Reviewing the still uncertain state, and the still certain need, for effective federal crack retroactivity resentencing

I have not been able to keep up with all of the jurisprudential ups and downs that have followed the FIRST STEP Act finally making retroactive key parts of the Fair Sentencing Act for federal crack offenders.  Thus, I am quite grateful that a recent email discussion with various lawyers led to Assistant Federal Defenders Johanes Maliza and Thomas Drysdale drafting this extended guest post to catch us all up on some critical cases and issues in this arena:

The sentencing excesses that Congress addressed with the Fair Sentencing Act, and then the First Step Act, should stay in the past.  The pending cert petition in Bates v. United States, No. 20-535, has the potential to keep them there for everyone.  Bates asks the Court to decide whether cocaine base defendants getting resentenced under the First Step Act should get resentenced under modern sentencing guidelines, or under repealed, invalidated, or otherwise discarded sentencing rules.

The Court recently granted cert in another First Step Act case, Terry v. United States, No. 20-5904.  But Terry gets at a different, more limited question.  In Terry, the Court is answering only whether certain low-level cocaine base offenders are eligible for a resentencing.  The Terry question is important, and needs to be resolved to bring uniformity across the circuits, but the government made one good point as it opposed the petition: Terry concerns a limited group of defendants.

A Terry defendant would have to be a person with a small (often very small) amount of cocaine base, who is still serving her sentence 10 years after the Fair Sentencing Act.  Most 841(b)(1)(C) defendants from 2010 are out of prison by now, though many are still on Supervised Release.  The vast majority of cocaine base offenders still serving prison terms for pre-August 2010 conduct are mid- and high-quantity defendants, who were charged under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) or (B).  Terry only concerns people charged under § 841(b)(1)(C).

Even if Terry comes out for the petitioner, every single person who would benefit from Terry needs the answer to Bates: Which guidelines do courts use for resentencing? Indeed, the few Terry defendants still in prison are those who need a positive result in Bates the most because resentencing based on the guidelines from 2010 could still be sky high, even while the statutory scheme has shifted dramatically in the last 10 years.  Guidelines still anchor federal sentences; as the government says in Bates they remain the “lodestar.”

Consider a real, but anonymized, defendant in Central Illinois to show the need for modern guidelines in § 404 resentencings.  Mr. Jones [not client's real name, though he has given permission to speak about his case] was convicted of violating 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A), for 50 grams or more of cocaine base in 2010.  The charge began with a 10-year mandatory minimum; but with four drug priors, his statutory minimum was Life.  His guidelines were Life.  His minimum term of Supervised Release was 10 years.

Because he cooperated, (the only way to get out from under life), Mr. jones got a 324- month sentence, plus 10 years of Supervised Release.  Even if he got out of prison before he died, he was going to die on Supervised Release.  Terry, which only concerns persons sentenced under § 841(b)(1)(C), has nothing to do with him because was charged under § 841(b)(1)(A).  With an 841(b)(1)(A) conviction, Mr. Jones is clearly eligible for resentencing under § 404 of the First Step Act, but the terms of that resentencing was not defined by the Act.  Since Mr. Jones was convicted of having 50 grams of cocaine base, his charges would come under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B) in 2019. But how much does that really matter if his guidelines didn’t change?

One might assume the statutory changes transform everything now that a Mandatory Life is either 5-40 or 10-Life after First Step.  Which one, and why do we care?  Well, his prior convictions still set up his stat max, and his stat max still sets up his new guidelines.  Considering all four of his prior drug crimes still worked to raise his statutory max to Life and made his guidelines range 262-327 months and his 324-month sentence was still within that range.  But while one provision of the First Step Act gave Mr. Jones the right to seek resentencing, another provision made two of his priors ineligible to trigger § 851 enhancements because the statutory maximum sentences on those priors was below 10 years.  And while Mr. Jones’ resentencing worked its way through the docket, the Seventh Circuit issued a string of opinions that culminated in a ruling that Illinois cocaine convictions cannot serve as § 851 enhancements. Mr. Jones’ remaining two statutory enhancements, both for cocaine, were now out. Well, they were still there, since this Seventh Circuit ruling wasn’t necessarily retroactive, but this was a shockwave for Mr. Jones’ guidelines.  Under the law in 2010, Jones had statutory Life, and guidelines range of Life.  Now, under statutory changes and modern guideline interpretation, he had a statutory range of 5-40, and guidelines range of 188-235.

While his case was pending for First Step Act resentencing, the law had shifted for everybody else.  Mr. Jones’ 324-month sentence, after cooperation, had transformed from “Harsh-but-at-least-not-Life,” into, “That’s 11-plus years over the low end of the guidelines?!?”  Thankfully for Mr. Jones, he is in the Seventh Circuit, so the district court recalculated his guidelines as part of First Step resentencing, and gave him a 188-month (bottom-of-the-range) sentence.  Still harsh. But he’ll be out in a few years, not a decade.  But in the Tenth Circuit, which is where the Bates case comes from, this entire analysis would have amounted to passionate argument from his attorney, soaring rhetoric about finality from the government, and a “Whaddya gonna do?” from the district judge because the circuit does not permit a defendant's current guideline range to be considered at a First Step resentencing.

It is hard to imagine that that the First Step Act intended to leave people like Mr. Jones behind.  A broad bipartisan coalition passed the First Step Act, trying to reduce the draconian sentences imposed on nonviolent drug offenders.  Because the Supreme Court in Terry will only resolve the few people with § 841(b)(1)(C) convictions who are still in prison, the difference in treatment between what happened with Mr. Jones and what happened in a case like Bates will not be addressed.  The Supreme Court should take up and render a decision in a case like Bates as soon as possible in order to resolve a resentencing wait and uncertainty for hundreds, if not thousands, of defendants. No matter what happens in Terry, the issue in Bates is going to need a resolution. That resolution should come earlier, so that nobody has to overserve a minute of their sentences.