The harsh consequences of old criminal history

Earlier this week, I expressed concerns about the Cannon case from the Seventh Circuit in which an apparently small-time drug user, because of two minor state drug offenses from a decade earlier, was require to receive a mandatory life sentence.  Continuing the theme of the harsh federal consequences of a long-ago criminal history, consider today’s First Circuit decision in Powell v. US, No. 05-2222 (1st Cir. Dec. 1, 2005) (available here). 

The ultimate legal issue in Powell is whether a 11-year-old state evasive driving offense qualified as a “violent crime” for purposes of sentencing the defendant to the mandatory minimum term of fifteen years imprisonment under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).  Though that legal issue is interesting, and well discussed in Powell, the decision really caught my eye because the defendant is ultimately receiving a 15-year term of imprisonment “for possessing shotgun that [Powell] says he inherited from his deceased father.”  I wonder what the NRA might think of such a harsh federal sentence for inheriting a shotgun.