Page:Lora v. United States.pdf/11

Rh This follows the same pattern as several other provisions enacted alongside subsection (j) in the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, 108 Stat. 1959. In those provisions, as in §924(j)(1), Congress authorized the death penalty, but also a flexible range of lesser sentences for “any term of years,” with no mandatory minimum or consecutive-sentence mandate. In the same law, Congress also enacted a provision allowing judges to go below the otherwise-mandatory minimum sentence in certain cases. Given those choices to favor sentencing flexibility over mandatory penalties, it is not “implausible,” as the Government asserts, that subsection (j) permits flexibility to choose between concurrent and consecutive sentences.

Nor is that flexibility incompatible with the seriousness of subsection (j) offenses. Subsection (j) merely reflects the seriousness of the offense using a different approach than subsection (c)’s mandatory penalties. For murder, subsection (j) authorizes the harshest maximum penalty possible: death. §924(j)(1). And for manslaughter, subsection (j) imposes the same harsh punishment that the Federal Criminal Code prescribes for other manslaughters. See §924(j)(2) (aligning penalties with §1112).

Congress could certainly have designed the penalty