Since 2009, Bluestem Prairie has been following the career of Austin, Minnesota neo-nazi Samuel Johnson, who had discovered the white supremacist movement while in jail.
A reader has let us know about an update in Johnson's story.
As the post below from the Oyez Project notes, his activities--which mostly involved trying to recruit those active in the anti-immigration movement into the National Socialist Movement--drew the attention of the FBI in 2010. Having been rejected by local anti-immigration activists, Johnson himself spun off from the NSM and formed the Aryan Liberation Movement, which contemplated revenge against immigrants rights activists, as well as blowing up the Mexican consulate's office in St. Paul.
Johnson was sentenced to 15 years in prison, under laws governing gun possession by violent felons. Johnson is appealing this part of the sentence. At Guns.com, Jared Morgan looks at the appeal (and the position of groups filing amicus briefs for and against Johnson's position) in Unconstitutionality of ‘violent offender’ clause to be argued in Neo-Nazi’s case.
Regardless of what one thinks of Johnson (and we don't think highly of him or his political beliefs), his appeal does raise important questions about the "violent offender" clause. Civil liberties are not about who's Minnesota Nice.
From The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law post, JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES,
Facts of the CaseIn 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began investigating Samuel Johnson based on his involvement in an organization called the National Social [sic] Movement. Later in 2010, Johnson left that group to found the Aryan Liberation Movement. In November of that year, Johnson told an undercover FBI agent that he manufactured napalm, silencers, and other explosives for the Aryan Liberation Movement in addition to possessing an AK-47 rifle, several semi-automatic weapons, and a large cache of ammunition. In April 2012, Johnson was arrested at a meeting with his probation officer and admitted to possessing some of the previously mentioned weapons.
A grand jury charged Johnson with six counts of firearm possession, three of which relied on his classification as an “armed career criminal.” This classification was based on the fact that he had three prior felony convictions that the district court designated as “violent felonies”—attempted simple robbery, simple robbery, and possession of a short-barreled shotgun. Pursuant to the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), Johnson was then subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years. Johnson argued that the convictions in question should not be considered violent felonies and that the ACCA was unconstitutionally vague. The district court held that the felony convictions in question were in fact violent felonies and that Johnson was an armed career criminal for the purposes of the mandatory minimum sentence required by the ACCA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
QuestionIs the definition of "violent felony" in the Armed Career Criminal Act unconstitutionally vague?
Argument
The New York Times look at the case in an April 20 article, Justices Hear Second Round of Arguments on Case Hinging on Phrase’s Meaning:
For the fifth time since 2007, the Supreme Court on Monday struggled to make sense of a phrase in a federal law that requires longer sentences for some gun crimes based on earlier convictions.
“I can think of no other instance in which the court has endeavored so many times in so few years to answer precisely the same question,” said Katherine M. Menendez, a lawyer for a Minnesota man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison based in part on an earlier conviction for possessing a short-barreled shotgun.
The case, Johnson v. United States, No. 13-7120, was before the court for a rare re-argument. When the court first heard arguments in the case in November, the question before it was whether merely possessing the shotgun could be considered a violent felony under the law.
In January, the court asked the parties to come back for a second argument on the broader question of whether the key phrase in the law was unconstitutionally vague.
Under the law, convicted felons caught with guns face a maximum sentence of 10 years. But those with three prior convictions for violent felonies are subject to a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence.
Which crimes qualify as violent felonies has been the subject of much litigation. The law defines the relevant crimes to include burglary, arson, extortion, the use of explosives and ones that “otherwise involve conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.”
On Monday, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggested that the law, if not the court’s interpretations of it, was clear enough. “Can a statute be vague simply because this court messes it up?” he asked, adding that the court had twice upheld the constitutionality of the law. . . .
Read the rest at the New York Times.
Photo: Sam Johnson in his southern Minnesota NSM glory days. Via Austin Daily Herald.
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Compare the case of Sam Johnson to that of Mohamed Osman Mohamud (2010 Portland car bomb plot). Both told undercover FBI operatives that they identified targets to bomb for ideological reasons. But one is an "armed career criminal" and the other is a terrorist. One got a 15 year prison sentence, that probably would have been just 7 if it wasn't for ACCA mandatory sentencing (As the judge considered 15 years to be "too harsh") ; the other got a 30 year prison sentence with lifetime supervision. One is a would-be cause celebre for gun lobbyists like the Gun Owners' of America. One's case is up for review in the Supreme Court on the pretext that a person who "merely possesses" a sawed off shotgun does not represent a serious risk of physical harm, the same way he "merely" possessed an ideology that led him to join a neo-Nazi group who openly calls the United States to be purged of all non-straight-white-cis people.
Posted by: Sagdathagar | Apr 30, 2015 at 07:36 PM