Want does Johnson mean for the past, present and future of the career offender guidelines?

As first reported in this post, the the Supreme Court late last week in Johnson v. United States, No. 13-7120 (S. Ct. June 26, 2015) (available here), ruled that a key clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act violated "the Constitution’s prohibition of vague criminal laws."  In this initial post, I quickly explored Johnson's appliction to those previously sentenced under ACCA, and I will have more to say on that topic in the future.  But in this post, I wanted to flag the possibility that Johnson could impact past, present and future sentencing pursuant to the career offender guideline of the US Sentencing Guidelines.  

The possible impact of Johnson on guideline sentencing arises because the key phrase declared unconstitutionally vague in Johnson — the phrase which defines predicate offenses to include any offense that "otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another" — is also used in the definition of a career offender predicate under USSG 4B1.1 and 4B1.2.  And, critically, many more federal defendants get sentenced pursuant to the career offender guidelines than pursuant to ACCA.  Indeed, according to Sentencing Commission data, it appears as many as four times more defendants on average each year (roughly 2,200 as opposed to 550) are subject to the career offender guideline than are subject ot ACCA.  

But, importantly, even though the career offender guideline uses the same phrasing as the ACCA statute as the basis of a big sentencing enhancement, this part of the guideline is not necessarily going to be deemed unconstitutionally vague in all cases because lower courts have suggested traditional vagueness doctrines simply do not apply to guidelines in the same way the apply to statutes.  Morevoer, the arguments against applying vagueness doctrines to the application of the federal sentencing guidelines would seem to be even stronger in a post-Booker world in which the guidelines are only advisory.

Moreover, even if the Johnson ruling and vagueness doctrines apply to the federal sentencing guidelines, defendants sentenced in the past under the career offender guideline may be able to get (or even seek) any sentencing relief comparable to ACCA-sentenced defendants.  As noted in prior posts, ACCA's application is such a big deal because it changes a 10-year statutory max sentencing term into a 15-year statutory minimum.  In contrast, the career offender guideline only changes a calculated guideline range within an otherwise applicable statutory range.  That difference certainly means that the best a career offender defendant can hope to get from Johnson is a chance at resentencing, not an automatically lower sentence.

Beyond the interesting and intricate question about Johnson's impact on past career offender sentences, I also think the present and future of this guideline's application remains uncertain.  Given that vagueness doctrine might not apply to the guideline, perhaps district judges could (and even should) still keep applying as it did in the past the phrasing found problematic in Johnson.  Or perhaps district judges ought to now just adopt the approach to the probelmtic clause that was advocated by Justice Alito in dissent in Johnson (discussed in this post).  Or perhaps the US Sentencing Commission needs to use its emergency amendment authority ASAP to just delete or revise the phrase that Johnson addressed because, if it does not, it is near certain different courts nationwide will take different approaches to how to implement the guideline now in light of Johnson.

In sum: Johnson + career offender guideline = lots and lots of uncertainty and interpretive headaches.

Some prior posts on Johnson and its possible impact:

• A (way-too-quick) Top 5 list of thoughts/reactions to the votes and opinions Johnson
• SCOTUS finds, per Justice Scalia, that ACCA residual clause is unconstitutionally vague
• "Residual Impact: Resentencing Implications of Johnson v. United States’ Potential Ruling on ACCA’s Constitutionality"
• How many hundreds (or thousands?) of ACCA prisoners could be impacted by a big ruling in Johnson?
• How many federal prisoners have "strong Johnson claims" (and how many lawyers will help figure this out)?
• Some real-world (conservative?) reasons why only Justice Alito advocated "real-world conduct" approach to ACCA 
• Lots and lots of Johnson GVRs with Justice Alito explaining their meaning and (limited?) import