The justices disagreed with the government's view that the man, William Dale Wooden, had met the threshold spelled out in the Armed Career Criminal Act, which provides a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison for offenders convicted of federal gun crimes who have committed three or more felonies on "occasions different from one another."
Wooden pleaded guilty to 10 separate burglary charges after breaking into a mini-storage facility in Georgia in 1997. In 2015, he was found guilty of possessing firearms as a felon. A federal district court sentenced him to 15 and a half years in prison. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the sentence in 2019.
Federal prosecutors had initially requested a 21-month sentence but later argued that he was a career criminal under the ACCA, saying each burglary charge counted as an occasion. Nothing in the law defines what constitutes an occasion.
But the Supreme Court soundly rejected that view Monday, saying it went against what "an ordinary person using language in its normal way" would describe Wooden's offenses to be.
In an opinion delivering the decision of the court, Justice Elena Kagan said the government's view contravenes the ordinary usage of the word "occasion."
"An occasion may itself encompass multiple, temporally distinct activities," Justice Kagan said in the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh. "For example, the occasion of a wedding may include a ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, and dancing."
Actions do not need to be carried out simultaneously — and often don't — to be considered part of an occasion, according to English common language, Kagan said.
She also noted that the government's interpretation of the law "can make someone a career offender in the space of a minute" and that the high court has in the past interpreted the word occasion "to encompass multiple, temporally discrete offenses."
In particular, Kagan said the government's "hyper-technical" focus on the precise timing of elements collapses the three-occasion requirement spelled out in the law.
In explaining the court's ruling, she gave another example: during a bar brawl, a patron hits a fellow drinker, then another, then a third one. The government would consider those three assaults occurring on different occasions.
"Timing of course matters, though not in the split-second, elements-based way the government proposes," Justice Kagan wrote.
Location is also important, the justice said, as criminal acts that are further from one another are less likely to be part of the same event. Character and relationship of the offenses are also relevant: the more offenses share a common purpose or plan, the more likely they make up one occasion.
In general, when an offender engages in a continuous stream of closely related criminal acts at one location, those should be counted as one occasion for the purpose of the ACCA, Justice Kagan said.
"For the most part, applying this approach will be straightforward and intuitive," the court opinion says.
Allon Kedem of Arnold & Porter, who argued the case pro bono on Wooden's behalf, told Law360 he was "delighted" by the court's decision.
"Mr. Wooden is not an armed career criminal and should not have been subject to a mandatory minimum sentence," Kedem said. "We're hopeful that he will quickly be resentenced and sent home to his family."
Justice Kagan's wedding analogy was a pleasant surprise and felt personal to Kedem. The justice attended his wedding during the time he clerked for her, he said.
"Justice Kagan was actually at my wedding," Kedem said. "I thought the example was spot on."
Another former clerk to Justice Kagan, Erica L. Ross of the U.S. Solicitor General's Office, argued the case on behalf of the U.S. government on Oct. 4, the first day of in-person oral arguments in 18 months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ross argued an "occasion" ends when the legal elements of an offense are established. Under that view, crimes committed minutes or even seconds apart from one another could be considered occurring on different occasions for the purpose of the ACCA and could trigger the mandatory minimum sentence.
Justice were left wondering what factors — timing, location or other circumstances — could provide the ultimate test. Several of them found the government's view counterintuitive.
In the end, they squarely rejected it.
No ordinary person would say Wooden burglarized 10 storage units on 10 different occasions but rather that all 10 burglaries happened on one occasion, Justice Kagan wrote.
"The origin of the 'occasions' clause confirms that multiple crimes may occur on one occasion even if not at the same moment," the court ruled. "Wooden's night of crime is a perfect case in point."
The high court took up the case in part to resolve a circuit split. Some courts of appeals, such as the Sixth Circuit, considered the different occasion element to be satisfied when crimes take place at different moments in time, rather than simultaneously. Other circuits consider additional factors such as circumstances of the crimes.
The government relied on a "legally fancified" version of the Sixth Circuit's timing test, Justice Kagan wrote.
Justices Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch filed concurring opinions, but agreed with the general court's view that Wooden is not a career offender.
The Supreme Court decision provides some clarity on the language of the ACCA, which has been at the center of other cases.
"What the Supreme Court is telling us is that we should be reading these statutes in plain English," Kedem said.
Wooden filed a petition for certiorari on his own. A senior associate at Arnold & Porter noticed the high court had asked the government for a response, an unusual move for a pro se case, and involved the firm in the case, Kedem said.
He said it was "remarkable" that the high court took up the case.
Devi M. Rao, the deputy director of Supreme Court and appellate practice at the MacArthur Justice Center, which filed a brief in May supporting Wooden, told Law360 in an email that "the result in this case is consistent with common sense."
She also called Justice Kagan's opinion a "fun read."
Wooden is represented by Allon Kedem of Arnold & Porter.
The government is represented by Erica L. Ross of the U.S. Solicitor General's Office.
The case is Wooden v. U.S., case number 20-5279, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
--Editing by Andrew Cohen.
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