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June 27, 2022

Lots of GVRs based on Taylor limiting "crime of violence" for applying 924(c) sentence enhancement

As night follows day, it regularly follows after a significant new Supreme Court decision limiting the reach of a federal criminal statute that a subsequent Supreme Court order list grants, vacates and remands (GVRs) a number of cases "for further consideration in light of" the new decision.  In this morning's order list, the Supreme Court's 7-2 decision last week in US v. Taylor, No. 20–1459 (S. Ct. June 21, 2022) (available here), provides the basis for twenty GVRs.

Because Taylor limited the reach of what serves as a "crime of violence" under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A), a statute which impacts whether and when an "individual may face a second felony conviction and years or decades" of additional mandatory imprisonment for having a gun involved in the commission of certain offenses (basics here), I suspect there will be future Taylor GVRs and likely lots of other echoes from the decision.  

Especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's high-profile ruling in Bruen changing the jurisprudence of the Second Amendment (basics here, questions here and here), it is interesting to note that two big wins for criminal defendants this SCOTUS Term came in cases limiting the reach of federal criminal statutes imposing severe mandatory punishments for gun-related offenses.  Though Taylor and Wooden (basics here, analysis here) will not get nearly as much attention as Bruen, for certain folks they will prove even more important.

June 27, 2022 at 09:57 AM | Permalink

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