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Struggling to get psyched for Sykes, another ACCA case before SCOTUS

By Douglas A. Berman

On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Sykes v. US, yet another case on the docket to resolve a circuit split over what prior crimes trigger the severe mandatory minimum prison terms in the Armed Career Criminal Act.  As this SCOTUSblog page explains, at issue in Sykesis "[w]hether fleeing the police in a car, after being ordered to stop, constitutes a 'violent felony' within the meaning of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which imposes heightened sentences for such violent felonies." I wrote a preview of the Sykes case for the American Bar Association?s PREVIEW of U.S. Supreme Court Cases, which can be accessed here.   In that preview, I sought to play up how this latest ACCA case "implicates a number of cross-cutting jurisprudential and policy considerations...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 11, 2011 (boomark / email).