A felon who told police he had guns because he was "hunting'' a rival gang member he believed was responsible for killing his brother had his federal sentence for weapons possession cut in half Wednesday.

Eddie Ray Strickland Jr., originally sentenced to 15 years in 2014 as a felon in possession of a firearm, was resentenced to seven years in prison in U.S. District Court in Portland.

Strickland is among the thousands of federal offenders who appealed their designations as armed career criminals based on two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Eddie Ray Strickland Jr.

Under the career criminal act, someone convicted of a federal gun crime with three or more previous convictions for a violent felony or a serious drug offense faced a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years.

In late June 2015, the Supreme Court held 8-1 in Johnson v. United States that part of the "violent crime'' definition was unconstitutionally vague and denied defendants their due process rights. Then last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Johnson decision applied retroactively to offenders sentenced before the June 26, 2015, decision came down.

Strickland's lawyer argued before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that one of Strickland's convictions – third-degree robbery – wasn't considered a violent felony under the act and he shouldn't have been designated an armed career criminal. The appeals court agreed in late June and ordered the 15-year sentence be thrown out.

Strickland originally was sentenced in August 2014 after he pleaded guilty to possessing two loaded firearms as a felon. The charge stemmed from a Portland police search of his home with a warrant after officers received complaints that Strickland had threatened his girlfriend with a gun.

Strickland had put a gun to his girlfriend's head in July 2011 and threatened to kill her, according to court documents. He also had fired a shot in her direction a month earlier, missing her but striking the couch where she had been sitting, the documents indicated.

At his home, police found two guns hidden in a crawl space behind stairs leading up to his second-floor residence. Strickland told police that the .380-caliber semiautomatic silver-and-black handgun and a .40-caliber semiautomatic black handgun were his for "protection,'' court documents say.

When he was arrested, Strickland also told Portland Detective Todd Gradwahl that he was "hunting'' a rival gang member he believed had shot and killed his brother Isaiah Strickland in Portland in 2003 and that the rival was after him as well, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin wrote in a sentencing memo. Strickland also told police that he would have shot the brother of the man he suspected of killing Isaiah Strickland, according to Kerin.

"A brother for a brother,'' Strickland told police, Kerin said in court Wednesday.

"The defendant had the means to kill someone; what he told detectives was he was only looking for the right opportunity to do so,'' Kerin wrote in a new sentencing memo.

Kerin urged that Strickland be resentenced to eight years and nine months in custody, citing the dangerous circumstances surrounding his gun possession and his past domestic violence threats.

Strickland's lawyer, Kevin Bons, urged the court to sentence Strickland to four years and nine months. Bons detailed Strickland's chaotic and dysfunctional family environment as a child with a mother who was addicted to cocaine and a father who was mostly absent. Strickland started using drugs and drinking alcohol at age 8 and was selling drugs by age 9, according to court documents.

Strickland said in court that he had the guns because he was "angry" that his brother was dead and no one had been held responsible. Isaiah Strickland, 17, was gunned down in a parking lot at Northeast Seventh Avenue and Fremont Street on Nov. 2, 2003, in a case that remains unsolved.

Strickland told the judge that he recognizes he made a mistake but has grown while in prison and was recently baptized behind bars.

Strickland's 40-year-old sister Shanita Hunter, who needs a kidney transplant, said her brother is her only sibling and a match for a kidney donation. She asked the judge to be lenient so she could get the transplant.

Judge Michael W. Mosman resentenced Strickland to seven years in prison. He said he was taking into account Strickland's incredibly difficult childhood and background, but also the context of his crimes.

Strickland has already served most of the sentence -- six years and nearly two months, his lawyer said.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian