UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 09-4808

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

QUINTON MICHAEL SPINKS,

Defendant – Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle 

District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. Thomas D. Schroeder, 

District Judge. (1:08-cr-00350-TDS-2)

Submitted: March 23, 2010 Decided: April 8, 2010

Before MOTZ, KING, and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Michael Driver, Durham, North Carolina, for Appellant. Anna 

Mills Wagoner, United States Attorney, Terry M. Meinecke, 

Assistant United States Attorney, Greensboro, North Carolina, 

for Appellee. 

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

Quinton Michael Spinks pled guilty to one count of 

conspiracy to distribute five grams or more of cocaine 

hydrochloride and fifty grams or more of cocaine base, in 

violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (2006), and was sentenced to 

168 months in prison. On appeal, Spinks argues that the 

district court erred in using the applicable statutory mandatory 

minimum of 240 months as the starting point for determining 

Spinks’s sentence reduction for providing substantial 

assistance. For the reasons that follow, we affirm. 

Spinks asserts that the district court improperly 

relied on both United States v. Pillow, 191 F.3d 403 (4th Cir. 

1999), and United States v. Hood, 556 F.3d 226 (4th Cir. 2009),

to determine his starting sentence. According to Spinks, the 

decisions in those cases reflect this court’s alleged continued 

treatment of “the guidelines, or at least [USSG] § 5G1.1(b)(2), 

as mandatory, in direct contradiction to the holdings” in 

Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), and United States v. 

Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). Spinks argues that the district 

court applied § 5G1.1(b) in a mandatory fashion, because the 

court explained it would start with “the guideline sentence in 

this case, which is the mandatory minimum, and [the court] can 

depart under 5K1.1 to whatever degree the [c]ourt determines is 

appropriate.” According to Spinks, “[o]nce the government moved 
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for reduction of sentence . . ., the [district] [c]ourt was no 

longer obligated to sentence Defendant to the statutory minimum 

sentence of 240 months.” 

To the extent that Spinks challenges this court’s 

holding in Hood, it is well-settled that a panel of this court 

cannot “overrule the decision of another panel; only the en banc 

court may overrule a prior panel decision.” Jones v. Angelone, 

94 F.3d 900, 905 (4th Cir. 1996). Moreover, Spinks’s argument 

is contrary to the holding in Booker. In Booker, the Supreme 

Court struck the provision in the federal sentencing guidelines 

that made the guidelines mandatory. 543 U.S. at 249-50. 

Nonetheless, the excision of that provision and Booker’s 

remedial holding that the guidelines must be applied in a 

discretionary manner did not alter the applicability of 

statutory mandatory minimums. As this court explained in Hood,

in a post-Booker case, where a statutory mandatory minimum is 

applicable to a defendant, “the district court [is] not 

authorized to reduce [the] statutory minimum sentence.” 

556 F.3d at 233. “Only Congress could authorize a departure 

from the statutorily mandated minimum sentence, and it did so in 

[18 U.S.C.] § 3553(e) for the limited purpose stated there – ‘to 

reflect a defendant’s substantial assistance in the 

investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed 

an offense.’” Id. (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) (2006)).
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Here, Spinks does not argue, nor does the record 

reflect, that the statutory mandatory minimum in 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(b)(1)(A) (2006) is inapplicable to his conduct. The 

Government filed an Information regarding Spinks’s prior felony 

conviction, which made the twenty-year statutory mandatory 

minimum applicable to Spinks’s underlying conviction. 

Accordingly, because the guidelines range as initially 

calculated by the presentence report was less than the statutory 

mandatory minimum, the district court did not err in relying on 

the twenty-year statutory mandatory minimum as the starting 

point for calculating Spinks’s USSG § 5K1.1 departure and 

resulting sentence. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s 

conviction and sentence. We dispense with oral argument because 

the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the 

materials before the court and argument would not aid the 

decisional process.

AFFIRMED