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WASHINGTON – Three days after the fierce battle around his Supreme Court appointment, Judge Brett Kavanaugh will join his new colleagues for the first time on Tuesday morning, sitting on the far right of the bench at Place reserved for the youngest justice.
The court will hear two hours of arguments in three cases, all relating to a complex and ambiguous federal law that has long thwarted judges. Cases do not raise critical constitutional issues or pressing social issues, which may be appropriate for a court that has suffered collateral damage from a confirmation struggle marked by bitterness, mistrust, and outright partisanship.
The law, the penal law relating to the armed career, is a sort of law with three strokes. Persons convicted of possession of firearms by a federal court must be sentenced to harsher sentences if they have already been convicted of three violent crimes or serious drug charges.
Determining what constitutes one of these previous offenses is not always easy. The first case, Stokeling c. United States No. 17-5554, concerns part of the law that defines violent crimes as including any offense involving the use or threat of use of physical force. The question that arises in this case is whether a minimum force, such as in a torn handbag, is sufficient.
The case concerns Denard Stokeling, who pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm after robbing a restaurant in Miami Beach. He had already issued three convictions, and prosecutors argued that their sentence was longer than the charge the prosecution would normally have imposed.
Mr Stokeling objected, claiming that his conviction for "stealing with his bare hands" in a state court following a stolen collar was not a violent crime. This meant, he said, that he should only incur a maximum sentence of 10 years instead of a minimum sentence of 15 years.
A trial judge agreed, condemning Mr. Stokeling to about six years in prison. But the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, Under Florida law, the theft with bare hands necessarily involved the use of force, resulting in a longer sentence.
The court will consider another part of the same law in two other cases – United States v. Stitt, No. 17-765 and United States v. Sims, No. 17-766 – consolidated for a single hour of arguments.
The law says burglaries are violent crimes that may require longer sentences. But that does not specify what is described as burglary.
The Supreme Court declared that the crime required the invasion of a "building or structure". But the defendants in both cases – Victor Stitt (Tennessee) and Jason Sims (Arkansas) – were convicted under domestic laws allowing for burglary lawsuits in mobile homes and the like. vehicles in which people sleep.
Judge Kavanaugh and his colleagues will then have to decide whether a mobile home is more like a car or a house.
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