Gorsuch sides with liberal justices to strike down stiff firearms penalties

[Belsnickel]

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-stiff-firearms-penalties-2019-6

Quote:WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the US Supreme Court's four liberal members on Monday in striking down as unconstitutionally vague a law imposing stiff criminal sentences for people convicted of certain crimes involving firearms.

In the 5-4 ruling, with Gorsuch's fellow conservatives in dissent, the court ruled against President Donald Trump's administration in declaring that the federal law in question was written too vaguely and thus violated the US Constitution's guarantee of due process. Trump's two appointees to the court, Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, disagreed in the decision.

The court invalidated the firearms convictions of two men prosecuted in Texas on a variety of charges for their roles in a series of 2014 gas station robberies in Texas. Although the robbers were armed, no shots were fired.

Gorsuch, appointed by Trump in 2017, wrote that laws passed by Congress must give ordinary people notice of what kind of conduct can land them in prison.

"In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all," Gorsuch added.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump in 2018, wrote a dissenting opinion expressing surprise at the court overturning a law in use for decades. The law's most recent version was passed by Congress in 1986.

"The court's decision today will make it harder to prosecute violent gun crimes in the future," Kavanaugh wrote.

Kavanaugh said there was evidence that steep prison sentences have been a contributing factor in a decline in US violent crime.

Gorsuch said Congress could pass a more specific law to address the issue, but added that "no matter how tempting, this court is not in the business of writing new statutes to right every social wrong it may perceive."

It represented the third ruling in the court's current term in which Gorsuch has joined the court's liberals in a 5-4 decision.

The court sided with defendants Maurice Davis and Andre Glover, who were convicted of multiple robbery counts, one count of conspiracy to commit robbery and two counts each of brandishing a shotgun during a crime of violence.

Davis was originally sentenced to 41 years in prison. Glover faced a 50-year sentence. Both likely will now get shorter sentences. The decision does not affect their other convictions.

Monday's ruling was similar to another 5-4 ruling a year ago in which Gorsuch also joined the liberals in the majority. The court ruled that a law requiring the deportation of immigrants convicted of certain crimes of violence also was unconstitutionally vague.

Gorsuch is ideologically aligned with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he replaced on the court in 2017. Scalia wrote a 2015 ruling that Gorsuch invoked in Monday's decision that found that a similar provision in a federal criminal sentencing law also was overly broad.

Trump's Justice Department appealed the case to the Supreme Court after the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals last year threw out one of each of the two defendants' firearm-related offenses.

The case did not involve the right to bear arms under the US Constitution's Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court's conservative justices tend to interpret broadly.

I agree with the ruling in this instance. I know there will be people surprised at Gorsuch's position on this, but Scalia was rather libertarian in many ways. So to see Gorsuch lean that direction here, as well, shouldn't be news. Honestly, though, I'm more surprised the liberals on the bench didn't just take the "guns bad!" approach. But hey, I'll take it.

[Benton]

(06-25-2019, 05:43 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-stiff-firearms-penalties-2019-6


I agree with the ruling in this instance. I know there will be people surprised at Gorsuch's position on this, but Scalia was rather libertarian in many ways. So to see Gorsuch lean that direction here, as well, shouldn't be news. Honestly, though, I'm more surprised the liberals on the bench didn't just take the "guns bad!" approach. But hey, I'll take it.

Generally, I think their theory is 'guns make people evil.'

In this instance, though, I agree the court's decision. 50 years for a robbery where no one was injured seems excessive.

[*michaelsean*]

Looks like Obama got his third justice after all. I don't know what to think. You want to curb gun crime, throw the book at people who use guns, but there are extremes I suppose. I just read what is written here, and it doesn't seem to say they thought the punishments were too extreme, just that the law was vague in some way.

[Belsnickel]

(06-26-2019, 11:01 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Looks like Obama got his third justice after all. I don't know what to think. You want to curb gun crime, throw the book at people who use guns, but there are extremes I suppose. I just read what is written here, and it doesn't seem to say they thought the punishments were too extreme, just that the law was vague in some way.

Yeah. The ruling was saying that how the law was written was too vague to pass constitutional muster for due process, not that the punishment was too much.