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Parties Involved:
Andre Pease
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 19-13404

Non-Argument Calendar

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 8:98-cr-00302-SCB-TGW-3

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Plaintiff–Appellee,

 versus

ANDRE PEASE, 

 Defendant–Appellant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Florida

________________________

(May 8, 2020)

Before GRANT, LAGOA, and HULL, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: 

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Andre Pease, proceeding pro se, appeals the district court’s denial of his

motion to reduce his sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) and Amendment 

782 to the Sentencing Guidelines, and the denial of his motion for reconsideration. 

After a careful review of the record and the parties’ briefs, we affirm.

I.

In 1998, Pease entered a guilty plea, pursuant to a written plea agreement, to 

one count of conspiring to distribute cocaine. The plea agreement contained a 

provision waiving Pease’s right to appeal his sentence except in the case of an 

upward departure from the Sentencing Guidelines range, a sentence above the 

statutory maximum, a sentence in violation of the law apart from the Sentencing 

Guidelines, or an appeal by the government challenging the sentence imposed. 

Although the factual basis in the plea agreement stated that Pease possessed with 

the intent to distribute three kilograms of cocaine, the agreement also stated that 

Pease’s offense was punishable by a mandatory minimum of ten years and a 

maximum of life in prison, corresponding to the penalties for distribution of 5 

kilograms or more of cocaine. See 18 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(ii) (1996). 

Prior to sentencing, the probation officer prepared a presentence 

investigation report (PSR) stating that Pease was responsible for at least 150 

kilograms of cocaine, based on his participation in the charged conspiracy since 

1993 or 1994. The PSR also stated that Pease should be sentenced as a career 

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offender under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 because he had two qualifying prior felony 

convictions.

Pease objected to the PSR’s drug-quantity determination and to his 

classification as a career offender. The district court sustained Pease’s drugquantity objection in part, finding that he was responsible for only six kilograms of 

cocaine. Based on that finding, the district court determined that Pease’s statutory 

sentencing range was ten years to life in prison followed by at least five years’ 

supervised release. But the court agreed with the probation officer’s conclusion 

that Pease qualified as a career offender under the Sentencing Guidelines.

If the district court had used the Guidelines drug-quantity table in § 2D1.1(c) 

to calculate Pease’s Guidelines range, Pease’s base offense level for an offense 

involving six kilograms of cocaine would have been 32, and with a four-level 

leadership-role enhancement, his total offense level would have been 36. See 

U.S.S.G. §§ 2D1.1(c), 3B1.1(a) (1997). But because Pease was a career offender, 

the district court used the career-offender guideline (§ 4B1.1). With a statutory 

maximum sentence of life, Pease’s total offense level under the career-offender 

guideline was 37, and his criminal history category was VI. Id. § 4B1.1. His 

corresponding Sentencing Guidelines range was 360 months to life. Id. Ch. 5, 

Pt. A, Sentencing Table. The district court sentenced Pease to 360 months in 

prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

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Pease appealed his sentence, and we affirmed. United States v. Pease, 240 

F.3d 938 (11th Cir. 2001). In his direct appeal, Pease challenged the district 

court’s factual finding that he was responsible for six kilograms of cocaine. We 

rejected that challenge because it was barred by the appeal waiver in Pease’s plea 

agreement. Id. at 942. 

Pease also argued that the district court’s use of the six-kilogram amount 

found by the court at sentencing—rather than the unspecified amount alleged in the 

indictment—to determine his statutory sentencing range violated the rule 

established in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), that “[o]ther than the 

fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the 

prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a 

reasonable doubt.”1 530 U.S. at 490. We agreed that under Apprendi, drug 

quantity was an element of Pease’s drug-trafficking offense that the court should 

have required the government to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt if not 

admitted by Pease. Pease, 240 F.3d at 943–44. But we concluded that Pease had 

not shown that the district court’s Apprendi error affected his substantial rights, as 

required to meet the plain-error standard, because Pease’s 30-year sentence was 

1 We assumed without deciding that Pease’s Apprendi argument was not barred by his appeal 

waiver. Pease, 240 F.3d at 943 n.5.

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below the statutory maximum (40 years) that would have applied based on the 

three-kilogram purchase that Pease admitted as part of his guilty plea. Id. at 944.

In 2019, Pease filed a motion pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), seeking 

the retroactive application of Amendment 782 to the United States Sentencing 

Guidelines. Amendment 782 modified the drug-quantity tables in U.S.S.G. 

§ 2D1.1 to lower the base offense levels corresponding to various drug quantities. 

See U.S.S.G. App. C, amend. 782 (2014). As amended, § 2D1.1 provided a base 

offense level of 30 for an offense involving at least 5 but less than 15 kilograms of 

cocaine, and a base offense level of 26 for an offense involving at least 2 but less 

than 3.5 kilograms of cocaine. Id. § 2D1.1(c). The district court denied Pease’s 

motion, finding that he was not entitled to a sentence reduction under Amendment 

782 because he was sentenced as a career offender. This appeal followed.

II.

Section 3582(c)(2) gives district courts the authority to reduce the sentence 

of a prisoner who was “sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing 

range that has subsequently been lowered” by an amendment to the Sentencing 

Guidelines, but only “if such a reduction is consistent with applicable policy 

statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.”2

 The applicable policy 

2 We review the district court’s conclusions about the scope of its legal authority under 

§ 3582(c)(2) de novo. United States v. Colon, 707 F.3d 1255, 1258 (11th Cir. 2013). 

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statement provides that a district court reviewing a § 3582(c)(2) motion “shall 

determine the amended guideline range that would have been applicable to the 

defendant” if the relevant amendment “had been in effect at the time the defendant 

was sentenced.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.10(b)(1). The policy statement further instructs 

that in calculating the amended guideline range, “the court shall substitute only” 

the amended guideline or guidelines “for the corresponding guideline provisions 

that were applied when the defendant was sentenced and shall leave all other 

guideline application decisions unaffected.” Id. (emphasis added). A district court 

proceeding under § 3582(c)(2) is required “to follow the Commission’s 

instructions in § 1B1.10 to determine the prisoner’s eligibility for a sentence

modification.” Dillon v. United States, 560 U.S. 817, 827 (2010).

On appeal, Pease argues that the district court was required to recalculate his 

Guidelines range under the career-offender guideline, using the 40-year statutory 

maximum sentence for an offense involving only three kilograms of cocaine. In 

this way, Pease sought to have the district court correct its Apprendi error in the 

calculation of his applicable statutory maximum sentence—the same error that we 

declined to correct in Pease’s direct appeal. He asserts that by using the lower 

maximum sentence, his total offense level as a career offender would be 34, 

resulting in a reduced Guidelines range of 262 to 327 months’ imprisonment.

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Pease’s argument overlooks the fact that the district court was constrained 

by § 1B1.10(b)(1) to leave its calculations under the career-offender guideline 

untouched. The retroactive application of Amendment 782, which lowered the 

applicable offense level under § 2D1.1, would not affect Pease’s guideline range 

because his range was not calculated under that provision. And because 

Amendment 782 did not affect § 4B1.1, the district court was not authorized to 

correct any errors it made in calculating his Guidelines range under that provision 

in 1999. See Dillon, 560 U.S. at 831 (“Because the aspects of his sentence that 

Dillon seeks to correct were not affected by the Commission’s amendment to 

§ 2D1.1, they are outside the scope of the proceeding authorized by § 3582(c)(2), 

and the District Court properly declined to address them.”).

Pease is not eligible for a sentence reduction under § 3582(c)(2) and 

Amendment 782 because Amendment 782 did not affect Pease’s sentencing range 

under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1. See United States v. Hamilton, 715 F.3d 328, 337 (11th 

Cir. 2013). Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of Pease’s 

§ 3582(c)(2) motion.

AFFIRMED. 

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