Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Criminal Defendants

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered good news to criminal defendants this week, allowing prison sentences to run concurrently, rather than consecutively.

In a unanimous decision released Friday, the court determined that federal criminal sentencing law does not require judges to set sentences back-to-back and that convicts can serve concurrent sentences instead.

In Lora v. United States, Efrain Lora, a man who was involved in a drug scheme in the Bronx, New York, was initially indicted on one charge, but the government brought a second indictment that added two other charges. The jury found Lora guilty on all three counts and the district court sentenced him to five years in prison for the first count, which the judge said would run consecutively with the 25-year sentence on the second two counts.

Lora appealed, arguing that the two sentences could be served at the same time, bringing down the total time to 25 years instead of 30. In an opinion written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, all of the Supreme Court justices sided with Lora.

Amir Ali, executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center, applauded the ruling, pointing out that federal sentencing laws have been "a major contributor to mass incarceration, and to disproportionate sentences that most ordinary people would find appalling."

"Justice Jackson's opinion makes clear that for this federal offense, courts are not forced to make sentences run consecutively," Ali tweeted. "They have the discretion to impose a sentence that is proportionate to the crime committed."

Although the ruling suggests that criminal defendants could see shorter sentences, former federal prosecutor and elected state attorney Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek that it's too early to tell how the decision, which is limited in application, will impact future sentencing.

"Time will tell whether the decision is a meaningful bellwether for the court's approach to the limitations of the federal sentencing guidelines and mandatory sentencing provisions," McAuliffe said. "Generally, the Supreme Court has been in favor of protecting and expanding a trial court judge's ability to exercise discretion in sentencing."

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley said the court's ruling could be a win for former President Donald Trump should he be convicted in the criminal case related to the mishandling of confidential documents.

That's because in Friday's decision, the court reaffirmed "the general principle that 'when a federal court imposes multiple prison sentences, it can typically choose whether to run the sentences concurrently or consecutively,'" Turley told Newsweek.

While the Lora case is not involved with Trump, Turley said that the ruling makes it "extremely unlikely" for the former president to be sentenced to hundreds of years on the 37 counts he's facing. Trump has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Turley said the court could still hand down an "effectively terminal sentence" to Trump, who just turned 77 on Wednesday, saying, "any counts would likely run concurrently."

However, McAuliffe believes its still "far too early" to make any prediction's on Trump's case.

"The federal Trump prosecution needs to get to a trial and have a conviction before sentencing issues become ripe for debate or speculation," he said.