"Why Did the Supreme Court Sidestep Sentencing Dispute?"

The title of this post is not merely the question I had for a few Justices after the denial of cert last week in Jones v. US (lamented here and here), it is also the headline of this new National Law Journal article about this decision authored by Tony Mauro.  Here are excerpts:

The U.S. Supreme Court's ­refusal to add a Washington drug case to its docket would not ordinarily get much notice.  But when the court did just that on Oct. 14, it drew wide criticism for missing an opportunity to resolve a long-­running dispute over judicial discretion in ­sentencing.

The court denied certiorari in Jones v. United States, which asked the court to rule that in deciding on a sentence, federal judges should not be able to take into consideration conduct for which the defendant was acquitted.  In the Jones case, the trial judge significantly increased the sentences of three defendants by factoring in drug conspiracy charges that the jury had rejected.

"It is really hard to understand why the court ruled as it did," said University of Illinois College of Law professor Margareth Etienne, a sentencing expert. "It goes against everything the Supreme Court has said for the last 15 years."

Cato Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro said, "It's not just high-­profile culture-war issues like same-sex ­marriage and the right to bear arms that the Supreme Court is avoiding like the plague."  Shapiro said the court's action was "another opportunity lost by the Court, another responsibility shirked.  "The issue has been raised in numerous lower court decisions, and in a 2007 Supreme Court case, several justices said it should be taken up if the right case came along.  As recently as Oct. 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit mentioned the Jones case in a ruling that criticized the "questionable ­practice" of basing sentences on uncharged or unproven offenses.

An unusual lineup of three justices — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — took the rare step of dissenting from the denial of review.  "This has gone on long enough," Scalia wrote. "The present petition presents the non-hypothetical case the court claimed to have been waiting for."

In the case the court denied, a District of Columbia jury found Antwuan Ball, Desmond Thurston and Joseph Jones guilty in 2007 of selling between two and 11 grams of cocaine, relatively small amounts. They were acquitted on racketeering and other charges that they were part of an extensive narcotics conspiracy. Yet, when U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts sentenced the three, he said he "saw clear evidence of a drug conspiracy," and sentenced Ball, Thurston and Jones to 18, 16 and 15 years in prison, respectively — four times higher than the highest sentences given for others who sold similar amounts of cocaine, according to filings with the Supreme Court....

Stephen Leckar, of counsel to Kalbian Hagerty in Washington, who represented the defendants in the petition denied last week, said he was disappointed that the petition fell "one vote short" of being granted certiorari. The fact that conservatives Scalia and Thomas dissented — along with liberal Ginsburg — "ought to be a fire bell in the night" signaling that the issue should be resolved, Leckar said....

The University of Illinois' Etienne speculated that some justices may have felt the facts of the Jones case were "too good" to be a vehicle for making a broad pronouncement on the issue. She explained that Jones involved a judge ignoring an actual acquittal by a jury, whereas a more common scenario is a judge basing an enhanced sentence on conduct that may or may not have been charged or was not part of a plea agreement. Ruling on a case involving an actual acquittal might leave the broader issue unresolved. "It is going to take a while" for the court to revisit the issue, Etienne added. "Until it does, the old adage that one is 'innocent until proven guilty' will continue to have little meaning."

Previous related posts on the Jones case:

• Extended examination of ugliness of acquitted conduct enhancement
• Latest chapter in notable federal acquitted conduct case from DC
• "When Acquitted Doesn't Mean Acquitted"
• DC Circuit gives disconcertingly short-shrift to Antwuan Ball's many significant sentencing claims
• Notable follow-up thoughts on acquitted conduct and the sentencing of Antwuan Ball
• Rooting for acquitted conduct petition grant from SCOTUS long conference
• Trying not to get too excited about SCOTUS relist in Jones/Ball acquitted conduct case
• Three Justices dissent from denial of certiorari in Jones/Ball acquitted conduct case
•  Refusing to take up acquitted punishment, passive virtues, SCOTUS reputation, and cert-denial-deal speculation