United States v. Turner, No. 21-2309 (7th Cir. 2022)
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Turner made four sales of cocaine and one sale of heroin to an undercover officer. He had a loaded handgun in his waistband. Turner was convicted on six counts of distributing and possessing controlled substances, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1); being a felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1); and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. 924(c). Turner’s 924(c) conviction would ordinarily carry a maximum sentence of 10 years but the court found that Turner qualified as an armed career criminal under the ACCA, 18 U.S.C. 924(e), so he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of life in prison. A defendant meets that classification if his “prior criminal record includes at least three convictions for ‘serious drug offense[s]’ or ‘violent felon[ies].’” A “serious drug offense” includes an offense under state law “involving manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute, a controlled substance.” Turner had two prior convictions under a Wisconsin drug trafficking statute.
Turner argued that the Wisconsin statute sweeps more broadly than the ACCA definition of a “serious drug offense” because the state law makes it a crime to deal in substances that the federal law does not reach. The Seventh Circuit affirmed his 20-year sentence. The supposed overbreadth concerns only substances that, as a matter of chemistry, do not exist and cannot possibly exist; “we opt for scientific reality over abstract legal doctrine.”
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