Supreme Court Weighs Whether Hemp Legalization Affects Gun Possession Mandatory Minimums For Man With Marijuana Convictions
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The Supreme Court on Monday heard the case of a defendant seeking to reduce his criminal penalty for firearm possession as the result of the federal government’s legalization of hemp in 2018.
At issue are the boundaries of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), a 1984 law that imposes penalties on gun possession for people with past violent felonies or serious drug offenses.
Initially the law imposes a 10-year maximum penalty for having a firearm, but after three offenses, a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence kicks in. Like other three-strikes laws, the act was intended to dissuade recidivism by ratcheting up criminal penalties for repeat offenses.
The case before the Supreme Court, Brown v. U.S., which is consolidated with the case of a separate petitioner, centers on what qualifies as a relevant drug charge for ACCA’s purposes given that laws around controlled substances are quickly changing and, in some cases, creating conflicts between state and the federal government.
Notably the ACCA itself doesn’t include a list of substances that qualify under the statute, instead relying on other statutes to determine whether a conviction is relevant.
“We think the cross-reference to an external body of law that is dynamic is critical here,” Austin Raynor, a Justice Department lawyer, told the court on behalf of the federal government. “In our view, the cross-reference raises a temporal question. When Congress chooses to reference an external body of law, that raises the question, which version of that body of law is Congress intending to reference?”
420GrowLife
via www.KahliBuds.com
Ben Adlin, KahliBuds, 420GrowLife
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