USA v Duarte non-violent felon

[tedw]

It's a fun read, and it's satisfying to find a Circuit Court judge (or maybe 12 of them) who is as flabbergasted about the situation as we are. But it needs to go further and suggest reforms to keep it from happening.
Effectively, what the 9CA is doing is thinly veiled blatent subversion of law. The problem is that judges seem to have no accountability in this regard. Judges should have leeway to make mistakes and be wrong, even stubbornly so. But it's something else to act subversively. There needs to be some consequence. Until there is, our country is stuck.

You are right. And there is . It is called impeachment. They only serve for a period of " Good Behaviour". The problem is we have one party in the Senate that would not allow it. And the Republican don't even seem to have the huevos to even impeach. In that sense, our system of government is failing us.

[tedw]

Well, for one, Benitez opinions do have a legal effect.

I dont care about the cohesion of a politically biased court system. If they can openly defy SCOTUS, what good is the court system?

"Here, Duarte’s underlying vandalism conviction, we have explained, likely would have made him a misdemeanant at the Founding. See infra at 59. Duarte’s second predicate offense—felon in possession of a firearm, Cal. Pen. Code § 29800(a)(1)—was a nonexistent crime in this country until the passage of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938. See Range, 69 F.4th at 104. As for Duarte’s remaining convictions—drug possession and evading a peace officer— we do not know whether either crime traces back to an analogous, Founding-era predecessor because the Government failed to proffer that evidence.16 Based on this record, we cannot say that Duarte’s predicate offenses were, by Founding era standards, of a nature serious enough to 16 Criminalizing drug possession, in particular, did not appear to gain significant momentum until the early 20th century, with the passage of such laws as the Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. See Margarita Mercado Echegaray, Note, Drug Prohibition in America: Federal Drug Policy and its Consequences 75 Rev. Jur. U.P.R. 1215, 1219 (2006); cf. Alaniz, 69 F.4th at 1129–30 (citing id.). Before then, what we now think of as “illicit drugs,” such as opium and cocaine, “were . . . legal in the United States” for a long stretch of this country’s history. Echegaray, supra, at 1218. USA V. DUARTE 63 justify permanently depriving him of his fundamental Second Amendment rights. The Government therefore failed to demonstrate that applying § 922(g)(1)’s lifetime firearm ban to Duarte fits within any “longstanding” tradition of “prohibit[ing] . . . the possession of firearms by felons.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626

The majority had judicial integrity. They followed the law. That is what Judges are supposed to do.

[Sgt Raven]

You are right. And there is . It is called impeachment. They only serve for a period of " Good Behaviour". The problem is we have one party in the Senate that would not allow it. And the Republican don't even seem to have the huevos to even impeach. In that sense, our system of government is failing us.

According to Andrew Branca of 'The Law of Self Defense', Congress could find a Federal Judge is not serving in Good Behavior in a 50%+1 vote without impeachment.