530 U. S., at 126 (discussing Federal Sentencing Guidelines in determining what traditionally qualifies as a sentencing factor). The decision severely curtailed the burning of draft cards as a form of protest, but the… 104.1, §312, pp. ; see also Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477, 484 (1989) (“If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions”). The 1998 amendment was colloquially known as the “Bailey Fix Act.” 144 Cong. Other articles where United States v. O’Brien is discussed: Selective Service Acts: Supreme Court ruled in United States v. O’Brien (1968) that the destruction of a draft card inhibited the furtherance of an important government objective that was unrelated to the stifling of unpopular speech.
The District Court sentenced O’Brien to a 102-month term for his §924(c) conviction, to run consecutively with his sentence on two other counts.
You have successfully signed up to receive the Casebriefs newsletter. 1967). Ibid.
Reversed. (b) As relevant here, the 1998 amendment divided what was once a lengthy principal sentence into separate subparagraphs. Discussion.
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
Citations in this opinion are to the 1962 edition, which was in effect when O'Brien committed the crime and when Congress enacted the 1965 Amendment. volume_up. The Defendant, O’Brien (Defendant), was convicted for symbolically burning his draft card under a federal statute forbidding the altering of a draft card. I am therefore in full agreement with Justice Thomas’ separate writing today, post, at 1–2, as I was with his Harris dissent. 4373. United States v. O’Brien. The firearms were a semiautomatic Sig-Sauer pistol, an AK47 semiautomatic rifle, and a Cobray pistol. And the Government does not suggest that it would be subjected to any unfairness if the machinegun provision continues to be treated as an element.
But once that finding is added, the penalty range becomes harsher—30 years to life imprisonment, §924(c)(1)(B)(ii)—thus “expos[ing] a defendant to greater punishment than what is otherwise legally prescribed,” Harris, 536 U. S., at 579 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Nor does it make a difference whether the sentencing fact “involve[s] characteristics of the offender” or “[c]haracteristics of the offense,” ante, at 8, or which direction the other factors in the Court’s five-factor test may tilt. And in Harris, the Court was careful to point out that, unlike the case at bar, the other Castillo factors “reinforce[d] the single-offense interpretation implied by the statute’s structure.” 536 U. S., at 553.