Court Opinion

ID: 9483482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:21:34.437747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:38.411891
License: Public Domain

FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), a statute making it an independent offense to commit a crime of violence using a firearm, is Congress’ attempt to discourage use of firearms. Upon a first conviction, an offender receives a mandatory five year term. Upon a “second or subsequent conviction,” the defendant receives a mandatory twenty-year sentence. Because a criminal with a firearm poses the same threat to the public on first and subsequent offenses, the differential sentences must have been designed to create a differential effect on the offender. The initial five-year sentence is intended to punish and reform the first-time offender, while the subsequent twenty-year sentence punishes more severely those who failed to learn their lessons from the initial punishment. Where the primary purposes of subsequent offender legislation are reformation and retribution, “such ends would be served best by applying the statutes only to those offenders who have been convicted prior to the commission of the subsequent offense.” Gonzales v. United States, 224 F.2d 431, 434 (1st Cir.1955).
A common-sense reading of § 924(c) is consonant with that intent. Congress created an “incentive plan” for felons to abandon their firearms even though they may return to crime. The first conviction for use of a firearm requires a hefty five year sentence. If that does not teach a lesson, the next offense with a gun draws a twenty-year sentence. The majority’s interpretation drains the statute of its intended impact on the offender. Defendants like Neal, who the majority believes may simultaneously receive first and subsequent convictions, never have the opportunity to learn from their initial mistakes. In the process, the differential punishments provided in § 924(c) lose their intended effect. The incentive Congress constructed to deter violence from the use of firearms is destroyed.
While resort to legislative history is not necessary where, as here, the structure and purpose of the statute are evident on its face, I note that the floor debates on § 924(c) are fully consistent with the incentive scheme described above. For example, Representative Poff, a cosponsor of the bill, said that the penalty provisions were designed
*604to persuade the man who is tempted to commit a Federal felony to leave his gun at home. Any such person should understand that if he uses his gun and is caught and convicted, he is going to jail. He should further understand that if he does so a second time, he is going to jail for a longer time.
114 Cong.Rec. 22,231 (1968) quoted in United States v. Abreu, 962 F.2d 1447, 1450 (10th Cir.1992) (en banc). This and similar comments from the bill’s sponsors support my reading that an initial five year sentence should have a chance to teach and punish before longer sentences for subsequent convictions are imposed. The language of the statute is exactly consistent with such a scheme. Neal should have the opportunity for a five year correction course before receiving twenty years.
The majority disagrees. It believes that the plain meaning of § 924(c) requires the draconian result reached in this case. The fact that the majority and I, all of us possessed of reasonable minds, find directly opposite “plain meanings” in this statute, suggests at a minimum that the phrase “second or subsequent conviction” is ambiguous as applied to simultaneous convictions of separate counts in an indictment. The Tenth Circuit, sitting en banc, found it so:
In short, “second or subsequent” can be read to describe either multiple events occurring at one time or multiple events occurring in a chronological sequence. “Conviction” can refer either to the return of a jury verdict of guilt or to the court’s entry of judgment on that verdict. Accordingly, the text of the statute does not compel the construction that a second or subsequent conviction occurs when a defendant is charged in one indictment with more than one section 924(c) offense and a single judgment of conviction is entered on that indictment. Given the impossibility of discerning a plain meaning of “second or subsequent conviction” from the language of the statutory phrase, we conclude that the phrase is ambiguous.
Abreu, 962 F.2d at 1450. The rule of lenity commands that we interpret ambiguous criminal statutes in favor of the defendant. United States v. R.L.C., — U.S.-, - & n. 6, -, 112 S.Ct. 1329, 1338 & n. 6, 1340, 117 L.Ed.2d 559 (1992); United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 348, 92 S.Ct. 515, 522-23, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971). Whether one agrees with my common-sense reading of the statute or finds it ambiguous, the result for Neal should be the same: twenty year sentences cannot be imposed upon him.