"How would you feel if your 10-year prison sentence depended on a dangling modifier?"

"That's the situation for Avondale Lockhart, whose case was heard Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court...."

According to federal law, Lockhart gets a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence for the child pornography if he had a prior state conviction “relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor.” The crucial words here are “involving a minor.” Lockhart says they apply to the whole sentence. Because his prior conviction was for attempted rape of a woman, not a minor, the law doesn't apply to him. The government says “involving a minor” just refers to the last part of the sentence, “abusive sexual conduct,” not to what came before. It thinks Lockhart should get the 10 years.

Reading that description, it's quite clear that Lockhart should win and that Professor Noah Feldman doesn't know the meaning of "dangling modifier." A "dangling modifier" is what I put at the beginning of the previous sentence. The modifier in that federal statute isn't dangling. It's attached to something it modifies, but there's ambiguity about how much else it modifies.