Has anyone kept track of total ACCA case GVRs through the years (or estimated total time spent on ACCA churn)?
The question in the title of this post is prompted by the one notable criminal justice element of the Supreme Court's order list this morning. At the very end of a relatively short order list, Justice Alito (joined by Justice Thomas) dissents from the Court's decision to GVR a case back to the Eleventh Circuit (which is what the US Solicitor General urged the Court to do). Here is the full dissent:
The Court grants, vacates, and remands in this case, apparently because it harbors doubt that petitioner’s 1987 conviction under Florida law for battery on a law enforcement officer qualifies as a “violent felony” as defined by the Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause, which covers a felony offense that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.” 18 U. S. C. §924(e)(2)(B)(i). I share no such doubt: As the case comes to us, it is undisputed that petitioner was convicted of battery on a law enforcement officer after he “‘struck [an] officer in the face using a closed fist.’” App. to Pet. for Cert. A–1, p. 11. See Fla. Stat. §784.03(1)(a) (2018) (a person commits battery when he “[a]ctually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other,” among other things). Because the record makes “perfectly clear” that petitioner “was convicted of battery on a law enforcement officer by striking, which involves the use of physical force against the person of another,” App. to Pet. for Cert. A–1, at 11, I would count the conviction as a “violent felony” under the elements clause and would therefore deny the petition. Mathis v. United States, 579 U. S. ___, ___ (2016) (ALITO, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 6).
Last year in this post, I expressed my ACCA exhaustion by asking "At just what level of Dante's Inferno does modern ACCA jurisprudence reside?". And if I was much more clever and had endless time, I might this year try to come up with some account of ACCA jurisprudence that uses an elaborate array of Game of Thrones references (e.g., the now-long-dead residual clause could be cast as evil Joffrey and other clauses could be other Lannisters and other characters could be key SCOTUS rulings assailing or defending clauses).
I make the GoT reference in part because I know I can find on the Internet somewhere a detailed accounting of characters killed in that long-running fictional series. In turn, I wonder if I can find on the Internet somewhere any accounting of cases sent back by SCOTUS in the long-running (and likely never-ending) drama that is modern ACCA jurisprudence.
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