Descamps v. United States

Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. ___ (2013), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified standards for evaluating potential prior offenses under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). In a 8–1 decision written by Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court held that judges may only look at the statutory elements of a crime, rather than the facts associated with that particular crime, "when the crime of which the defendant was convicted has a single, indivisible set of elements." In his review of the case for SCOTUSblog, Daniel Richman opined that following the Court's decision, "[w]hether or not a prior conviction is going to 'count' will have to be determined as mechanically as possible."