Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored a unanimous opinion on Friday that judges can be more lenient in the sentencing process for certain crimes involving firearms.
In the unanimous opinion in Lora v. United States, the justices said a ban on concurrent sentences in one section of the criminal code for drug-related gun crimes does not govern a sentence for a conviction under another section of the law.
BIDEN BETS THAT THE BEST WAY TO BEAT TRUMP IS TO REMAIN SILENT ON THE INDICTMENT
Jackson, a former federal trial court judge and the first former public defender to serve on the high court, said Congress could have designed the penalty scheme in another way, but because it didn’t, the court “must implement the design Congress chose.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“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 involved Efrain Lora, who was convicted of aiding and abetting an assassination of a rival drug dealer in the Bronx in 2002. Lora’s role in the scheme was to wait in a car and call his associates when he witnessed the rival dealer in front of his house, according to prosecutors.
A federal district judge sentenced Lora to 25 years in prison for a distribution charge and five years for his aiding and abetting. Lora requested that they run concurrently to serve 25 only, but the judge said the law required a consecutive sentence, meaning he would serve 30 years.
An appeals court upheld that decision, prompting Lora to appeal to the highest court.
Larry Rosenberg of Jones Day law firm had argued for Lora that there was “nothing in the text” of the statute in question to support consecutive sentencing in this case. Rosenberg sent a statement to the Washington Examiner lauding the justices for preserving the “long-standing default of discretion in criminal sentencing.”
“The Court’s decision to enforce the plain text that Congress enacted will help ensure that a defendant’s sentence fits both the crime and the individual,” Rosenberg said.
Jackson, the newest member and the first black woman on the high court who was tapped by President Joe Biden to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer last year, has authored six opinions this year, four of which saw the other eight justices agree with her majority opinion.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The latest justice issued her first solo dissent against an 8-1 majority opinion earlier this month that makes it easier for companies to sue over worker strikes.
Her first-ever opinion was in November, writing a brief two-page response in support of a death row inmate from Ohio. Jackson wrote she would have tossed out lower court rulings in the case of Ohio inmate Davel Chinn, whose counsel argued the state suppressed evidence that might have changed the outcome of his trial.
