FindLaw > Criminal Law Summaries > 1998 Index > Nathaniel Jones v. United States

Case: Nathaniel Jones v. United States

Issue: Whether 18 U.S.C. § 2119, the "carjacking statute" provided for three separate offenses or a single offense containing various penalties.

Facts: A grand jury indicted Jones and two co-defendants for using a firearm in relation to a violent crime in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) and carjacking in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2119. During the carjacking, one of Jones' co-defendants struck one of the victims in the ear with a gun, thereby perforating his eardrum. At the time of the alleged offense and trial in 1992, § 2119 provided:

Whoever, possessing a firearm as defined in section 921 of this title, takes a motor vehicle that has been transported, shipped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce from the person or presence of another by force and violence or by intimidation, or attempts to do so, shall –

(1) be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both,

(2) if serious bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of this title) results, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 25 years, or both, and

(3) if death results, be fined under this title or imprisoned for any number of years up to life, or both.

The indictment made no reference to subsections (2) or (3), charged none of the facts listed in subsections (2) or (3), and at arraignment, the magistrate told Jones that he faced a maximum sentence of 15 years for carjacking. Similarly, the jury instructions defined the Government's burden of proof solely by reference to the first paragraph of § 2119. A jury convicted Jones of both counts charged in the indictment. The presentence report recommended a 25-year sentence for Jones because one of the victims had suffered a perforated eardrum. Jones objected to this recommendation on the grounds that serious bodily injury was an element of the offense defined in § 2119(2), a crime with which he had not been charged. According to Jones, § 2119 charges three separate offenses, not a single crime with a enhanced penalties. The district court rejected Jones' argument, imposed the 25-year sentence with a consecutive 5-year sentence for the firearm offense, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.

Holding: At the time of the offense, 18 U.S.C. § 2119 established three distinct offenses by the specification of elements, not a single crime with multiple penalties. Because Jones was not charged or convicted pursuant to subsection (2) or (3) of § 2119, he cannot be sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Reasoning: Although no one factor is dispositive as to whether § 2119 charges multiple offenses, various considerations imply this conclusion when the statute is considered as a whole. First, subsections (2) and (3) provide for much higher penalties and condition them on additional facts than provided in subsection (1). These enhanced penalties and additional facts tend to demonstrate that subsection (2) and (3) comprise distinct elements, thereby tending to establish distinct offenses. Second, only the numbered sections of the statute complete the thought that specific conduct is prohibited. In this respect, § 2119 structurally differs from other criminal statutes, which generally provide that that enumerated conduct "shall be unlawful" or "shall be punished," and hence stand on their own, whereas § 2119 needs the numbered paragraphs to complete a thought. Third, while the Government correctly states that the term "shall" separates offense-defining clauses from penalty provisions, the term does not invariably do so. Fourth, grammar does not dictate the result here; statutory enactment must be viewed in context, not in a vacuum. Thus, to divine the meaning of § 2119, the Court considered analogous robbery statutes on which § 2119 was modeled. A review of these statutes suggests that Congress intended separate and aggravated offenses by including the various subsections to § 2119. The fact that serious bodily injury and death are sequentially enumerated in subsections (2) and (3) tends to prove that Congress meant these two provisions to be aggravated forms of the crime.

Not only does this interpretation make grammatical and schematic sense, but it avoids unnecessarily resolving grave constitutional questions effecting the Fifth and Sixth Amendments: Were the Government's argument accepted that § 2119 provides for a single offense with enhanced penalties, then a district judge could engage in factfinding that increases the severity of a penalty for a variant of a given crime–and whether this is permissible is not free from doubt and thus the statute should be construed to avoid giving rise to such a question.

Other Opinions: Justices Stevens and Scalia concurred separately, but on the same ground: Only juries have the power under the Constitution to increase the prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed. To remove this power from a jury would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Justice Kennedy dissented, and was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor and Breyer. According to the dissent, § 2119 provides for a single crime with various penalties, not three distinct crimes. Various considerations tend to support this argument. First, like many statutes, § 2119 sets forth the offense first and the punishment in subsequent paragraphs, and in this respect, many federal and state statutes treat serious bodily injury as a sentencing factor, not as a separate crime. Second, § 2119 follows the common model of statutory drafting for criminal statutes in that the elements are provided in the first paragraph which ends with the phrase "shall," after which follow the penalties. Third, in § 2119 as in many criminal statutes, the active voice is used to define prohibited conduct, and the passive voice provides for penalties. These observations aside, however, the federal robbery statutes on which the majority relies to hold that § 2119 provides for three separate offenses are not the most analogous statutes to § 2119, and regardless, those statutes do not support the majority's conclusion; the cases on which the majority relies for this proposition do not support it.

As for the discussion of constitutional doubt, the majority opinion makes no sense, never explains what any alleged constitutional doubt is, and creates a problem where none exists. There is no need to engage in this ill-conceived dicta because the issue is one of statutory construction.

Comment: The current version of § 2119 (amended in 1994 and 1996) contains the same basic structure as the pre-1994 statute, so the Court's holding plainly applies to it as well.