Supreme Court of the United States · 2005-04-26
18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed
Case and law context
Role: applied; posture: criminal; guilty plea reserving the claim that a foreign conviction is not a 922(g)(1) predicate; district court and CA3 rejected the claim; certiorari by the defendant; result: claimant-lost; claim: (g)(1)
Uncertainty
None recorded
Misfit
The decision turns on one phrase inside status.g1 ("convicted in any court"); the law file has no sub-id for the court/jurisdiction of the predicate conviction, so the block sits on status.g1 as a whole and the phrase is carried only by the variant genus.
Basis [law] on a guilty plea: the facts are admitted and the Court decides a pure question of statutory scope that disposes of the conviction; there is no value for "undisputed facts + legal ruling" (known one-basis-per-block limit). The Court formally remands; result claimant-lost records that the 922(g)(1) conviction cannot stand on this predicate.
Polarity is strained: "convicted in a Japanese court" is one sentence that both supplies a conviction and, because the court is foreign, defeats the element; tagged cuts-against.
B · Case × element grid
Top-level elements follow claim order in panels of up to six elements. Case rows repeat across panels. Every recorded block retains its holding and basis; multiple blocks are not merged into a case-level verdict. ✓ satisfied · ✗ not satisfied · ○ not reached · · not addressed. Muted blocks are not counted. Sub-element evidence remains on case and element pages.
Elements 1–6 of 12
| Case | One applicable prohibited category | Section 925(a)(1) government-use firearm or ammunition exception | Actual or constructive possession | Firearm or ammunition under section 921 | Possession in or affecting commerce | Knowledge of possessing the firearm or ammunition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small v. United States — 544 U.S. 385 (2005) · Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 (18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed) | · not addressed | · not addressed | ○ not reached · basis not recordedNot counted: applied/merits | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed |
Elements 7–12 of 12
| Case | Knowledge of the relevant disqualifying status | Second Amendment limit on the unlawful-user theory applied to Hemani | Ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce | Knowing shipping, transportation or receipt | Receipt of the prohibited object | Received object previously shipped or transported across borders |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small v. United States — 544 U.S. 385 (2005) · Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 (18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed) | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed | · not addressed |
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Pattern | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small v. United States — 544 U.S. 385 (2005) · Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 — not reached (18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed) | Actual or constructive possession | not_reached Excluded from merits counts applied / merits claim: (g)(1) After release Small bought a gun from a Pennsylvania dealer and pleaded guilty; possession was not in dispute. | Unspecified route | No source quotation recorded for this block. |
| Small v. United States — 544 U.S. 385 (2005) · Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 — not · law (18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed) | Conviction punishable by more than one year | not Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: law; claim: (g)(1); opinion: majority; subject: opinion=majority The only predicate was a Japanese conviction; "any court" is read with an assumption of domestic reach (akin to, but not, the presumption against extraterritoriality), supported by anomalies a foreign reading would create in 921(a)(20), 921(a)(33) and 924(e). The length of the foreign sentence is irrelevant once the court is foreign. | convicted-in-any-court/foreign-court-conviction | In 1994 petitioner, Gary Small, was convicted in a Japanese court of having tried to smuggle several pistols, a rifle, and ammunition into Japan.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [571:716] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.Small was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [717:765] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.We consequently assume a congressional intent that the phrase “convicted in any court” applies domestically, not extraterri-torially.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [7904:8037] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.Thus, the key statutory phrase “convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” somewhat less reliably identifies dangerous individuals for the purposes of U. S. law where foreign convictions, rather than domestic convictions, are at issue.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [6334:6619] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.we conclude that the phrase “convicted in any court” refers only to domestic courts, not to foreign courts.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [15090:15197] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.For these reasons, the judgment of the Third Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [15287:15431] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62. |
| Small v. United States — 544 U.S. 385 (2005) · Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 — satisfied · law (18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed) | Conviction punishable by more than one year | satisfied Excluded from merits counts applied / dissent basis: law; claim: (g)(1); opinion: Thomas, J., dissenting (joined by Scalia and Kennedy, JJ.); subject: opinion=Thomas, J., dissenting (joined by Scalia and Kennedy, JJ.) Dissent reads "any court" literally to include foreign courts. | convicted-in-any-court/foreign-court-conviction | Gary Small, having recently emerged from three years in Japanese prison for illegally importing weapons into that country, bought a gun in the United States.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [15591:15748] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.In concluding that “any” means not what it says, but rather “a subset of any,” the Court distorts the plain meaning of the statute and departs from established principles of statutory construction.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [16153:16350] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62. |
Court interpretations recorded from this case
interpretation
We hold that the phrase encompasses only domestic, not foreign, convictions.
Small v. United States — 544 U.S. 385 (2005) · Supreme Court of the United States · 2005 (18usc922: author: Fable · not independently reviewed)
We hold that the phrase encompasses only domestic, not foreign, convictions.Source:
docroot/ir/caselaw/us_544.jsonl#/us/544/0385-01; Unicode character offsets [492:568] (end exclusive); SHA-256 1060dfdb181f03e6cd7c6634b2c1b274d424bfaa84320732c16c9078e0948c62.McAdory applies the Ninth Circuit rule to Washington mandatory sentencing ranges; the actual sentence served alone is not the test, nor is the state felony label conclusive. Small, 544 U.S. 385, 387 (2005), judicially construes convicted in any court in section 922(g)(1) to exclude foreign convictions; this is not a textual exclusion enacted in section 921(a)(20).