Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/09-1533/opinion.html
Timestamp: 2016-10-25 08:36:21
Document Index: 535138679

Matched Legal Cases: ['§841', '§841', '§841', '§841', '§1002', '§841', '§841', '§2', '§841', '§841', '§841', '§2', '§2', '§841', '§2', '§841', '§2', '§841', '§922', '§841', '§841', '§841', '§841']

DePierre v. United States (Opinion by Justice Sotomayor) :: 564 U.S. ___ (2011) :: Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center Log In
› DePierre v. United States
DePierre v. United States 564 U.S. ___ (2011)
FRANTZ DePIERRE, PETITIONER v.
At the time of petitioner’s conviction and sentence, federal law mandated a minimum 10-year sentence for persons convicted of certain drug offenses, 21 U. S. C. §841(a), including those involving 50 grams or more of
“a mixture or substance … which contains cocaine base,” §841(b)(1)(A)(iii), and a minimum 5-year sentence for offenses involving 5 grams or more of the same, §841(b)(1)(B)(iii). This case requires us to decide whether the term “cocaine base” as used in this statute refers generally to cocaine in its chemically basic form or exclusively to what is colloquially known as “crack cocaine.” We conclude that “cocaine base” means the former.
As a matter of chemistry, cocaine is an alkaloid with the molecular formula C17H21NO4. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 434 (2002). An alkaloid is a base—that is, a compound capable of reacting with an acid to form a salt.[Footnote 1] Id., at 54, 180; see also Brief for Individual Physicians and Scientists as Amici Curiae 2–3 (herein-after Physicians Brief). Cocaine is derived from the coca plant native to South America. The leaves of the coca plant can be processed with water, kerosene, sodium car-bonate, and sulphuric acid to produce a paste-like substance. R. Weiss, S. Mirin, & R. Bartel, Cocaine 10 (2d
ed. 1994). When dried, the resulting “coca paste” can be vaporized (through the application of heat) and inhaled, i.e., “smoked.” See United States Sentencing Commission, Special Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy 11–12 (1995) (hereinafter Commission Report). Coca paste contains C17H21NO4—that is, cocaine in its base form.
In 1986, increasing public concern over the dangers associated with illicit drugs—and the new phenomenon
of crack cocaine in particular—prompted Congress to re-vise the penalties for criminal offenses involving cocaine-related substances. See id., at 95–96. At the time, federal law generally tied the penalties for drug offenses to both the type of drug and the quantity involved, with no pro-vision for mandatory minimum sentences. See, e.g., §841(b)(1) (1982 ed., Supp. III). After holding several hearings specifically addressing the emergence of crack cocaine, Congress enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (ADAA), 100 Stat. 3207, which provided mandatory minimum sentences for controlled-substance offenses in-volving specific quantities of drugs.
As relevant here, the ADAA provided a mandatory 10-year sentence for certain drug offenses involving 5 kilograms or more of “a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of ” various cocaine-related elements, including coca leaves, cocaine, and cocaine salts; it also called for the same sentence for offenses involving only
50 grams or more of “a mixture or substance … which contains cocaine base.” ADAA, §1002, 100 Stat. 3207–2 (amending §§841(b)(1)(A)(ii)–(iii)) (emphasis added). The ADAA also stipulated a mandatory 5-year sentence for offenses involving 500 grams of a mixture or substance containing coca leaves, cocaine, and cocaine salts, or 5 grams of a mixture or substance containing “cocaine base.” Id., at 3207–3 (amending §§841(b)(1)(B)(ii)–(iii)).
DePierre asked the District Court to instruct the jury that, in order to find him guilty of distribution of cocaine base, it must find that his offense involved “the form
of cocaine base known as crack cocaine.” App. in No. 08–2101 (CA1), p. 43. His proposed jury instruction defined “crack” identically to the Guidelines definition. See id., at 43–44; see also USSG §2D1.1(c), n. (D). In addition, De-Pierre asked the court to instruct the jury that “[c]hemi-cal analysis cannot establish a substance as crack because crack is chemically identical to other forms of cocaine base, although it can reveal the presence of sodium bicarbonate, which is usually used in the processing of crack.” App. in No. 08–2101, at 44.
We begin with the statutory text. See United States
v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc., 489 U. S. 235, 241 (1989). Section 841(b)(1)(A) provides a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence for certain drug offenses involving
“(I) coca leaves, except coca leaves and extracts of coca leaves from which cocaine, ecgonine, and derivatives of ecgonine or their salts have been
We agree with DePierre that using the term “cocaine base” to refer to C17H21NO4 is technically redundant; as noted earlier, chemically speaking cocaine is a base. If Congress meant in clause (iii) to penalize more severely offenses involving “a mixture or substance … which contains” cocaine in its base form it could have simply (and more correctly) used the word “cocaine” instead. But Congress had good reason to use “cocaine base” in the ADAA—to distinguish the substances covered by clause (iii) from other cocaine-related substances. For example, at the time Congress enacted the statute, the word “cocaine” was commonly used to refer to cocaine hydrochloride, i.e., powder cocaine. See, e.g., United States v. Mon-toya de Hernandez, 473 U. S. 531, 536, 544 (1985)
(repeatedly referring to cocaine hydrochloride as “cocaine”); “Crack” Cocaine, Hearing before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 99th Cong., 2d Sess., 94 (1986) (hereinafter Crack Cocaine Hearing) (prepared statement of David L. Westrate, Assistant Administrator, Drug Enforcement Admin., Dept. of Justice) (discussing production of “a white, crystalline powder, cocaine hydrochloride, otherwise known simply as cocaine”).
The word “cocaine” in subclause (II) also performs another critical function. Clause (iii) penalizes offenses involving “a mixture or substance described in clause (ii) which contains cocaine base.” §§841(b)(1)(A)(iii), (B)(iii) (emphasis added). In other words, clause (ii) imposes a penalty for offenses involving cocaine-related substances generally, and clause (iii) imposes a higher penalty for
a subset of those substances—the ones that “contai[n] cocaine base.” For this structure to work, however, §841(b)(1) must “describ[e] in clause (ii)” substances containing chemically basic cocaine, which then comprise the subset described in clause (iii). If such substances were not present in clause (ii), clause (iii) would only apply to substances that contain both chemically basic cocaine and one of the other elements enumerated in clause (ii). Presumably, the result would be that clause (iii) would not apply to crack cocaine, freebase, or coca paste offenses, as there is no indication that, in addition to “cocaine base” (i.e., C17H21NO4), those substances contain cocaine “salts” (e.g., cocaine hydrochloride), ecgonine, or any of the other elements enumerated in clause (ii). In short, the exclusion of “cocaine” from clause (ii) would result in clause (iii) effectively describing a null set, which obviously was not Congress’ intent.
DePierre first argues that we should read “cocaine base” to mean “crack cocaine” because, in passing the ADAA, Congress in 1986 intended to penalize crack cocaine
offenses more severely than those involving other substances containing C17H21NO4. As is evident from the pre-ceding discussion, this position is not supported by the statutory text. To be sure, the records of the contemporaneous congressional hearings suggest that Congress was most concerned with the particular dangers posed by the advent of crack cocaine. See, e.g., Crack Cocaine Hearing 1 (statement of Chairman Roth) (“[We] mee[t] today to examine a frightening and dangerous new twist in the drug abuse problem—the growing availability and use of a cheap, highly addictive, and deadly form of cocaine known on the streets as ‘crack’ ”); see generally Commission Report 116–118; Kimbrough, 552 U. S., at 95–96.
It does not necessarily follow, however, that in passing the ADAA Congress meant for clause (iii)’s lower quantity thresholds to apply exclusively to crack cocaine offenses. Numerous witnesses at the hearings testified that the primary reason crack cocaine was so dangerous was
because—contrary to powder cocaine—cocaine in its base form is smoked, which was understood to produce a faster, more intense, and more addictive high than powder cocaine. See, e.g., Crack Cocaine Hearing 20 (statement of Dr. Robert Byck, Yale University School of Medicine) (stating that the ability to inhale vapor “is the reason why crack, or cocaine free-base, is so dangerous”). This is not, however, a feature unique to crack cocaine, and freebase and coca paste were also acknowledged as dangerous, smokeable forms of cocaine. See, e.g., id., at 70 (prepared statement of Dr. Charles R. Schuster, Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse) (reporting on the shift from snorting powder cocaine to “newer more dangerous routes of administration, such as freebase smoking”); id., at 19–20 (statement of Dr. Byck) (describing the damaging effects of cocaine smoking on people in Peru).
Given crack cocaine’s sudden emergence and the similarities it shared with other forms of cocaine, this lack of clarity is understandable, as is Congress’ desire to adopt a statutory term that would encompass all forms. Congress faced what it perceived to be a new threat of massive scope. See, e.g., Crack Cocaine Hearing 4 (statement of Sen. Nunn) (“[C]ocaine use, particularly in the more pure form known as crack, is at near epidemic proportions”); id., at 21 (statement of Dr. Byck) (“We are dealing with
a worse drug … than we have ever dealt with, or that anybody has ever dealt with in history”). Accordingly, Con-gress chose statutory language broad enough to meet
that threat. As we have noted, “statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils.” Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 523 U. S. 75, 79 (1998). In the absence of any indication in the statutory text that Congress intended only to subject crack cocaine offenses to enhanced penalties, we cannot adopt DePierre’s narrow construction. See Lewis v. Chicago, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 9) (“It is not for us to rewrite [a] statute so that it covers only what we think is necessary to achieve what we think Congress really intended”).
it had sought, or the defendant had received, a statutory-minimum sentence enhanced under clause (iii) for an of-fense involving coca leaves. Id., at 44. And although
this question is not before us today, we note that Congress’ deliberate choice to enumerate “coca leaves” in clause (ii) strongly indicates its intent that offenses involving such leaves be subject to the higher quantity thresholds of that clause. Accordingly, there is little danger that the statute will be read in the “absurd” manner DePierre fears.
We recognize that, because the definition of “cocaine base” in clause (iii) differs from the Guidelines definition, certain sentencing anomalies may result. For example, an offense involving 5 grams of crack cocaine and one involving 5 grams of coca paste both trigger a minimum 5-
year sentence under §841(b)(1)(B)(iii). But defendants convicted of offenses involving only 4 grams of each substance—which do not trigger the statutory minimums—would likely receive different sentences, because of the Guidelines’ differential treatment of those substances with respect to offense level.[Footnote 14] Compare USSG §2D1.1(c)(9) (providing an offense level of 22 for at least 4 grams of “cocaine base,” i.e., “crack”) with §2D1.1(c)(14) (providing an offense level of 12 for less than 25 grams of “cocaine,” which, under the Guidelines, includes coca paste). As we have noted in previous opinions, however, such disparities are the inevitable result of the dissimilar operation of the fixed minimum sentences Congress has provided by stat-
by the Guidelines. See Kimbrough, 552 U. S., at 107–108; Neal, 516 U. S., at 291–292. Accordingly, we reject De-Pierre’s suggestion that the term “cocaine base” as used in clause (iii) must be given the same definition as it has under the Guidelines.
It is so ordered. Footnote 1 There are more detailed theories of how acids and bases interact. For our purposes, it is sufficient to note the fundamental proposition that a base and an acid can combine to form a salt, and all three are different types of compounds. See generally Brief for Individual Physicians and Scientists as Amici Curiae 8; A Dictionary of Chemistry 6–7, 62–63, 496 (J. Dainith ed., 5th ed. 2004).
Footnote 2 Though the terms “crack” and “crack cocaine” are interchangeable, in this opinion we adopt DePierre’s practice and generally employ the latter.
Footnote 3 Due to a recent amendment, the quantity ratio in §841(b)(1) is now roughly 18-to-1, but otherwise the relevant statutory provisions are unchanged from those in effect at the time DePierre was sentenced. See Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA), §2, 124 Stat. 2372 (changing the quantity in §841(b)(1)(A)(iii) from 50 to 280 grams and in subparagraph (B)(iii) from 5 to 28 grams).
Footnote 4 In 2007 the Commission increased the quantity of cocaine base required to trigger each offense level, reducing the cocaine base-to-cocaine sentencing ratio under the Guidelines. See USSG Supp. App. C, Amdt. 706 (effective Nov. 1, 2007). Unless otherwise noted, we cite to the current versions of the relevant Guidelines provisions.
Footnote 5 The Guidelines’ Drug Quantity Table only lists “cocaine” and “cocaine base” among its enumerated controlled substances, but the application notes make clear that the term “cocaine” includes “ecgonine and coca leaves,” as well as “salts, isomers, and salts of isomers” of cocaine. §2D1.1(c), and comment., n. 5.
Footnote 6 DePierre was also indicted for distribution of powder cocaine under §841(a)(1) and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number under 18 U. S. C. §922(k). He was convicted by jury of the former offense and pleaded guilty to the latter prior to trial.
Footnote 7 As noted earlier, §841(b)(1)(B) calls for a mandatory minimum 5-year sentence for offenses involving exactly the same substances; the only difference in subparagraph (B) is that the threshold quantity in clause (ii) is 500 grams, and in clause (iii) it is 5 grams. Because the 100-to-1 ratio is a feature of both §§841(b)(1)(A) and (B), and those subparagraphs are identical in all other respects, throughout this opinion we use the terms “clause (ii)” and “clause (iii)” to refer to those clauses as present in either subparagraph.
Footnote 8 The Government urges us to give “cocaine base” its “settled, unambiguous scientific meaning,” i.e., “the form of cocaine classified chemically as a base, with the chemical formula C17H21NO4 and a particular molecular structure.” Brief for United States 20; cf. McDermott Int’l, Inc. v. Wilander, 498 U. S. 337, 342 (1991) (“In the absence of contrary indication, we assume that when a statute uses … a term [of art], Congress intended it to have its established meaning”). But the scientifically proper appellation for C17H21NO4 is “cocaine” tout court, and the Government cites no source that uses “cocaine base” to refer to C17H21NO4 (save lower-court opinions construing the statute at issue
in this case). Therefore, there is no “settled meaning”—scientific or otherwise—of “cocaine base” for us to apply to §841(b)(1).
Footnote 9 The statute itself gives us good reason to reject DePierre’s reading. Substituting “crack cocaine” for “cocaine base” would mean that clause (iii) only applies to a “mixture or substance … which contains [crack cocaine].” But crack cocaine is itself a “substance” involved in drug offenses; it is the end product that is bought, sold, and consumed. We are aware of no substance that “contains” crack cocaine.
Footnote 10 DePierre makes a similar argument with respect to coca leaves: Because they contain chemically basic cocaine, he contends, under the Government’s interpretation offenses involving coca leaves will never be subject to the lower quantity threshold associated with subclause (I), rendering that provision superfluous. For reasons discussed later, see infra, at 15–16, we are not convinced.
Footnote 11 At the time the ADAA was enacted, the definition of “narcotic drug” in the same subchapter of the United States Code included, as relevant, the following:
Footnote 12 It appears that Congress itself is of the view that coca leaves contain “cocaine,” as subclause (I) exempts offenses involving “coca leaves from which cocaine … ha[s] been removed.” §§841(b)(1)(A)(ii)(I), (B)(ii)(I).
Footnote 13 We also disagree with DePierre’s contention that Congress’ failure to reject the Guidelines definition of “cocaine base” means that it has effectively adopted that interpretation with respect to the statute. See Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U. S. 85, 106 (2007) (“Ordinarily, we resist reading congressional intent into congressional inaction”).
Footnote 14 In defining “cocaine base” as “crack,” the Commission explained that “forms of cocaine base other than crack” are treated as “cocaine” for purposes of the Guidelines. USSG App. C, Amdt. 487 (effective Nov. 1, 1993). This includes coca paste, which the Commission described as “an intermediate step in the processing of coca leaves into cocaine hydrochloride.” Ibid. As we have explained, however, coca paste is a smokeable form of cocaine in its own right, and we see no reason why, as a statutory matter, it should be subject to lesser penalties than crack or freebase.