United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted January 21, 2020*

Decided January 22, 2020 

Before 

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1914 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

CHRISTOPHER HAMILTON 

 Defendant-Appellant.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois. 

No. 96-20044 

Harold A. Baker, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Christopher Hamilton, who had been convicted of serious drug charges, jointly 

moved with the government under the First Step Act to reduce his life sentence to time 

served. The district court granted the motion and, over Hamilton’s objection, imposed 

eight years of supervised release. Hamilton appeals, arguing for the first time that the 

First Step Act mandates the district court to conduct a plenary resentencing hearing. We 

affirm the judgment. 

 

*

 We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument because the briefs 

and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would 

not significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 19-1914 Page 2 

Hamilton was convicted in 1996 of possessing 250 grams of crack-cocaine with 

intent to distribute. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Because he had two prior felony drug 

convictions, the district court sentenced him to a statutory minimum term of life in 

prison. See id. § 841(b)(1)(A)(iii) (1994). 

In 2010, Congress enacted the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the sentencing 

disparity in § 841 between offenses involving powder cocaine and those involving 

cocaine base (“crack”). Fair Sentencing Act, sec. 2, 3, § 401(b)(1), 124 Stat. 2372 (2010) 

(codified in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(iii)). The Act modified § 841(b)(1)(A) to increase the 

quantity of crack—from 50 to 280 grams—necessary to trigger the subsection’s statutory 

penalties. In 2018, passage of the First Step Act made this provision of the Fair 

Sentencing Act retroactive to crack-offense defendants sentenced before August 3, 2010. 

See Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194, § 404 (2018). Specifically, § 404(b) of the First Step 

Act provides that the district court “may, on motion of the defendant ... impose a 

reduced sentence” as if the defendant had been sentenced with the benefit of the higher 

threshold drug quantities. Because Hamilton’s 1996 conviction involved less than 

280 grams of crack, § 404(b) rendered him eligible for a sentence reduction. 

Hamilton, assisted by recruited counsel, and the government then jointly moved 

to reduce his sentence to time served (23 years), but they disagreed over the 

appropriateness of supervised release. The government sought eight years of 

supervision based on Hamilton’s disciplinary record in prison; Hamilton countered that 

he should have no supervised release because his time served already had extended 

beyond the high end of his revised guidelines range by more than eight years. 

To resolve the disagreement, the district court held a hearing, with Hamilton 

appearing telephonically and his recruited lawyer appearing in person. (Hamilton did 

not object to this arrangement.) The court granted the parties’ joint motion and reduced 

Hamilton’s sentence to time served. But the court also imposed an eight-year term of 

supervised release—not to punish Hamilton, but to “afford an opportunity for 

rehabilitation and behavior modification.” 

Hamilton devotes most of his appellate brief to arguing, for the first time, that 

the district court, under the First Step Act, should have conducted a full, plenary 

resentencing hearing. Had it done so, he continues, the court would have had to 

analyze anew whether any of his prior state drug convictions constituted a serious drug 

felony under § 841(b)(1)(B). (Under § 841(b)(1)(B), a defendant who was previously 
No. 19-1914 Page 3 

convicted of a serious drug felony is subject to at least eight years of supervised release 

in addition to the prison term). The court, Hamilton maintains, necessarily would have 

found that none of his prior convictions qualified as a serious felony, and therefore he 

should not have been subject to the statutory minimum term of supervised release. 

But Hamilton forfeited this argument by not raising it first in the district court, so 

we review it only for plain error. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732–37 (1993); 

United States v. Pankow, 884 F.3d 785, 790–91 (7th Cir. 2018). Under that standard of 

review, we will reverse only if the district court committed a clear or obvious error that 

affected a defendant’s substantial rights and impugns the fairness, integrity, or public 

reputation of the proceedings. See Pankow, 884 F.3d at 791. 

Whether a sentence modification under the First Step Act requires a plenary 

resentencing hearing, however, is an argument we have yet to address, and we “rarely” 

find plain error on matters of first impression because they “are unlikely to be that 

obvious.” United States v. Ramirez, 783 F.3d 687, 695 (7th Cir. 2015). Nevertheless, 

nothing in the First Step Act requires a district court to hold any sort of hearing. Case 

law on the matter is sparse, but one circuit has held that a plenary resentencing is not 

allowed. See United States v. Hegwood, 934 F.3d 414, 418 (5th Cir. 2019) (The district court 

“plac[es] itself in the time frame of the original sentencing, altering the relevant legal 

landscape only by the changes mandated by the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act.”). Two other 

circuits leave the choice whether to resentence to the district court’s discretion. 

See United States v. Beamus, 943 F.3d 789, 792 (6th Cir. 2019) (district court’s discretion to 

resentence allows consideration of a defendant’s criminal history as reflected in 

presentence report); United States v. Wirsing, 943 F.3d 175, 186 (4th Cir. 2019). Based on 

the language of § 404(b) of the First Step Act that “[a] court ... may ... impose a reduced 

sentence,” the district court did not plainly err by reducing Hamilton’s sentence 

without a plenary resentencing. 

To the extent Hamilton challenges his eight-year term of supervised release, the 

district court did not err because that is the statutory minimum term under 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(b)(1)(B). 

We have considered Hamilton’s remaining arguments, and none has merit. 

AFFIRMED