OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Biden administration faced another setback with a unanimous ruling from the Supreme Court, including President Biden’s nominee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court has determined that certain individuals convicted of gun crimes could be eligible for reduced prison sentences, allowing for concurrent service of sentences related to gun-related offenses.
“Congress could certainly have designed the penalty scheme at issue here differently. But Congress did not do any of these things. And we must implement the design Congress chose,” Jackson wrote in the ruling.
The ruling noted further: “The case involves two subsections of 18 U.S.C. 924. Subsection (c) outlines offenses and penalties and states that no term of imprisonment imposed on a person under this subsection shall run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment imposed on the person. Subsection (j), which was added more recently, outlines other offenses and corresponding penalties. It does not include language about forbidding concurrent sentences.”
District courts usually have the discretion to decide whether prison sentences should run concurrently or consecutively. However, certain laws may restrict the option of imposing concurrent sentences in particular situations.
Efrain Lora, who filed of the case, was convicted of aiding and abetting an individual involved in drug trafficking or a violent crime while carrying or using a firearm. He was also found guilty of conspiracy to distribute drugs.
Lora, along with three accomplices, was involved in cocaine trafficking and committed the murder of a rival drug dealer in 2002 in New York City due to a territorial dispute. U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe, appointed by President George W. Bush, sentenced Lora based on a law that prohibits concurrent sentences for offenses involving one of the crimes for which he was convicted.
Lora received a 25-year sentence for the conspiracy charge and an additional five years for the other crime. An appeals court upheld the decision.
Attorneys for Lora then argued that the judge’s cited law did not apply to the aiding and abetting offenses, and his sentences should have been concurrent. Federal prosecutors disagreed, asserting that the lower courts were correct and the Supreme Court did not need to review the case.
But all nine justices sided with Lora.
“Subsection (c)’s consecutive-sentence mandate applies only to the terms of imprisonment prescribed within subsection (c). A sentence imposed under subsection (j) does not qualify,” Jackson wrote. “Subsection (j) is located outside subsection (c) and does not call for imposing any sentence from subsection (c).”
“Combining the two subsections would set them on a collision course; indeed, in some cases, the maximum sentence would be lower than the minimum sentence,” she added.
The result of the ruling is a vacated prison sentence. The high court also remanded the case back to a lower court for resentencing.
“We are thrilled that the Court preserved the longstanding default of discretion in criminal sentencing, restoring courts’ discretion to impose either concurrent or consecutive sentences in this case and others like it,” Lawrence Rosenberg, part of the legal team representing Lora, said in a statement to news outlets. “The Court’s decision to enforce the plain text that Congress enacted will help ensure that a defendant’s sentence fits both the crime and the individual.”
During oral arguments, however, Jackson also seemed skeptical of some aspects of the case.
“I don’t understand why the government believes in this case that it’s entitled to the penalty structure that comes with Section (c) if a person is convicted of (c) when (j) doesn’t say and it could easily have said any person who’s convicted of subsection (c), et cetera,” she told Assistant to the Solicitor General Erica Ross. “I think it is certainly true that Congress could have been clearer in this provision.”
Ross responded: “My point was simply that it also doesn’t say what [Lora] is suggesting.”
