Barrett v. United States

**Opinion:** https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/607us1r07\_7647.pdf ## Case background This case concerns the relationship between two provisions of 18 U. S. C. § 924: subsection (c)(1)(A)(i), which criminalizes using, carrying, or possessing a firearm in connection with a federal crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, and subsection (j), which prescribes different penalties, including, in certain circumstances, capital punishment, when “a violation of subsection (c)” causes death. Dwayne Barrett committed a series of robberies between August 2011 and January 2012; during one, his confederate shot and killed Gamar Dafalla. Barrett was convicted on seven counts, three of them relevant here: Hobbs Act robbery of Dafalla, which served as the predicate for a § 924(c) count and a § 924(j) count arising from the same killing. The District Court declined to sentence Barrett separately on the two firearm counts, merging the subsection (c) conviction into the subsection (j) conviction. On appeal after resentencing, the Second Circuit held that one act may yield two convictions and instructed the District Court to impose separate convictions and sentences on both counts. That court acknowledged that subsection (c)(1) and subsection (j) qualify as the same offense under the test in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299, but believed that, as construed in Lora v. United States, 599 U. S. 453, the two provisions are separate offenses for which Congress has clearly authorized cumulative punishments. Because that decision deepened a split among the Courts of Appeals, this Court granted certiorari. Because the Government agreed with Barrett, the Court appointed an amicus curiae to defend the judgment below. ## Questions Presented (1) Whether the Double Jeopardy Clause permits two sentences for an act that violates 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) and § 924(j), a question that divides seven circuits but about which the Solicitor General and Petitioner agree. The petition presented two questions, but the Court granted certiorari limited to the first. The second question, whether Hobbs Act robbery qualifies as a crime of violence under § 924(c)(3)(A), was not taken up. ## Holding Congress did not clearly authorize convictions under both §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i) and (j) for a single act that violates both provisions. One act that violates both provisions therefore may spawn only one conviction. The part of the Second Circuit’s judgment that held otherwise is reversed. All agree that the two subsections define the same offense under Blockburger, which triggers the presumption that Congress does not intend to punish the same offense under two different statutes. That presumption yields only to a plainly expressed contrary intent, and nothing in the text, structure, or legislative history of § 924 supplies one. Congress twice wrote “in addition to” language into subsection (c) itself, language this Court has called “crystal clear” evidence of an intent to overcome Blockburger, but used no similar language for the interplay between subsection (c)(1) and subsection (j). Subsection (c)’s consecutive-sentence mandate speaks only to how sentences are arranged once two convictions are permissible; it does not answer whether two convictions may be imposed at all. And because subsection (j) supplies its own comprehensive penalty scheme that operates independently of subsection (c)’s, Congress is best read to have placed in front of prosecutors a menu, not a buffet. ## The Court Justice Jackson delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, III, IV-A, and IV-B, and an opinion with respect to Part IV-C, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor and Kagan joined. Justice Gorsuch filed an opinion concurring in part. ## What this episode contains This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in *Barrett v. United States*, written by Justice Jackson. **AI disclosure:** The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone, inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be attributed to Justice Jackson. The text being read is the Court’s published majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.