The Supreme Court ruled Friday that judges can be more lenient in delivering punishment for some gun crimes, finding that those sentences can run concurrently alongside sentences for other crimes.
At issue is a complex federal law that provides enhanced penalties for crimes involving a firearm.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing for a unanimous court, said that while one section of the law includes a mandate that sentences run stacked on top of each other, another section does not. So someone convicted of offenses under both sections can have their penalties run consecutively, lowering the overall time they have to serve.
“Congress could certainly have designed the penalty scheme at issue here differently,” she wrote. “But Congress did not do any of these things. And we must implement the design Congress chose.”
The case before the justices involved Efrain Lora, who was convicted of aiding and abetting an assassination of a competing drug dealer in the Bronx in 2002. He was the lookout when the victim was murdered using a firearm.
Lora was convicted under the aiding and abetting murder section of the firearms law, and also of drug trafficking involving a firearm.
The drug trafficking section carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years, and says it cannot run “concurrently with any other term of imprisonment.”
The aiding and abetting section contains no minimum sentence, but does allow for a maximum penalty of execution. It does not include any prohibition on concurrent sentences.
A federal district judge sentenced Lora to 25 years for the distribution charge and five years for his aiding and abetting. Lora had asked that they run concurrently, so he would only serve 25 years, but the judge ruled the law required consecutive sentences, or 30 years.
An appeals court upheld that decision.
Lora appealed to the Supreme Court, where the Justice Department argued consecutive sentencing made sense, arguing the two sections must be read together.
But the high court said it was impossible to read the law that way.
Justice Jackson said the sections were written at different times and don’t operate in tandem with each other, so they must be viewed as separate. A sentencing under one has no bearing on a sentencing under the other.
She said combining them would have produced bizarre results where the maximum sentence would be lower than the minimum sentence.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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