CASES ADJUDGED
IN THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
AT
OCTOBER TERM, 1996
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the tenth circuit
No. 95-1605. Argued December 11, 1996—Decided March 3, 1997
All three respondents were convicted in New Mexico courts and sentenced to prison terms on state charges arising from the use of guns by two of them to hold up undercover officers during a drug sting operation. After they began to serve their state sentences, respondents were convicted on various drug and related federal charges connected to the sting operation, and of using firearms during those crimes in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 924(c). In ordering their imprisonment, the District Court directed that the portion of their federal sentences attributable to the drug convictions run concurrently with their state sentences, with the remaining 60-month sentences required by § 924(c) to run consecutively to both. Among other rulings, the Tenth Circuit vacated the firearms sentences on the ground that they should have run concurrently with the state prison terms. The court found § 924(c)'s language to be ambiguous, resorted to the legislative history, and held that a § 924(c) sentence may run concurrently with a previously imposed, already operational state sentence, but not with another federal sentence.
Held: Section § 924(c)'s plain language—i. e., "the sentence . . . under this subsection [shall not] run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment" (emphasis added)—forbids a federal district court to direct that the section's mandatory 5-year firearms sentence run concurrently with any other prison term, whether state or federal. Read naturally, the section's word "any" has an expansive meaning that is not limited to federal sentences, and so must be interpreted as referring to all "term[s]
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