United States v. Juan Resendiz-ponce (549 U.S. 102)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 19, 2007 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 549 U.S. 102 · 127 S. Ct. 782
- Decided
- January 19, 2007
- Term
- October Term 2006
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. A jury convicted respondent Juan Resendiz-Ponce, a Mexican citizen, of illegally attempting to reenter the United States. Because the indictment failed to allege a specific overt act that he committed in seeking reentry, the Court of Appeals set aside his conviction and remanded for dismissal of the indictment. We granted the Government’s petition for certiorari to answer the question whether the omission of an element of a criminal offense from a federal indictment can constitute harmless error. 547 U. S. 1069 (2006). Although the Government expressly declined to “seek review of the court of appeals’ threshold holdings that the commission of an overt act was an element of the offense of attempted unlawful reentry and that the indictment failed to allege that element,” Pet. for Cert. 9, n. 3, “ ‘[i]t is not the habit of the Court to decide questions of a constitutional nature unless absolutely necessary to a decision of the case,’ ” Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (quoting Burton v. United States, 196 U. S. 283, 295 (1905)). For that reason, after oral argument we ordered the parties to file supplemental briefs directed to the question whether respondent’s indictment was in fact defective. We conclude that it was not and therefore reverse without reaching the harmless-error issue. I…
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