{"id":956,"date":"2026-04-22T13:27:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T17:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/?p=956"},"modified":"2026-04-26T13:30:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:30:28","slug":"florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nIn federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key factual issues that can dramatically increase a defendant\u2019s sentence. A recent Florida ruling<\/a> reinforces the constitutional requirement that juries, not judges, must resolve certain factual determinations that expose defendants to heightened penalties. If you are facing federal firearm charges or potential sentence enhancements in Florida, it is critical to consult a Sarasota criminal defense attorney who can help you take the measures necessary to protect your rights during every phase of your case.<\/p>\n

Facts and Procedural History<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allegedly, law enforcement officers encountered the defendant at a motel in Jacksonville after the property manager reported repeated trespassing. Officers attempted to remove the defendant from the premises, but when the defendant refused to comply, they placed him under arrest. During the arrest, officers discovered a loaded firearm in the defendant\u2019s possession, leading to federal charges for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key factual issues that can dramatically increase a defendant\u2019s sentence. A recent Florida ruling reinforces the constitutional requirement that juries, not judges, must resolve certain factual determinations that expose defendants to heightened penalties. If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evidence","category-violent-crimes"],"yoast_head":"\nFlorida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act — Sarasota Criminal Attorney Blog — April 22, 2026<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key — April 22, 2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act — Sarasota Criminal Attorney Blog — April 22, 2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"In federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key — April 22, 2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hanlon Law, PA\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act — Sarasota Criminal Attorney Blog — April 22, 2026","description":"In federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key — April 22, 2026","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act — Sarasota Criminal Attorney Blog — April 22, 2026","twitter_description":"In federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key — April 22, 2026","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Hanlon Law, PA","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/"},"author":{"name":"Hanlon Law, PA","@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/89615beb6980a63897b67886b5390081"},"headline":"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act","datePublished":"2026-04-22T17:27:26+00:00","dateModified":"2026-04-26T17:30:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/"},"wordCount":725,"articleSection":["Evidence","Violent crimes"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/","url":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/","name":"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act — Sarasota Criminal Attorney Blog — April 22, 2026","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-04-22T17:27:26+00:00","dateModified":"2026-04-26T17:30:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/89615beb6980a63897b67886b5390081"},"description":"In federal criminal cases involving sentence enhancements under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), courts must carefully determine who decides key — April 22, 2026","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/florida-court-discusses-predicate-offenses-under-the-armed-career-criminal-act\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Florida Court Discusses Predicate Offenses Under the Armed Career Criminal Act"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/","name":"Sarasota Criminal Attorney Blog","description":"Published by Sarasota, Florida Criminal Lawyer \u2014 Hanlon Law","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/89615beb6980a63897b67886b5390081","name":"Hanlon Law, PA","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c09dcc7ad49cb4e69012e689c8f8279e82819db3eccff0cdeeccdacb7210dc98?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c09dcc7ad49cb4e69012e689c8f8279e82819db3eccff0cdeeccdacb7210dc98?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c09dcc7ad49cb4e69012e689c8f8279e82819db3eccff0cdeeccdacb7210dc98?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Hanlon Law, PA"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/author\/hanlonlaw1\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarasotadefenseattorney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}