Johnson v. United States
The Court struck down part of the Armed Career Criminal Act, ruling that its 'residual clause' — which increased prison sentences for felons found with guns who had past 'violent felony' convictions — was too vague to satisfy the Constitution's due process guarantee.
The decision overturned two of the Court's own recent precedents upholding the clause, and it means thousands of federal sentences based on that clause could no longer be imposed or may need to be revisited.
“Invoking so shapeless a provision to condemn someone to prison for 15 years to life does not comport with the Constitution's guarantee of due process.”
The core holding explaining why the residual clause violates due process.
How it got here: A federal trial court sentenced Johnson to 15 years under the residual clause; the Eighth Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court took the case and later ordered new briefing on vagueness.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Samuel Johnson, a felon with a long criminal record and ties to a white-supremacist group under FBI surveillance, pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm. Federal prosecutors sought a mandatory 15-year sentence under a law that increases penalties for felons with three prior "violent felony" convictions, arguing his earlier conviction for possessing a sawed-off shotgun qualified under a catch-all "residual clause" covering crimes involving a serious risk of physical injury.
The question before the Court
Could Congress hand out a mandatory 15-year prison sentence based on a "violent felony" definition so vague that judges couldn't apply it consistently?
Why it matters
Federal defendants facing enhanced prison terms under the Armed Career Criminal Act can no longer be sentenced based on the residual clause, and many who were already sentenced under it may be able to challenge their sentences. Prosecutors and judges must now rely only on the law's remaining, more specific categories of violent felonies.
What changes now
The case was sent back to the lower courts, which can no longer use the residual clause to enhance Johnson's or other defendants' sentences. The ruling does not affect the Act's other provisions, including its list of specifically named offenses like burglary and arson. Many federal prisoners sentenced under the residual clause were expected to seek reduced sentences following this decision.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly said its ruling does not affect the Armed Career Criminal Act's four specifically named offenses (burglary, arson, extortion, and crimes involving explosives) or the rest of the law's definition of a violent felony — only the vague catch-all residual clause is affected.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kennedy
Justice Kennedy agreed with the outcome but for different reasons, siding with Justice Alito's view that the residual clause is not unconstitutionally vague. Assuming the categorical approach still applies, he agreed with Justice Thomas that Johnson's shotgun-possession conviction simply doesn't qualify as a violent felony under ordinary statutory interpretation, without needing to strike down the clause.
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed Johnson's sentence should not stand but argued the Court could have resolved the case through ordinary statutory interpretation, since mere gun possession is too remote from any real risk of injury to qualify as a violent felony. He also voiced broader skepticism about the vagueness doctrine itself, tracing its troubling parallels to substantive due process and questioning whether it is grounded in the Constitution's original meaning.
Dissent — Justice Alito
“So brushing aside stare decisis, the Court holds that the residual clause is unconstitutionally vague even though we have twice rejected that very argument within the last eight years.”Alito's central objection that the majority abandoned recent precedent without justification.
Justice Alito argued the majority abandoned precedent without good reason, having twice rejected vagueness challenges to the same clause within the last eight years. He contended the clause could reasonably be read to apply to real-world conduct rather than an idealized abstraction, and that even under the categorical approach, the clause is not vague in all applications since many crimes clearly qualify. He would have upheld Johnson's sentence.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied its vagueness doctrine, which holds that the government violates due process when it punishes someone under a criminal law so unclear that ordinary people can't tell what's prohibited, or so standardless that it invites arbitrary enforcement by judges.
- Under existing precedent, courts assessing the residual clause had to use a 'categorical approach' — imagining the conduct involved in a typical or 'ordinary case' of the crime, rather than looking at what the defendant actually did, and then guessing whether that imagined conduct was risky enough to count as violent.
- The Court found two compounding sources of unpredictability: judges had no reliable method for picturing what 'ordinary case' conduct looks like for thousands of different crimes, and even once pictured, there was no clear line for how much risk was enough to qualify.
- The Court pointed to its own repeated, inconsistent attempts across four earlier cases to develop a workable test for the clause, as well as widespread, persistent disagreement among lower courts about how to apply it, as evidence that the standard could not be applied in a principled way.
- The Court rejected the argument that a law is constitutional so long as some applications are clear, holding instead that the indeterminacy infecting the clause as a whole made it impossible to administer predictably, regardless of any straightforward cases.
- Because the residual clause could not be applied without guesswork, the Court concluded that increasing a defendant's prison sentence under it denies due process of law.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Overrules James v. United States (550 U.S. 192)
The Court's earlier holding that the residual clause was not unconstitutionally vague is overruled.
Overrules Sykes v. United States (564 U.S. 1)
The Court's earlier holding rejecting a vagueness challenge to the residual clause is overruled.
Reaffirms Taylor v. United States (495 U.S. 575)
The Court relies on Taylor's categorical approach requirement as the framework that makes the clause unworkable.