By David G. Savage / Tribune Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — With Justice Neil M. Gorsuch casting the deciding vote, the Supreme Court on Tuesday spared a California immigrant from deportation because his conviction for home burglary was not clearly the kind of “crime of violence” that would allow such a step.
The decision narrows one provision of a broad federal immigration law that calls for mandatory deportation for non-citizens — including longtime lawful residents — who are convicted of an “aggravated felony.”
While the law says a “crime of violence” is an aggravated felony, the justices have struggled in recent years to decide which state crimes qualify as an aggravated felony under federal law.
A federal immigration judge had decided James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines and legal immigrant who had lived in Northern California since 1992, was slated for deportation because he had pleaded guilty twice to residential burglary under California law. Though a lower court determined that Dimaya had gone into an abandoned home and a garage, the immigration judge found that a residential burglary carries a “substantial risk” of provoking violence or injury.
But by a 5-4 vote, the justices reversed that ruling on Tuesday and held that the burglary law is too vague and uncertain to be deemed a crime of violence in all instances.
Justice Elena Kagan, speaking for the court, relied heavily on a similar ruling handed down by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in 2015. He said the court would not add an extra 15-year prison term for “armed career criminals” unless Congress spelled out what it meant by a violent felony. The law had been interpreted in that case to apply to possession of hand gun.
“Deportation is a particularly severe penalty,” she said in Sessions vs. Dimaya, and it is unconstitutional to mandate deportation based on a “hopelessly vague” provision.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor agreed.
Gorsuch filed a separate opinion agreeing the outcome. “Vague laws invite arbitrary power,” he wrote. “They can invite the exercise of arbitrary power all the same — by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing the prosecutors and courts to make it up. … Just take the crime at issue in this case, California burglary, which applies to everyone from armed home intruders to door-to-door salesmen peddling shady products. How, on that vast spectrum, is anyone supposed to locate the ordinary cases and say whether it includes a substantial risk of physical force? The truth is, no one knows.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented and said that law was reasonably clear. And Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr., faulted the majority for declaring one provision unconstitutionally vague.
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