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New (and needed) scholarship on the Armed Career Criminal Act

By Douglas A. Berman

Serious sentencing gurus know that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have been struggling greatly in recent years to figure out how to apply the federal Armed Career Criminal Act. I am thus pleased to see some new scholarship on this topic in the form of this new article by David Holman, which is titled "Violent Crimes and Known Associates: The Residual Clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act." Here is the abstract: Confusion reigns in federal courts over whether crimes qualify as ?violent felonies? for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).  The ACCA requires a fifteen-year minimum sentence for felons convicted of possessing a firearm who have three prior convictions for violent felonies.  Many offenders receive the ACCA?s mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years based on judges? guesses that their prior crimes could be committed in a violent manner - instead of based on the statutory crimes of which they were actually convicted...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 21, 2010 (boomark / email).