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« Hearing on BATF use of informants tomorrow | Main | A brief history of Supreme Court nomination controversies »

Supreme Court rules on 18 USC 924's mandatory sentence

Posted by David Hardy · 3 April 2017 11:55 AM

Dean v. United States, decided today. For repeated use of a firearm in violent offenses, defendant was subject to 30 years' imprisonment without probation or parole, this to be additional to sentences for the violent offense themselves.

The sentencing for the offenses themselves is affected by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which aren't really binding but are used as the starting point for determining a sentence. The Supreme Court ruled that, in determining a sentence, the trial court should also take into account that the defendant is subject to an additional mandatory term. Essentially, if in this case the court thinks 30 years is enough, and the Guidelines call for 10 years on the underlying offenses, the court should consider reducing the 10 years so as to get closer to what the court thinks is just.

1 Comment | Leave a comment

FWB | April 4, 2017 8:29 AM | Reply

The worst part of this is that the federal government has NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to punish for anything except the following: counterfeiting current coin and securities, piracies on the High Seas, felonies on the High Seas, offenses against the law of nations, treason, and depending on what securing means, to secure copyright and patent. These police powers are granted by the Constitution to the federal government. If the federal government has other police powers by implication or inherent authority, then the granting of these 6 was unnecessary. Those claiming implied or inherent police powers are saying that the Framers were idiots to include some police powers and leave others to be "found magically" by our own federal government. And of course those in the federal government would NEVER be of a mind to usurp power and expand the reach whether under cover of law or not.

Everyone punished by the federal government for something outside the 6 granted police powers has been punished illegally. The point is not whether it is good or bad but whether or not it is legitimate.

As an example of the lack of implied powers look at the power to coin money. Under the implied powers paradigm (usually using the N&P clause), the power to coin money would include the power to regulate the value of those coins and to punish the counterfeiting of those coins. However, the Framers saw fit to independently and explicitly grant the power to regulate the value and to punish counterfeiting. The Framers' actions can only lead to a single reasonable logical answer and that is that each little piece of the overall power of coining money was NOT included within a any other grant and that every tiny piece of power, however so remotely related to the granted power, had to be explicitly granted in order for the federal government to hold that power.

Enforcement clauses in the amendments are pretty well limited to enforcement against state authority and not toward individuals.

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