Background:
Petitioner: Efrain Lora
Respondent: United States
Petitioner Efrain Lora and three co-defendants operated a cocaine enterprise in the Bronx. Lora and his counterparts were charged with conspiring to murder a rival drug lord who had been previously threatening Lora over drug territory. A federal grand jury stepped in shortly thereafter, charging Lora with three counts including: aiding and abetting the use and carrying of a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime causing the death of a person, a drug trafficking conspiracy charge, and a charge for causing an intentional killing in furtherance of that conspiracy. Eventually, Lora was found to be guilty on all three counts by a jury and the district court sentenced him to a 5-year imprisonment for the first charge and 25 years for the second two charges.
The kick in this case involves the nature in which the sentences were issued to Lora. Rather than issuing him concurrent sentences, meaning that Lora would serve the sentences for all charges at the same time, the district court ordered Lora to serve his sentences on a consecutive basis. Consecutive sentencing involves serving one of the sentences first before serving the second. In this case, Lora’s total amount of prison time would be extended from 25 years to 30 years under consecutive sentencing.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(D)(ii), “no term of imprisonment imposed on a person under this subsection shall run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment imposed on the person, including any term of imprisonment imposed for the crime of violence or drug trafficking crime during which the firearm was used, carried, or possessed.”
The question facing the bench is whether federal criminal sentencing law requires that an individual convicted and sentenced for a crime related to a drug-trafficking murder serve consecutive, rather than concurrent sentences.
Oral arguments for this case were given on March 28th. An opinion from the court is pending.
Arguments:
Petitioners argue under 18 U.S.C. § 924(j)(1) (“A person who, in the course of a violation of subsection (c), causes the death of a person through the use of a firearm, shall if the killing is a murder (as defined in section 1111), be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life”) that a judge, at their discretion, may issue a concurrent or consecutive sentence to a defendant. Petitioner claims that subsection (j) does not apply to 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(D)(ii) stated above because Congress created subsection (j) as a “new subsection” separate from subsection (c).
Respondents argue that the bench should harmonize subsections (j) and (c). They claim that subsection (j)(1) provides enhanced penalties for the most serious subsection (c) offenders. During oral arguments, counsel for the respondent Erica L. Ross repeatedly drew links between subsections (j) and (c). Justices challenged her contention that there was a clear connection between the subsections and asked questions related to if a subsection (j) charge must adhere to the sentencing rules in subsection (c), including the mandate of consecutive sentences.
The high court will decide this case in the coming weeks, and it will be interesting to see if the bench takes a more textualist approach in the majority opinion or if they establish that the different subsections are unique and severed from one another.
Sources:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-49
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/lora-v-united-states/
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/briefs/2023/02/22/22-49_lora_v._usa.pdf
Hello Hunter, thank you for this interesting analysis of this unique SCOTUS case! I did not realize that there were different situations in which sentences would be served either concurrently or consecutively. Doesn’t serving sentences concurrently sort of defeat the purpose? Do you know how that came to be? Thank you!
After rereading this post about 2-3 times, I think I got the rough idea of the premise. Personally, I’m not an expert on the field of law and policy-making, but I would rather not have SCOTUS deem this as a violation and allow him to serve his sentence concurrently and not consecutively. I think there should be a harsh punishment for people who do these types of crime in order to deter others from going down the same path. We already know that some people are able to get out early due to good behavior so why make their sentence even shorter than it already is? Also, murder is not a subject that should be taken lightly. I feel like the courts would be robbing the victim’s loved ones of their justice by lightening up his sentence. Of course, this is all my opinion and I have no concrete evidence to back any of these claims and thoughts up. Thank you for sharing this with us!
Hi Hunter! This is a really interesting case and I am honestly confused about the whole case. I am not sure how this issue has not come up to SCOTUS before now with it dealing with consecutive and concurrent sentences because it has always been up to the discretion of each judge in every case. I am also interested to see what precedent this sets in the future with double jeopardy.