Basically there’s this piece of legislature regarding nonviolent drug offenders that will spare them from longer sentences so long as they do not have on their record conditions: A B, and C
The key issue being that “and” is written right at the end of condition B
The debate is basically over whether that means they cannot have A, B, AND C on their record collectively, or if it was intended to mean they cannot have A, cannot have B, AND cannot have C - as in they cannot have any one of them
Or perhaps alternatively, they cannot have either A, or B AND C together
Basically the wording is shit - likely intentionally, but it’s also probable that whoever wrote this is just dumb… Par for the course either way, really
Hope that wasn’t too complicated… I’ve made like 6 edits to this comment trying to clear it up as best I can lmao
That was well explained and blows my mind a court is wasting any time on that.
Here we have the convention when drafting legislation that the conjunction ‘and’ at the end of a list it means all things in the list- so A, B, and C. Whereas if ‘or’ appears, it means a choice from the list.
I get that maybe once upon a time there needed to be clarification in the courts, but that cannot me the first time such a drafting approach has been taken in legislation in the USA and so an interpretation must have been established already?
I can see why contextually there could be room for either interpretation, but it’s astonishing a consistent interpretation hasn’t been established.
