Source: https://www.johntfloyd.com/judicial-war-over-crack-sentencing-comes-to-an-end/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 05:55:40+00:00

Document:
Next Post: IS LARRY RAY SWEARINGEN GUILTY OF CAPITAL MURDER?
Last October we posted a blog entitled “The Judicial Wars Invoked by Crack Sentencing” (Oct. 24, 2008). The blog focused on a judicial tiff between the U.S. Supreme Court and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of James Eric Moore. We are pleased to report that the Supreme Court has finally put this issue to bed in two cases this Term.
This judicial controversy actually began on January 12, 2005 when the Supreme Court issued a controversial ruling that federal district courts were not required to impose precise sentences recommended by the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. See: United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). The Court said the Guidelines were advisory in nature, and not mandatory sentencing requirements. Id., at 245-46.
Judge Reade’s sentencing decision was contrary to the Booker rationale. But she was not alone in her judicial reasoning. Many other federal judges shared her judicial sentiment. In fact, a little more than a year later an en banc Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judicial reasoning of Judge Reade in the case of Steven Spears by saying that neither Booker nor the sentencing mandate of 28 U.S.C. § 3553(a) authorized federal district court judges to “reject” the 100:1 crack/power cocaine ratio set forth in the Guidelines. See: United States v. Spears, 469 F.3d 1166, 1178 (8th Cir. Dec. 5, 2006)[Remanding a district court’s decision that categorically rejected the 100:1 crack/powder cocaine ratio and instead utilized a 20:1 ratio to impose a 240-month sentence for possession of crack and powder cocaine].
The en banc Spears precedent paved the way the following week, December 13, 2006, for the Eighth Circuit to uphold Judge Reade’s sentencing decision in the James Eric Moore case. See: United States v. Moore, 470 F.3d 767, 770 (8th Cir. 2006).
Both Spears and Moore applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for writs of certiorari challenging the Eighth Circuit rulings in their cases. They based their appeals on the Booker rationale. While their requests for certiorari review were pending, the Supreme Court on December 10, 2007 handed down Kimbrough v. United States which overruled the longstanding legal premise employed by Judge Reade that federal district courts had to apply provisions of the Guidelines that made one gram of crack cocaine the equivalent of 100 grams of powder cocaine (more commonly known as the “100:1 ratio”) for sentencing purposes. See: 128 S.Ct. 558, 575, 169 L.Ed.2d 481 (207).
In the wake of Kimbrough, the Supreme Court on January 7, 2008 granted both Spears’ and Moore’s certiorari applications with the same identical language: “On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and petition for writ of certiorari granted. Judgment vacated, and case remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Kimbrough v. United States …” See: Spears v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 858, 169 L.Ed.2d 709 (2008); Moore v. United States, 128 S.Ct. 858, 169 L.Ed.2d 709 (2008).
Two months after the Supreme Court’s remand, the Eighth Circuit, on March 6, 2008, once again upheld Judge Reade’s sentencing decision in the James Eric Moore case, without any new briefing on the Kimbrough implications, saying that “[a]s there was then no circuit authority to the contrary, we presume the district court was aware that Booker granted it discretion to vary downward [from the Guidelines] based upon the impact of the crack guidelines on this defendant, but elected not to exercise its discretion.” See: United States v. Moore, 518 F.3d 577, 580 (8th Cir. 2008).
Slightly more than three months after the Eighth Circuit upheld Moore’s sentence for the second time, the appeals court on June 23, 2008 handed down a second en banc decision in the Steven Spears case that paid some judicial homage to Kimbrough by rejecting its previous precedent holding that the 100:1 crack/powder cocaine ratio was mandatory despite Booker and holding that this particular Guideline, like all the Guidelines, are “advisory only.” But appeals court nonetheless concluded that the district court had incorrectly varied from the 100:1 ratio when it substituted a 20:1 ratio to sentence Spears because the sentence was not based on an individualized, case-specific evaluation of the facts or the defendant pursuant to § 3553(a). The appeals court held that while a district court had the authority to determine the 100:1 ratio could result in a sentence harsher than necessary, it could not categorically reject the ratio as set forth by the Guidelines. See: United States v. Spears, 533 F.3d 715, 717 (8th Cir. 2008) [Spears II].
“When the District Court said that “[i]t isn’t the judges but Congress that ‘looks at the [G]uidelines and decides whether or not they should be put … in force,’ the court showed that it did not think it had the discretion later upheld by Kimbrough. The Eight Circuit’s first decision recognized this, describing the District Court as ‘concluding’ [correctly under circuit precedent] that it was not ‘authorized … to reject’ the crack/powder disparity. In light of the District Court’s comments at sentencing, the Court of Appeals should have remanded the case to the District Court for resentencing under Kimbrough. We express no views on how the District Court should exercise its discretion at resentencing.” See: Moore v. United States, 129 S.Ct. 4, 5, 92 L.Ed.2d 1 (2008).
“On remand, the Eight Circuit again reversed Spears’ sentence and remanded for resentencing. It concluded, again, that the District Court ‘may not categorically reject the ratio set forth by the Guidelines,’ and ‘impermissibly varied by replacing the 100:1 radio quantity ratio inherent in the advisory Guidelines range with a 20:1 quantity ratio.’ Spears again petitioned for a writ of certiorari. Because the Eighth Circuit’s decision on remand conflicts with our decision in Kimbrough, we grant the petition for certiorari and reverse.
present no occasion for elaborative discussion of this matter because those Guidelines do not exemplify the Commission’s exercise of its characteristic institutional role.’ Kimbrough thus holds that with respect to the crack cocaine Guidelines, a categorical disagreement with and variance from the Guidelines is not suspect.
“That was indeed the point of Kimbrough: a recognition of district courts’ authority to vary from the crack cocaine Guidelines based on policy disagreement with them, and not simply based on an individualized determination that they yield an excessive sentence in a particular case. The latter position was already established pre-Kimbrough [Booker], and the Government conceded as much in Kimbrough. That the Government did not prevail in Kimbrough proves that its concession – ‘that a district court may vary from the 100:1 ratio if it does so based on the individualized circumstances of a particular case’ – understated the extent of the district courts’ sentencing discretion.
“This says that it was ‘appropriate’ for the District Court in Kimbrough not to specify what ratio it was using, but merely to proceed with § 3353(a) analysis. The Eighth Circuit read that to mean that district courts, in the course of their individual determinations, may not categorically disagree with the Guidelines radio, and (consequently) may not substitute their own ratio for that of the Guidelines. If it meant that, our vacating of the Eighth Circuit’s judgment in Spears I would have been inexplicable, because that supposedly impermissible disagreement and substitution was precisely the reasons for Spears I’s reversal of the District Court. As a logical matter, of course, rejection of the 100:1 ratio, explicitly approved by Kimbrough, necessarily implies an adoption of some other ratio to govern the mine-run case. A sentencing judge who is given the power to reject the disparity created by the crack-to-powder ratio must also possess the power to apply a different ratio which, in his judgment, corrects the disparity. Put simply, the ability to reduce a mine-run defendant’s sentence permits the adoption of a replacement ratio.
“The alternative approach – adopted by the Eighth Circuit – would likely yield one of two results. Either district courts would treat the Guidelines’ policy embodied in the crack-to-powder ratio as mandatory, believing that they are not entitled to vary based on ‘categorical’ policy disagreements with the Guidelines, or they would continue to vary, masking their categorical policy disagreements as ‘individualized determinations.’ The latter is institutionalized subterfuge. The former contradicts our holding in Kimbrough. Neither is an acceptable sentencing practice.” Id., at LEXIS 4-9 (Emphasis Original) [Internal Citations Omitted].
Moore and Spears made one thing crystal clear: a district court has unfettered discretion to reject the 100:1 crack/powder cocaine ratio for any reason it deems appropriate. That message was certainly delivered to the Eighth Circuit in no uncertain terms.

References: v. 
 § 3553
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 3553
 v. 
 v. 
 § 3353