What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 14 reversed part of a Second Circuit ruling that would have allowed Dwayne Barrett to face separate convictions and sentences under two federal firearm provisions for the same fatal robbery-related conduct.
The court held that a single act violating both 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i), which covers using, carrying or possessing a firearm in connection with certain federal crimes, and § 924(j), which sets penalties when such a violation causes death, may produce only one conviction. Writing for the court on the operative holding, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, "Congress intended subsection ( j) as an alternative, not a supplement, to subsection (c)(1)(A)(i)."
The decision resolves a split deepened by the Second Circuit, which had said the two provisions were separate offenses for which Congress clearly authorized cumulative punishment. The Supreme Court said the provisions define the same offense under Blockburger v. United States and that Congress did not clearly express an intent to overcome the presumption against multiple convictions for the same offense.
Barrett was convicted after a series of robberies, including one in which a confederate shot and killed Gamar Dafalla. After earlier Supreme Court rulings affected his case, the district court resentenced him to 50 years in prison and merged the § 924(c) count into the § 924(j) count, but the Second Circuit later instructed the district court to impose separate convictions and sentences on those counts.
The justices rejected the argument that § 924(c)'s consecutive-sentence mandate answered the separate question of whether two convictions may be entered at all. The opinion reasoned that Congress had used explicit "in addition to" language elsewhere in § 924 when it wanted to permit cumulative punishment, but did not use comparable language for the relationship between § 924(c)(1) and § 924(j).
The court reversed the Second Circuit in relevant part and remanded. Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in part, writing separately that the case exposed unresolved confusion in the court's double-jeopardy doctrine for concurrent prosecutions and saying Barrett had been charged and convicted twice for one offense.