Question Presented
May a defendant who commits a single act that violates two statutory provisions be convicted under both provisions?
Facts of the Case
Between August 2011 and January 2012, Dwayne Barrett and several co-conspirators carried out a string of armed robberies in New York, often using guns, knives, and threats of violence. On December 12, 2011, Barrett and two associates followed a minivan carrying the proceeds from a sale of untaxed cigarettes. While Barrett waited in the car, his accomplices held two men at gunpoint and stole the vehicle, which also contained $10,000 and a third victim, Gamar Dafalla. As he tried to discard some of the money during the getaway, Dafalla was fatally shot by one of the robbers. Later that day, Barrett took part in another robbery, threatening a victim’s life. He also helped dispose of the murder weapon and clean their vehicle with latex gloves and cleaning fluid to eliminate evidence.
Barrett was indicted on multiple counts, including conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery, two substantive counts of Hobbs Act robbery (one involving Dafalla’s murder), and separate firearms offenses, including a murder charge under 18 U.S.C. § 924(j). He was convicted in 2014 and originally sentenced to 90 years in prison. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated one firearms conviction under the Supreme Court’s then-new decision in United States v. Davis. Barrett was resentenced to 50 years in 2021. After further appellate proceedings, the Second Circuit affirmed most of his convictions and sentence but vacated and remanded for resentencing in light of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Lora v. United States, which held that § 924(j) does not require consecutive sentencing under § 924(c).
Opinion & Ruling
Congress did not clearly authorize convictions under both 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i) and 924(j) for a single act that violates both provisions, so such an act may yield only one conviction. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored the opinion for a unanimous Court, except that only a four-justice plurality joined its legislative-history section.
The case turns on the Blockburger presumption, a longstanding rule that Congress ordinarily does not intend to punish the same offense under two different statutes. Two provisions define the “same offense” under Blockburger when one does not require proof of any element the other lacks. All parties agreed that § 924(c)(1)(A)(i)—which criminalizes using, carrying, or possessing a firearm during a federal crime of violence or drug trafficking crime—and § 924(j)—which prescribes different penalties, up to death, when such a violation causes a death—define the same offense, because the first is a lesser included offense fully subsumed within the second. The presumption against dual convictions yields only to a plainly expressed contrary congressional intent.
The statutory text strongly suggests that Congress expressed no such intent. Twice within subsection (c) itself, in § 924(c)(1) and § 924(c)(5), Congress specified that a conviction must be “in addition to” other punishment—language that is “crystal clear” evidence of an intent to overcome Blockburger. No similar language addresses the relationship between subsections (c)(1) and (j). Subsection (c)’s consecutive-sentence mandate does not fill the gap: it governs how to arrange sentences once two convictions are permitted, not whether two convictions may exist at all. Structurally, subsection (j) supplies its own comprehensive penalty scheme that applies instead of subsection (c)’s, trading mandatory minimums for sentencing flexibility. Such overlapping offenses present prosecutors with a menu, not a buffet; a prosecutor who fears a lenient subsection (j) sentence may simply charge § 924(c)(1)(A)(i) instead. The holding reaches only § 924(c)(1)(A)(i), the sole clause under which Barrett was convicted.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined all but the legislative-history section, concurred in part to flag a tension in the Court’s precedents: Blockburger is a constitutional bar to prosecuting the same offense in successive proceedings, yet only a presumption that Congress may override when both charges come in one proceeding. He argued that “the same offence” should mean one thing in both settings, so that no defendant is convicted twice for one offense whatever Congress intends—as Barrett nearly was.