court comes down to trivialities in arcane laws, but this is really about a disagreement about how former criminals should be treated.

    Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch also pointed out another issue in this case, and that is that the law does not require the jury to separately convict the defendant for the enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act to apply. It is the judge who determines whether the defendant committed violent felonies on three previous occasions.

    This was obviously a case where the law was not applied as it was supposed to, and I think most people would argue it was unfair to the defendant.

    Parts of the Armed Career Criminal Act have been disputed by the Supreme Court before, for example Johnson v. United States (2015) where the Supreme Court overturned the ruling of an appeals court that had decided possession of a sawed-off shotgun counted as one of the three "violent felonies".
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2022
  2. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    Unless something has changed, in the State of Florida even one armed felony can get a life sentence.
     
  3. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This was a burglary though, not a robbery.
     
  4. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    I get that and your story indicates he was not armed when they did the burglaries but in Florida an armed burglary is considered just as violent as an armed robbery and it is also punishable by life
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2022

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