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Parties Involved:
Thomas Fields
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 12, 2012 Decided November 9, 2012

No. 09-3137

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

THOMAS FIELDS,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:08-cr-00299-1)

Tony Axam, Jr., Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was 

A.J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Neil H. Jaffee, 

Assistant Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance. 

John L. Hill, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause 

for appellee. With him on the brief were Ronald C. Machen, 

Jr., United States Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III and John

P. Mannarino, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Elizabeth Trosman, 

Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Before: HENDERSON and TATEL, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: Convicted of distribution and 

possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, appellant 

was sentenced before Congress passed the Fair Sentencing 

Act of 2010 (FSA), which reduced the disparity between the 

treatment of crack and powder cocaine. Appellant now claims 

that the FSA applies retroactively to him and that the district 

court erred in denying his motion to postpone sentencing until 

after passage of the Act. He also challenges the district court’s 

decision to impose two additional years of incarceration for 

his perjury at trial. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm. 

I.

Appellant, Thomas Fields, allegedly sold crack cocaine to 

a government agent on two occasions: 27.4 grams the first 

time and 115 grams the second time. When arrested a few 

months later, Fields had an additional 71.3 grams of crack 

packaged for sale. The police also discovered a ninemillimeter handgun in one of his residences. A grand jury 

indicted Fields for distribution and possession with intent to 

distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base (crack), 

distribution of five grams or more of cocaine base, and 

unlawful possession of a handgun. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)

(unlawful possession of a firearm); 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 

841(b)(1)(A)(iii), 841(b)(1)(B)(iii) (2006) (possession with 

intent to distribute and distribution of cocaine base).

At trial, both Fields and his wife testified that they were 

in the business of making and selling “scented rocks.” The 

business was apparently quite unsuccessful, as neither Fields 

nor his wife could identify anyone who had purchased their 

rocks. According to Fields, he gave the informant scented 

rocks, not crack cocaine, and the money the informant gave 

him was payment for gambling debts. 

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The jury convicted Fields for distributing 50 grams or 

more of crack and for possessing with intent to distribute 

another 50 grams or more, but was unable to reach a verdict 

regarding the distribution of the additional five grams. The 

jury was also unable to reach a verdict on the unlawful 

possession of the gun charge. On the government’s motion, 

the district court dismissed the charges on which the jury 

hung.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. §§ 801 et 

seq., and the related Sentencing Guidelines, § 2D1.1, a drug 

trafficker dealing in crack cocaine at the time of Fields’s 

conviction was subject to the same sentence as one dealing in 

100 times as much powder cocaine. Kimbrough v. United 

States, 552 U.S. 85, 91 (2007). The Supreme Court has held 

that “the cocaine Guidelines, like all other Guidelines, are 

advisory only” and that sentencing courts may conclude that 

the crack-to-powder disparity yields a sentence greater than 

necessary “even in a mine-run case.” Id. at 91, 109. The

Controlled Substances Act, however, imposed a ten-year 

mandatory minimum prison sentence for those convicted of 

offenses involving 50 grams or more of crack cocaine, and, as 

the Supreme Court explained in Dorsey v. United States, 132 

S. Ct. 2321, 2327 (2012), sentencing courts generally have no 

authority to go below the mandatory minimum.

Although Fields was scheduled for sentencing on July 8, 

2009, he filed a motion to postpone sentencing for four 

months. Fields argued that he needed more time to discover 

additional evidence regarding a prior state court conviction. 

He also wanted sentencing postponed until after passage of 

then pending legislation addressing the disparate treatment of 

crack and powder cocaine. The district court granted the 

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motion on the first ground, making it clear that it would not 

have done so merely because of the pending legislation: 

Well, the truth of the matter is that if I sentence him 

today and you file a notice of appeal, and Congress 

changes the law while the appeal is pending, based 

on our history with Booker and Terence Coles in the 

D.C. Circuit, as long as there’s an appeal pending he 

may well get the benefit of any change of law. He 

wouldn’t on collateral attack most likely. But I don’t 

know why you think Congress is going to change the 

law in four months. . . . I’m certainly not going to 

postpone every crack sentencing until Congress acts, 

because none of us knows when Congress acts, 

whether it’s going to act, what they’re going to do. 

Hr’g Tr. 4-6 (July 8, 2009). The court also said, “I believe, but 

don’t know for sure, that if Congress were to act while this 

case were on appeal, you might well get the benefit of it 

anyway.” Hr’g Tr. 22 (July 8, 2009).

Several months later, while granting a second 

continuance, the district court shared its thoughts on Fields’s 

sentence. The court indicated that the applicable Guidelines 

range for Fields’s convictions was 235 to 293 months, 

including enhancements for possession of a firearm and 

obstruction of justice. The court explained that it imposed the 

enhancements because it determined by a preponderance of 

the evidence that Fields had possessed the handgun and

perjured himself at trial. See United States v. Settles, 530 F.3d 

920, 923 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (“[A] sentencing judge may 

consider uncharged or even acquitted conduct in calculating 

an appropriate sentence, so long as that conduct has been 

proved by a preponderance of the evidence and the sentence 

does not exceed the statutory maximum for the crime of 

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conviction.”). Reiterating its disagreement with the crackpowder disparity, see United States v. Lewis, 623 F. Supp. 2d 

42, 45 (D.D.C. 2009) (Friedman, J.) (explaining that the court 

“will apply the 1-to-1 ratio in all crack cocaine cases that 

come before it for sentencing in the future”), the court 

determined that under a one-to-one crack-to-powder 

calculation—that is, applying the Guidelines as if Fields had 

been convicted of offenses involving powder cocaine—his 

sentencing range would be 51 to 63 months, including the two 

enhancements. But because the mandatory minimum trumped 

this range, “[Fields] doesn’t get punished for perjuring 

himself.” Hr’g Tr. 9 (Oct. 29, 2009). The court explained that 

the Guidelines range for violations of the perjury statute, 18 

U.S.C. § 1621, would be 21 to 27 months incarceration for an 

offender with Fields’s characteristics and that it was 

considering adding this sentence to the ten-year mandatory 

minimum. Hr’g Tr. 9-10 (Oct. 29, 2009). 

Denying a third motion for a continuance, the district 

court sentenced Fields to two concurrent terms of 144 months 

imprisonment—the mandatory minimum for each offense plus 

24 months for perjury. In doing so, the court explained: “It 

seems to me that I am trumped by what Congress has done in 

terms of the mandatory minimum, and I’m stuck with that, 

and I can’t do anything about it. But to permit a defendant to 

come in knowing in advance that if he’s convicted there will 

be ten years, and therefore any perjury is free and can’t be 

punished and won’t be punished, just strikes me as wrong, and 

strikes me as being an affront to the judicial process and the 

judicial system.” Hr’g Tr. 31 (Dec. 11, 2009).

Some eight months after Fields’s sentencing, on August 

3, 2010, Congress enacted the Fair Sentencing Act, which 

reduced the crack-to-powder cocaine disparity from 100-to-1 

to 18-to-1 by increasing the quantity of crack needed to trigger 

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the ten-year mandatory minimum. Dorsey, 132 S. Ct. at 2326. 

As amended, the statute now prescribes a mandatory 

minimum sentence of five years for offenses involving at least 

28 grams of crack and ten years for offenses involving 280 or 

more grams. See Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 

111-220, § 2, 124 Stat. 2372, 2372 (amending 21 U.S.C. § 

841).

On appeal, Fields presses three arguments: that the FSA

applies to him because his case was on appeal when the Act 

was passed, that the district court abused its discretion in 

refusing to postpone sentencing until after passage of the FSA,

and that the district court erred substantively and procedurally 

by adding the additional sentence for perjury to the mandatory 

minimum. We consider each argument in turn.

II.

We can easily dispose of Fields’s first argument. In 

Dorsey, the Supreme Court held that the more lenient 

penalties imposed by the FSA apply to offenders who 

committed crimes before the statute’s passage but were 

sentenced afterwards. 132 S. Ct. at 2326. And in United States 

v. Bigesby, 685 F.3d 1060, 1066 (D.C. Cir. 2012), we squarely 

held that the FSA is inapplicable to offenders, like Fields, who 

were sentenced before passage of the statute. At oral 

argument, however, Fields’s counsel equivocated between 

conceding that we were bound by Bigesby, decided the day 

after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dorsey, and disputing “the 

reasoning of Bigesby in light of Dorsey because Dorsey . . . 

clearly indicates that the savings clause does not prohibit 

retroactivity of certain parts of the Fair Sentencing Act.” Oral 

Arg. Rec. 18:10-:28. Whatever merit this argument might 

otherwise have, Dorsey actually confirms our decision in 

Bigesby, for the Court expressly acknowledged that it was 

creating a disparity “between pre-Act offenders sentenced 

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before August 3 and those sentenced after that date.” 132 S. 

Ct. at 2335. Although this is dictum, “carefully considered 

language of the Supreme Court, even if technically dictum, 

generally must be treated as authoritative.” United States v. 

Oakar, 111 F.3d 146, 153 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (internal quotation 

marks omitted).

To be sure, the FSA, as interpreted by Dorsey, produces a 

certain degree of arbitrariness. Individuals who commit the 

same offense on the same day may receive different sentences 

based purely on when they are sentenced—a date determined 

by the vagaries of the judicial system and not anything related 

to the goals of sentencing. But “disparities, reflecting a linedrawing effort, will exist whenever Congress enacts a new law 

changing sentences.” Dorsey, 132 S. Ct. at 2335. 

Fields’s challenge to the district court’s refusal to 

postpone sentencing until after passage of the FSA also fails. 

According to Fields, the district court denied his motion on 

the basis of the mistaken notion that Fields would get the 

benefit of the FSA so long as his case was pending on appeal 

at the time the statute was enacted. Had the district court truly 

denied the continuance for this reason, that might well have 

amounted to an abuse of discretion. See Kellmer v. Raines, 

674 F.3d 848, 851 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (“[B]y definition, a district 

court abuses its discretion when it makes an error of law.”

(internal quotation marks omitted)). But the district court 

explained that it was uncertain whether the FSA would apply 

to Fields and that it saw no reason to “postpone every crack 

sentencing until Congress acts, because none of us knows 

when Congress acts, whether it’s going to act, what they’re 

going to do.” Hr’g Tr. 6 (July 8, 2009). As we have previously 

held, this represents a perfectly adequate reason for denying a 

continuance. United States v. Lawrence, 662 F.3d 551, 553 

(D.C. Cir. 2011) (“Pending legislation is far too removed for 

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this court to compel district courts to consider at sentencing . . 

. .”).

Fields makes an array of arguments relating to the 24 

month addition to his sentence for perjury. In reviewing 

properly preserved sentencing challenges for abuse of 

discretion, we ask whether the district court committed any 

“‘significant procedural error, such as . . . selecting a sentence 

based on clearly erroneous facts.’” Id. at 556 (quoting Gall v. 

United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007)) (alteration in original). 

We also consider the sentence’s “substantive reasonableness,”

“tak[ing] into account the totality of the circumstances, 

including the extent of any variance from the Guidelines 

range.” Gall, 552 U.S. at 51.

Fields argues that the district court double-counted his 

trial perjury by adding a term of imprisonment to the 

mandatory minimum sentence after already applying the 

obstruction of justice enhancement in calculating the two 

Guidelines ranges. The district court did no such thing. 

Although the court did factor the perjury into its calculation of 

the Guidelines ranges, the ten-year mandatory minimum 

would have been the same for any defendant convicted of 

offenses involving an identical quantity of crack, irrespective 

of the perjury. In other words, as the district court explained, 

“because of the ten year mandatory minimum, even though 

[the perjury is] factored into the guidelines, it’s not separately 

punished.” Hr’g Tr. 32 (Dec. 11, 2009).

Nor do we detect any abuse of discretion in the district 

court’s decision to add two years for perjury. As the Supreme 

Court has held, a sentencing judge may “give consideration to 

the defendant’s false testimony observed by the judge during 

the trial.” United States v. Grayson, 438 U.S. 41, 42 (1978); 

see also United States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87 (1993). 

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According to Fields, “imposing a separate penalty under [the 

perjury statute] provides no additional general deterrence 

because a future defendant considering perjury would already 

be subject to a prosecution under that statute, albeit, with the 

benefit of his constitutional trial rights.” Appellant’s Br. 22. 

Although the threat of a separate prosecution on a perjury 

charge may deter prospective perjury, the threat of a 

sentencing addition on the underlying charge may deter it at 

least as effectively. The presence of one hardly undermines 

the effectiveness of the other, and Fields has raised no

constitutional objection to using his sentence to deter future

defendants from perjuring themselves.

Next, Fields argues that because an obstruction of justice 

enhancement would have added only approximately 12 

months under a one-to-one Guidelines calculation, the district 

court erred by adding the 24 months. Fields also challenges 

the additional 24 months on the grounds that his sentence was 

already greater than it should have been due to the unfair 

mandatory minimum. The district court never explained why 

it added 24 months instead of 12 for one simple reason: Fields 

failed to argue in the district court that 12 months was more 

appropriate than 24. Furthermore, as the government points 

out, Fields received the benefit of a significant downward 

variance from the Guidelines range of 235 to 293 months in 

effect at the time of his sentencing. As we have explained, a 

within-Guidelines sentence is presumptively reasonable. 

United States v. Dorcely, 454 F.3d 366, 376 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

Under these circumstances, Fields’s sentence could hardly be 

considered substantively unreasonable. See United States v. 

Mejia, 597 F.3d 1329, 1343 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (finding it “hard 

to imagine” sentence was substantively unreasonable when 

sentence was “two years below the range we ordinarily view 

as reasonable”). We appreciate that Fields believes the tenyear mandatory minimum was unfair and that Congress 

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apparently agreed, at least with respect to defendants 

sentenced after the FSA’s enactment. But given that the FSA 

does not apply to Fields, its subsequent enactment can have no 

effect on the reasonableness of his sentence. 

III.

For the reasons stated above, we affirm.

So ordered.

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