Leocal v. Ashcroft

Last updated
Leocal v. Ashcroft
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued October 12, 2004
Decided November 9, 2004
Full case nameJosue Leocal v. John D. Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States
Citations 543 U.S. 1 ( more )
125 S. Ct. 377; 160 L. Ed. 2d 271; 73 U.S.L.W. 4001
Prior history Deportation order affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals; petition for review in the Eleventh Circuit denied; cert. granted, 540 U.S. 1176(2004).
Holding
DUI crimes that have either no mens rea element or require merely negligence for a conviction are not "crimes of violence" that subject aliens to deportation.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Associate Justices
John P. Stevens  · Sandra Day O'Connor
Antonin Scalia  · Anthony Kennedy
David Souter  · Clarence Thomas
Ruth Bader Ginsburg  · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority Rehnquist, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
8 U.S.C.   § 1227; 18 U.S.C.   § 16

Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004), held that aliens may not be deported after being convicted of DUI if the DUI statute that defines the offense does not contain a mens rea element or otherwise allows a conviction for merely negligent conduct.

Mens rea is the mental element of a person's intention to commit a crime; or knowledge that one's action or lack of action would cause a crime to be committed. It is a necessary element of many crimes.

Contents

Facts

Josue Leocal is a citizen of Haiti who has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1987. In 2000, he was convicted in Florida of driving under the influence (DUI). Proceedings were then instituted to deport Leocal, and an immigration judge concluded that Leocal's DUI conviction constituted a "crime of violence" and hence an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Because of his conviction for an aggravated felony, Leocal was ordered deported in October 2001. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed this decision, and Leocal sought review in the Eleventh Circuit. In an unpublished opinion, the Eleventh Circuit concluded that the DUI conviction was an "aggravated felony," and hence it had no jurisdiction to review the lawfulness of the deportation order. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case.

Haiti country in the Caribbean

Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti and formerly called Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola, east of Cuba in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Haiti is 27,750 square kilometres (10,714 sq mi) in size and has an estimated 10.8 million people, making it the most populous country in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the second-most populous country in the Caribbean as a whole.

The term aggravated felony was created by the United States Congress as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to define a special category of criminal offenses. The INA says that certain aliens "convicted of an aggravated felony shall be considered to have been convicted of a particularly serious crime." Every "legal immigrant," including a "national but not a citizen of the United States," who has been convicted of any aggravated felony is ineligible for citizenship of the United States, and other than a refugee, every alien who has been convicted of any aggravated felony is ineligible to receive a visa or be admitted to the United States, if his or her "term of imprisonment was completed within the previous 15 years."

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 American immigration law

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 also known as the Hart–Celler Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The law abolished the National Origins Formula, which had been the basis of U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s.

Opinion of the Court

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, any alien convicted of an aggravated felony is deportable and may be deported upon an order of the Attorney General. An "aggravated felony" includes any crime classified under federal law as a "crime of violence." And a "crime of violence," in turn, is any crime that

(a) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another, or (b) is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.

In order to determine whether Leocal's DUI conviction qualified as a "crime of violence," the Court examined the elements of the statutory definition of the crime rather than the particular facts.

Under Florida law, it is a third-degree felony for any person to operate a vehicle under the influence and, "by reason of such operation, caus[e]... [s]erious bodily injury to another." This statute has no mens rea elementit does not require the defendant to have any particular level of intent to commit the crime. In Florida, DUI does not entail the attempted or threatened use of physical force; if DUI is to qualify as a crime of violence, it must so qualify because it involves the use of physical force. The "use" of physical force "most naturally suggests a higher degree of intent than negligent or merely accidental conduct." Likewise, DUI does not entail a "substantial risk" that physical force will be used. Furthermore, the fact that in another subsection of the Immigration and Nationality Act, Congress expressly distinguished between DUI crimes and "crimes of violence" bolstered the Court's conclusion that Florida's DUI statute was not a "crime of violence" because it did not require proof of any particular mental state, and thus criminalized merely negligent conduct.

Florida State of the United States of America

Florida is the southernmost contiguous state in the United States. The state is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U.S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. The Miami metropolitan area is Florida's most populous urban area. Tallahassee is the state's capital.

See also

<i>United States Reports</i> official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States

The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. United States Reports, once printed and bound, are the final version of court opinions and cannot be changed. Opinions of the court in each case are prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Publishing Office.

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