SCOTUS Orders Monday

Today the U.S. Supreme Court released an orders list from last Friday’s conference. The Court took a new case on Armed Career Criminal Act sentencing to replace the deceased James Walker’s case. It relisted for this coming Friday cases to replace the withdrawn D.C. Sniper, Jr. case on juvenile life-without-parole sentencing. Finally, the Court passed, for now, on the question of whether bump stocks can be banned administratively without amending the relevant statute.

Borden v. United States, No. 19-5410, is the case the Court took up the case for full briefing and argument. The Court limited its review to one of the two questions the petitioner asked. “Does the ‘use of force’ clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act (the ‘ACCA’), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i) encompass crimes with a mens rea of mere recklessness?” The mens rea is the mental element of the crime. From the Sixth Circuit opinion:

After Charles Borden, Jr. pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a felon, the district court sentenced him as an armed career criminal to 115-months’ imprisonment. Borden contends that the court’s enhancement of his sentence amounts to a denial of due process. Finding no constitutional violation, we AFFIRM.

I.

Police caught Borden with a pistol during a traffic stop in April 2017. He eventually pleaded guilty to possessing that firearm as a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

The government recommended sentencing Borden as an armed career criminal, relying on three prior Tennessee aggravated assault convictions as predicate offenses. Borden objected to that classification. He argued that one of his prior aggravated assault convictions did not qualify as a predicate “crime of violence” within USSG § 4B1.2(a) because it involved a reckless variant of the offense. Borden acknowledged, however, that this court’s decision in United States v. Verwiebe, 874 F.3d 258 (6th Cir. 2017) (cert. denied, 139 S.Ct. 63 (Oct. 1, 2018), held just the opposite: reckless aggravated assault is a crime of violence under § 4B1.2(a)’s use-of-force clause.

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First, he maintains that applying Verwiebe to his case violated the Constitution’s ex post facto and due process protections because it was decided six months after he committed his offense. Second, Borden challenges Verwiebe and Harper as wrongly decided.

The due process claim is the one the Supreme Court declined to take today.

The juvenile LWOP cases listed in last Thursday’s post have all been placed on this coming Friday’s conference list for a second look. This includes, interestingly, the two Oregon cases which the Attorney General of that State has moved to dismiss. Garcia v. North Dakota, No. 19-399, joins the group for a first look. Update: The Jones case was granted on March 9, and the two Oregon cases were dismissed March 16.

The bump stock case is Guedes v. Bureau of ATFE, No. 19-296. Justice Gorsuch issued a statement saying that he agrees to pass on the issue for now. “But waiting should not be mistaken for lack of concern.” His concern is not whether bump stocks should be banned but whether Congress or ATFE should be making that call.