Watson v. United States, Summary of Dec. 10, 2007 Decision

Within two months of hearing the case at oral argument, the Supreme Court turned around and ruled unanimously that Mr. Watson did not "use" a gun in a drug transaction under 18 USC 924(c)(1) when he bought the gun in exchange for supplying the federal agent with illegal drugs for the gun. The purpose of this essay is to summarize and quote Justice Souter's opinion. In the end, he will make a sort of "common sense" decision--that the way we employ the word "use" in common language has nothing to do with what is received in a transaction; it only relates to what we bring to the transaction.

Looking at Prior Decisions

The Court makes decisions based on statutory language and on the way that its previous decisions have interpreted statutes. Justice Souter began by talking about two previous cases of importance:

"Smith v. United States, 508 US 223 (1993) raised the converse of today's question, and held that “a criminal who trades his firearm for drugs ‘uses' it during and in relation to a drug trafficking offense within the meaning of § 924(c)(1).” Id., at 241. We rested primarily on the “ordinary or natural meaning” of the verb in context, id., at 228, and understood its common range as going beyond employment as a weapon: “it is both reasonable and normal to say that petitioner ‘used’ his MAC-10 in his drug trafficking offense by trading it for cocaine,” id., at 230.

Two years later, the issue in Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 116 S.Ct. 501, 133 L.Ed.2d 472 (1995) was whether possessing a firearm kept near the scene of drug trafficking is “use” under § 924(c)(1). We looked again to “ordinary or natural” meaning, id., and decided that mere possession does not amount to “use”: “ § 924(c)(1) requires evidence sufficient to show an active employment of the firearm by the defendant, a use that makes the firearm an operative factor in relation to the predicate offense,” id., at 143.

But neither of these decisions answered precisely the question at issue here. So, how did the Court resolve it? Read on.

Resolving the Issue

Even though the Government claimed that Mr. Watson's receipt of the gun was a "use" of it under the law, Justice Souter and the Court disagreed. He argued:

"With no statutory definition or definitive clue, the meaning of the verb “uses” has to turn on the language as we normally speak it, see, e.g., Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 U.S. ----, ----, 127 S.Ct. 625, 629-30, (2006); Asgrow Seed Co. v. Winterboer, 513 U.S. 179, 187, (1995); FDIC v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 476, (1994); there is no other source of a reasonable inference about what Congress understood when writing or what its words will bring to the mind of a careful reader. So, in Smith we looked for “everyday meaning,” 508 U.S., at 228, revealed in phraseology that strikes the ear as “both reasonable and normal,” id., at 230. See also Bailey, supra, at 145. This appeal to the ordinary leaves the Government without much of a case.

The Government may say that a person “uses” a firearm simply by receiving it in a barter transaction, but no one else would. A boy who trades an apple to get a granola bar is sensibly said to use the apple, but one would never guess which way this commerce actually flowed from hearing that the boy used the granola. Cf. United States v. Stewart, 246 F.3d 728, 731 (C.A.D.C.2001) (“[W]hen a person pays a cashier a dollar for a cup of coffee in the courthouse cafeteria, the customer has not used the coffee. He has only used the dollar bill”). So, when Watson handed over the drugs for the pistol, the informant or the agent “used” the pistol to get the drugs, just as Smith held, but regular speech would not say that Watson himself used the pistol in the trade. “A seller does not ‘use’ a buyer's consideration,” United States v. Westmoreland, 122 F.3d 431, 436 (C.A.7 1997), and the Government's contrary position recalls another case; Lopez, supra, at ----, 127 S.Ct. at 630-31, rejected the Government's interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(2) because “we do not normally speak or write the Government's way.”

Conclusion

Justice Ginsburg only concurred in the judgment (i.e., agreed with the result, but disagreed with the reasoning). In her opinion, the Court's 1993 decision in Smith was erroneous. Catchily reversing a Biblical exhortation, she wrote:

"It is better to receive than to give, the Court holds today, at least when the subject is guns. Distinguishing, as the Court does, between trading a gun for drugs and trading drugs for a gun, for purposes of the 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) enhancement, makes scant sense to me. I join the Court's judgment, however, because I am persuaded that the Court took a wrong turn in Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223, (1993), when it held that trading a gun for drugs fits within § 924(c)(1)'s compass as “us[e]” of a firearm “during and in relation to any ... drug trafficking crime.” For reasons well stated by Justice SCALIA in his dissenting opinion in Smith, 508 U.S., at 241, I would read the word “use” in § 924(c)(1) to mean use as a weapon, not use in a bartering transaction. Accordingly, I would overrule Smith, and thereby render our precedent both coherent and consistent with normal usage. Cf. Henslee v. Union Planters Nat. Bank & Trust Co., 335 U.S. 595, 600, (1949) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (“Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”)."

So, there you have it--next time you were thinking of paying for a gun with the drugs...

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