12
Stevens, J., dissenting
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Breyer joins, dissenting.
This case arose out of a criminal enterprise that violated both New Mexico law and federal law and gave rise to both state and federal prosecutions. It raises a narrow but important question concerning the scope of the prohibition against concurrent sentences contained in 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1). As the Government reads that provision, it prohibits the § 924(c) sentence from running concurrently with a state sentence that has already been imposed, but permits concurrent state and federal sentences when the federal prosecution precedes the state prosecution.1 Thus, the length of the total term of imprisonment—including both the state sentence and the federal sentence—is determined, in part, by the happenstance of which case is tried first.
Read literally, however, the text of § 924(c)(1) would avoid this anomalous result. Because the text broadly prohibits the § 924(c) sentence from running "concurrently with any other term of imprisonment" regardless of whether that other term is imposed before or after the federal sentence, if the statute is read literally, it would require state judges to make any state term of imprisonment run consecutively to the § 924(c) sentence. Alternatively, if the state trial follows the federal trial and the state judge imposes a concurrent sentence (because she does not read § 924(c) as having any applicability to state sentences), the literal text would require the federal authorities to suspend the § 924(c) sentence until the state sentence has been served.
By relying so heavily on pure textual analysis, the Court's opinion would appear to dictate this result. Like the Government, however, I do not think the statute can reasonably be interpreted as containing any command to state sentencing judges or as requiring the suspension of any federal sentences when concurrent state sentences are later imposed.
1 Reply Brief for United States 10-11; Tr. of Oral Arg. 6-10.
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