Kansas v. Glover and Conditional Irrelevance

SHERRY F. COLB

Cornell law professor Sherry F. Colb discusses the concept of “conditional irrelevance”—which she first identified in a law review article in 2001—and explains why the concept is useful for understanding the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Kansas v. Glover. Through the lens of conditional irrelevance, Colb explains why the knowledge of one fact (that the owner of the vehicle in that case lacked a valid license) should not itself provide police reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle.

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United States v. Baez-Martinez

Docket: 18-1289

Opinion Date: February 11, 2020

Judge: William Joseph Kayatta, Jr.

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The First Circuit affirmed Defendant's Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) sentence, holding that the district court did not err in determining that Defendant's prior conviction for second-degree murder and two prior convictions for attempted murder were violent felonies, thus triggering the ACCA's fifteen-year mandatory minimum. Defendant was convicted for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The presentence investigation report stated that the ACCA applied, meaning that Defendant was subject to a statutory minimum of fifteen years' imprisonment. The district court sentenced Defendant to fifteen years. After the Supreme Court declared the residual clause of the ACCA's definition of "violent felony" unconstitutional the Supreme Court vacated Defendant's sentence and remanded to determine whether the ACCA still applied. On remand, the district court determined that second-degree murder and attempted murder are violent felonies and again sentenced Defendant to fifteen years. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that Defendant's conviction for second-degree murder and his two convictions for attempted murder satisfied the ACCA's three-predicate-felony rule.