Скачать или смотреть Sessions v Dimaya 10.02.2017

Docket Number 15-1498
Facts of the case
James Garcia Dimaya, a native and citizen of the Philippines, was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1992. In 2007 and 2009, Dimaya was convicted under the California Penal Code for first-degree residential burglary; both convictions resulted in two years’ imprisonment. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a non-citizen convicted of an aggravated felony is subject to deportation. The INA definition of aggravated felony includes a “crime of violence,” which is any offense that involves the use or substantial risk of physical force against another person or property.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subsequently initiated deportation proceedings against Dimaya and claimed that his burglary convictions constituted crimes of violence under the Act. The Immigration Judge held that Dimaya was deportable and that burglary constitutes a crime of violence because it always involves a risk of physical violence. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed.

While Dimaya’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Johnson v. United States, which held that the definition of a “violent felony” in the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) was unconstitutionally vague. As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the INA’s crime of violence provision was unconstitutionally vague because it was largely similar to the violent felony provision in the ACCA that the Supreme Court struck down in Johnson. The appellate court found that both provisions denied fair notice to defendants and failed to make clear when a risk of violence could be considered substantial.

Question
Is the Immigration and Nationality Act’s “crime of violence” provision unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment?

Conclusion
The Immigration and Nationality Act’s “crime of violence” provision is unconstitutionally vague, in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the 5-4 opinion as to parts . To determine whether a person’s conduct falls within a "crime of violence" under Section 16(b), courts consider the overall nature of the offense, particularly “whether ‘the ordinary case’ of an offense poses the requisite risk.” The Court found that the term “ordinary case” under the “crime of violence” was too vague in that it risked unpredictable and arbitrary interpretation. In 2015, the Court struck down as unconstitutionally vague a similar provision of a different statute, see Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), and this provision suffers from the same problems as the one in that case.

A plurality of the court (the majority minus Justice Neil Gorsuch) rejected the government’s argument removal cases deserved a less rigid form of the void-for-vagueness doctrine, largely because the penalty of deportation is so severe. Justice Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which he opined that even civil statutes that do not involve removal should be subject to a stringent void-for-vagueness review.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, dissented. Chief Justice Roberts argued that unlike the provision of a criminal statute that the Court struck down as overly vague in Johnson, the provision of the INA does not present the same kind of uncertainty that was present in that case.

Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, joined in part by Justices Kennedy and Alito, to express "doubt that our practice of striking down statutes as unconstitutionally vague is consistent with the original meaning of the Due Process Clause."

Sessions v. Dimaya. (n.d.). Oyez. Retrieved December 21, 2025, from https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/15-1498