The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a Bay Area case over whether a federal law requiring deportation for noncitizens convicted of felonies involving a “substantial risk” of violence is unconstitutionally vague. On the opening day of their 2016-17 term, the justices granted review of the government’s appeal of a ruling by the federal appeals court in San Francisco that declared the law didn’t define its terms clearly. Dimaya was convicted of first-degree residential burglaries, of a home’s garage in 2007 and an uninhabited house in 2009, and was sentenced to two years in prison on each. At issue in the case is a 1996 law that requires deportation for noncitizens, including legal residents, who are convicted of “aggravated felonies” — those involving a “substantial risk” that force “may be used” against another person or someone else’s property. In a 2-1 ruling in Dimaya’s case in October 2015, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law failed to define “substantial” risk or give judges adequate guidance on which crimes qualified for automatic deportation. In seeking Supreme Court review, the Justice Department said deportation proceedings are civil cases and “are not subject to the same vagueness standard” as criminal prosecutions, the subject of the June 2015 ruling. Even if the Supreme Court upholds the federal law, he said, the appeals court will still have to decide whether first-degree burglary in California, which does not require a forcible entry, poses a substantial risk of violence.
Reported by SFGate 3 hours ago.
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