US Supreme Court rules reckless offenses do not qualify as ‘violent felony’ – JURIST – News

The US Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a US Court of Appeal ruling for the Sixth District that “reckless” crimes are violent crimes under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).

The ACCA imposes a 15-year prison sentence on anyone convicted of illegal possession of a firearm and convicted of three or more violent crimes in the past. To be considered a violent crime for the purposes of the ACCA, the crime must include “the use, attempt, or threat of physical violence against another person”. Petitioner Charles Borden Jr. pleaded guilty to felony charges and the government tried to apply the increased penalty under the ACCA.

One of the three violent crimes the government listed on the ACCA indictment was reckless assault under Tennessee law. Borden argued that the behavior must be knowledgeable or intentional in order to satisfy the requirement of “violence against someone else’s person” and that convicting him of reckless aggravated assault is out of the question. The District Court contradicted his reasoning and sentenced him as a professional criminal, and the Sixth District upheld the conviction. The Supreme Court overturned this judgment and remitted the case.

Judge Elena Kagan, along with Judges Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch, drafted the judgment of the court and concluded that any offense with a mens rea or mental state of recklessness is not a violent crime for the purposes of the ACCA applies. She wrote that reckless behavior was a less culpable mental state because it was more about “insufficient concern about the risk of injury” than about knowing intent to harm others. She also concluded that the ordinary meaning of “violent crime” requires the knowledge or intent behind the act. In addition, classifying a reckless crime as a violent crime would be contrary to the purpose of the ACCA, which is to address the particular risk of violent crime, that is, someone who has repeatedly committed willful violent crimes as opposed to someone who has committed frivolous crimes who have no intention of but only show a “danger to risks”

Judge Clarence Thomas agreed, but wrote a separate opinion in which he concluded that a reckless crime does not have an element of “use of physical force” that applies only to “intentional acts to harm people.” He wrote that the ACCA’s residual clause (18 USC § 924 (e) (2) (B) (ii)) would class Borden as a professional criminal, but noted that the 2015 Johnson v. United States ruling established this Remaining clause was unconstitutional and vague. Thomas would like to overturn the decision in Johnson, but accepted it here “because a different approach would create further confusion and division over whether state laws prohibiting reckless assault meet the elementary clause”.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote a dissent endorsed by Justice Colonel John Roberts and Judges Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, arguing that the plural reading of “against someone else’s person” is inconsistent with the Mens Rea for violent crimes has to do. Instead, he wrote that the phrase “is a centuries-old art term in criminal law that distinguishes offenses against the person from offenses against property”. He also argued that the common meaning of the phrase includes “reckless offense”.