WATSON v. UNITED STATES
On appeal from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
Who is litigating this time?
On one side: one convicted drug dealer . On the the other side: the U.S. government.
How was Watson convicted?
Mr. Watson traded 24 doses of oxycodone hydrochloride (OxyContin) to an undercover police officer, who traded the drugs for a .50 caliber pistol. Not surprisingly, Mr. Watson was arrested for selling drugs.
He was also indicted for the crime of using a gun while selling drugs. He pled guilty, but, he held onto his right to disagree with the government that trading drugs for a gun was "using" a gun in violation of the law. The difference is that if he can win this case, his prison sentence will be up to 60 months shorter. Clarinet Esq. was never good at math, but a calculator will tell you that this is 5 years.
How did Watson make it to the Supreme Court?
He appealed to the Court of Appeals, who affirmed his conviction. He appealed to the Supreme Court which granted his appeal. The Supreme Court granted his petition to clear up a disagreement among the circuit courts.
What was this all about?
This case is about the word "use." What do we mean when we say that we "use" something? Namely, do we "use" something if we receive it in trade? Here's a simple answer - No. We don't use things when we receive them in trade. Or, in other words, if Watson traded drugs for an apple, he used the drugs, not the apple.
So when the Court looked at the law that prohibited the "use" of a gun in relation to a drug crime, the Supreme Court decided that Mr. Watson hadn't used a gun when he received the gun in trade for OxyContin. The way the government read the statute just doesn't make sense.
If the government government obviously loses, how did the government convict Mr. Watson of this crime?
It turns out that the Supreme Court has explained the meaning of "use" before. In an earlier case, the Supreme Court decided that a person that traded his gun for drugs had "used" the gun. Naturally, symmetry would indicate that trading guns for drugs is the same as trading drugs for guns. Of course, trading drugs for guns would be a crime if that had been the way Congress had written it. But Congress did not write it that way. Nobody (except for the government in this case) thinks that you use a gun when you receive it in trade for drugs.
Mind you, trading drugs for guns is a crime. Just not this crime.
What's the big idea?
The Supreme Court does
try to give the text of a statute its normal meaning. Meaning can't be ignored - especially when that meaning was basically the basis for earlier decisions on the same statute.
What is the quotable quote?
"Whatever the tension between the prior result and the outcome here, law depends on respect for language and would be served better by statutory amendment (if Congress sees asymmetry) than by racking statutory language to cover a policy it fails to reach."
Any other words of wisdom?
Everybody agreed in the results in this case. 9-0. Justice Ginsburg wrote to seperately concur in the result. Her concurrance would narrow "use" to "use as a weapon" and not "use for trade." In the earlier case, Justice Scalia had argued (in his dissent) that "use" does not include trading. Justice Ginsburg, after seeing this case, changed her mind to agree with him - "use" does not include trading.
She notes a bit of language from Justice Frankfurter - Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
Interestingly, Justice Scalia does not join Justice Ginsburg's opinion, and he doesn't write separately. Does this mean that he now believes that "use" includes trading? We may never know. Maybe Congress will just fix it.
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