With Mental Strength Health being a theme of the Podcast; This Podcast takes to the next level.
Gregory Welch of southern Florida was sentenced to fifteen years in prison after being convicted under a federal law that the Court struck down in the Johnson case as too vague. That provision is the so-called “residual clause” in the Armed Career Criminal Act. The Act enhances a sentence for illegal possession of a gun by a felon from the ordinary maximum of ten years to a minimum of fifteen years if the individual had previously been convicted of three violent crimes or serious drug crimes.
Welch had pleaded guilty to the gun possession charge, on condition that he be allowed to challenge the use of one of his prior convictions as a basis for increasing his sentence. After the Johnson ruling came out late last June, he sought to reopen his sentence but failed in district court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit refused to grant permission for him to appeal.
He then took his case on to the Supreme Court, as did lawyers for at least a half-dozen other inmates seeking to take advantage of the Johnson ruling. The federal government last month picked out one of those cases as a proper one for the Court to consider, but the Court did not choose that one. Instead, it chose Welch’s petition — apparently because it was not complicated by rules barring multiple habeas petitions and had resulted in a final ruling at the appeals court level.
Although the Justice Department had originally opposed review by the Supreme Court of Welch’s case, although it suggested he should be allowed to raise the question in lower courts, Welch’s lawyers filed a new brief after the Justice Department took the position in the other case that the rule of the Johnson decision was a new “substantive” rule of law and, as such, should apply to cases that had been closed before the date of that decision.
With the Justice Department on Welch’s side on the retroactivity question; The Supreme Court Ruled in Welch's favor