The US Supreme Court recently granted certiorari to hear the case of United States v. Erlinger, set to determine whether the US Constitution entails a requisite under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) for a jury trial and proof beyond a reasonable doubt to assert that a defendant’s past convictions were ‘committed on occasions different from one another.'”
The Section 922(g) of the ACCA enforces a 15-year minimum sentence for the illicit possession of a firearm if the defendant exhibits three prior convictions “committed on occasions different from one another.” This law primarily applies to delinquents possessing a firearm with three qualifying previous convictions for serious crimes like violent felonies or significant drug offenses, and it often regulates violations of the state law.
In the past, the Supreme Court precedence in Alleyne v. United States pertaining to the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the US Constitution stated that “any fact that increases the mandatory minimum is an ‘element’ that must be submitted to the jury and found beyond reasonable doubt,” with a “narrow exception for the fact of prior conviction.”
In 2017, the defendant, Paul Erlinger, was charged for being a felon in possession of a firearm, violating the ACCA guidelines. Having pleaded guilty to four counts of burglary in 1991, Erlinger was sentenced to 180 days for the 2017 charge. However, he later moved to vacate, or annul, his sentence, arguing these offenses he was charged with “no longer qualified as ACCA predicates under intervening circuit law.”
The crux of this case involves whether prior convictions committed on separate occasions should be questions for a jury, or if a fact-finding judge can as accurately conclude. Presently, federal appellate courts seem divided on this issue. Erlinger contends his sentence was “unjust and artificially inflated.”
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