Argument preview: Growing pains in the mass incarceration and deportation movements

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Argument preview: Growing pains in the mass incarceration and deportation movements

By Evan Lee on Apr 19, 2016 at 5:41 pm

On Tuesday, April 26, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Mathis v. United States, likely to be the Term’s most important federal sentencing case, and its second-most important immigration case after United States v. Texas. It involves the surprisingly complicated question of how to determine which state convictions qualify for federal mandatory minimum sentences and for removal under immigration law. To understand why the case is so important, and why the issue of which convictions qualify is so bewildering, some investment in the background is essential.

Back in the 1980s, when the federal government seriously got in the business of meting out long sentencing enhancements based on prior state convictions for “violent felonies,” and deporting green-card holders for a fast-growing list of “aggravated felonies,” it all seemed so simple. A burglary, for example, was explicitly listed as a violent felony for sentencing purposes, and as an aggravated felony under immigration law. Why would there ever be an issue as to whether any given burglary would qualify in either context?

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United Statesv. Texas

ORAL ARGUMENT - APRIL 18, 2016

click on link below

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2015/15-674