Case ID: f-appx_295/html/0849-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert L. SLEEPERS, Defendant-Appellant.
    No. 08-2179.
    United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
    Submitted Oct. 2, 2008.
    
    Decided Oct. 9, 2008.
    Daniel L. Bella, Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Hammond, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
    Robert L. Sleepers, Lisbon, OH, pro se.
    Before FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge, DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge.
    
      
       After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. See Fed. R.App. P. 34(a); Cir. R. 34(f).
    
   Order

Sleepers pleaded guilty in 2004 to a cocaine-distribution conspiracy. 21 U.S.C. § 846. He admitted in a written plea agreement to distributing approximately 100 kilograms of cocaine. This, plus Sleepers’s prior convictions (covered by an information under 21 U.S.C. § 851), set the statutory minimum penalty at 240 months’ imprisonment, which was the sentence the district court imposed. After the Sentencing Commission lowered the offense level for crack cocaine and made the change retroactive, see U.S.S.G. § 2Dl.l(c); Amendment 706, Sleepers asked the district court to reduce his sentence. The judge declined, and Sleepers has appealed.

All that need be said to resolve this appeal is that Sleepers’s sentence is already the lowest permitted by law. It therefore makes no difference how much of the 100 kilograms was crack and how much was cocaine hydrochloride, or what changes the Commission has made to the Guidelines. Nothing the Commission has done could authorize (or purports to authorize) a district judge to disregard a statutory minimum penalty. See Neal v. United States, 516 U.S. 284, 116 S.Ct. 763, 133 L.Ed.2d 709 (1996). (Sleepers believes that his 240-month sentence is unlawful because the § 251 information was untimely, but he has already filed and lost a collateral attack. The requirements of a successive collateral attack have not been satisfied, so application of the statutory minimum is no longer open to question. See Godoski v. United States, 304 F.3d 761, 763 (7th Cir.2002).)

Affirmed.