That several items in a list share an attribute counsels in favor of interpreting the other items as possessing that attribute as well. Though this canon of construction is by no means a hard and fast rule, it is a factor pointing toward the Fourth Circuit's construction of the statute. Regardless of what the quoted phrase might mean standing alone, in conjunction with the choice of law clause it must refer only to restorations of civil rights by the convicting jurisdiction. The plain meaning that we seek to discern is the plain meaning of the whole statute, not of isolated sentences. See King v.
Many jurisdictions have no procedure for restoring civil rights.
Under our reading of the statute, a person convicted in federal court is no worse off than a person convicted in a court of a State that does not restore civil rights. Page 374 Because the statutory language is unambiguous, the rule of lenity, which petitioners urge us to employ here, is inapplicable. Of course, by denying the existence of an ambiguity, we do not claim to be perfectly certain that we have divined Congress' intentions as to this particular situation. But our task is not the hopeless one of ascertaining what the legislators who passed the law would have decided had they reconvened to consider petitioners' particular cases. Rather, it is to determine whether the language the legislators actually enacted has a plain, unambiguous meaning.