The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that its decision last year to narrow minimum sentencing “three strike” laws applies retroactively.
Justices voted 7-1 to allow a Florida prisoner named Gregory Welch to challenge the length of his incarceration. An appeals court had last year denied Welch’s case three weeks before Johnson v. United States was decided by the top federal court.
The move to apply the June 2015 opinion retroactively could eventually see more than 1,000 prisoners released earlier than previously expected, according to SCOTUSblog.
In Johnson, the Justices ruled invalid the so-called “residual clause” of the Reagan-era Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). In an 8-1 decision, the body said the clause was too vague in defining a “violent felony.”
The ruling saw “three strikes” provisions in the ACCA struck-down—namely, 15-year federal minimum sentences for repeat-offending felons. After Johnson, the federal mandatory minimum for felons convicted of possessing a firearm was reduced to ten years.
“The residual clause is invalid under Johnson, so it can no longer mandate or authorize any sentence,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. The lone dissenting justice was Clarence Thomas.
Welch personally remains incarcerated, but will now be able to contest whether a 1996 “strong-arm robbery” conviction in Florida should keep him behind bars under the ACCA. Kennedy noted Welch will have to prove the conviction doesn’t qualify “as a violent felony under the elements clause” of the law–an aspect of the ACCA untouched by Johnson.
Not all Supreme Court decisions apply retroactively. Justices ruled that Welch and other inmates can challenge convictions because Johnson impacted “the underlying statute rather than the judicial procedures by which the statute is applied.”
“Johnson is thus a substantive decision and so has retroactive effect,” Kennedy wrote.
In a separate, more high-profile case, the Supreme Court heard opening arguments on Monday in a challenge to President Obama’s Nov. 2014 executive order on immigration.
A decision in United States v. Texas is expected in the coming months–crucially, before elections in November. If the court is split 4-4 between liberal and conservative justices, an appellate court’s decision to enjoin the president’s deportation deferrals will be upheld.
More than 4 million undocumented immigrants in the US would be offered temporary protection by President Obama’s decree–though it would be quickly rescinded in January, if a Republican candidate wins this year’s presidential election.
