Failing to Report for Prison Isn’t Violent Crime, Supreme Court Says

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that failure to report for prison is not a “violent felony” meriting a longer sentence under a federal career criminal law.

Today’s decision, Chambers v. United States, tossed a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for Deondery Chambers, who was prosecuted as a career criminal under a federal three-time loser law for gun felons, the Associated Press reports. One of Chambers’ past convictions was for failing to report for weekend jail stays.

The federal government had argued that any “aversion to penal custody” should be treated as an escape, a violent crime for purposes of the sentencing enhancement law, according to SCOTUSblog.

In a second criminal case Jiminez v. Quarterman, the Supreme Court ruled for a criminal defendant who claimed he had not missed a deadline for filing a habeas appeal. The court said that when a state allows a prisoner to file an appeal that would normally be too late, the deadline for federal habeas appeals is tolled, according to SCOTUSblog.