Opinion ID: 1907719
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: postscript in response to dissent

Text: Judge SCHWELB, in dissent, stresses the devastating impact of lengthy prison sentence[s] which [the defendants do] not deserve on parents of small children, on racial and ethnic minorities, and on persons dying of AIDS or other medical conditions. Post at 97 n. 11. Criminal conduct often brings tragedy, both for the individuals involved and for the community as a whole. But to achieve the result Judge SCHWELB calls for, this court would have to ignore the law in effect at the time these crimes were committed, excuse the ambiguous language of the statute that repealed mandatory-minimum sentencing, overlook the general savings statutes enacted by Congress and by the Council of the District of Columbia to fill in the gaps caused by such ambiguity, and dismiss the fact that all four of these appellants were convicted  fairly  of contributing to the drug problem that plagues the city. It is the Council's role to decide what the laws  including their effective dates  will be, and it is this court's role to apply laws as the Council has written them, not as we would have had the Council write them, or have written them ourselves, in hindsight. We can no more decide to apply a law before it becomes effective than we can decide not to apply a law after it becomes effective. Judge SCHWELB denigrates use of the federal general savings statute as, in effect, an anomaly adopted a century and a quarter ago. Post at 104. The fact is, of course, that the Council itself adopted the local savings statute  equally applicable here (Judge SCHWELB agrees)  in 1990, only four-plus years before the Council repealed mandatory-minimum sentencing. [59] Seven members  a majority  were on the Council for both legislative decisions. [60] Furthermore, the Council's decision to adopt language that is functionally equivalent to the federal statute, but different in wording, shows more than passing attention to the subject. Compare D.C.Code § 49-304(a) with 1 U.S.C. § 109. We therefore cannot accept our colleague's argument that the Council should be deemed not to have had the general savings statute in mind when it repealed mandatory-minimums without specifying which of the several possible classes of defendants the repealer should affect. See supra Part III. D.(3). Under the circumstances, we have to presume the Council knew what it was doing in declining to provide language in the repealer that negates the general savings statutes. The majority approach accordingly differs from that of our colleague in two key respects. First, Judge SCHWELB argues that the Council, in repealing mandatory-minimum sentencing, did not trigger the general savings statute because the repealer did not release or extinguish a penalty. Second, he argues that even if a penalty was released or extinguished, the Council of the District of Columbia  although not expressly saying so  intended the repealer to apply retroactively, i.e., to affect all pending cases, rather than having the repealed legislation (preserved by the general savings statutes) apply. As elaborated earlier, our colleague is wrong in his first conclusion because of Supreme Court ( Marrero ) and succeeding federal circuit court ( Jacobs; Cook ) authority to the contrary. He errs in his second, fallback argument both because the Council's repealer did not satisfy the requirement of an express provision to negate application of the general savings statutes and because, in any event, the Council's intent  prospective or retroactive application of mandatory minimum sentencing?  is not clear. Even if we were inclined to do so, this court cannot supply a legislative intent that, to this day, is not discernible but for the general savings statutes enacted by Congress  and by the Council itself in 1990  to govern the very kind of situation at issue here. It therefore follows, ineluctably, that the federal and local general savings statutes, 1 U.S.C. § 109 and D.C.Code § 49-304(a), preserve for the defendants here the mandatory-minimum sentencing provisions in effect when the defendants' crimes were committed. SCHWELB, Associate Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part: One of the wisest exponents of our judicial craft cautioned more than eighty years ago that [statutes] should be construed, not as theorems of Euclid, but with some imagination of the purposes which lie behind them. Lehigh Valley Coal Co. v. Yensavage, 218 F. 547, 553 (2d Cir.1914), cert. denied, 235 U.S. 705, 35 S.Ct. 282, 59 L.Ed. 434 (1915) (Learned Hand, J.) (quoted in Luck v. District of Columbia, 617 A.2d 509, 513 n. 4 (D.C.1992)). Unfortunately, my colleagues in the majority have not heeded Judge Hand's precept. Instead, they have treated the principal issue before us rather like a problem in algebra, and they have made no inquiry into the consequences of their decision or into whether the Council which enacted the legislation in question could really have intended these consequences. The practical result of the majority's construction of the Mandatory Minimum Sentences Amendment Act (MMSAA), [1] D.C.Law 10-258, 42 D.C.Reg. 238 (effective May 25, 1995), will be that the defendants in these cases, as well as an unknown but substantial number of other persons, will be required to serve harsh mandatory minimum sentences without any consideration of each defendant's individual circumstances. The majority so holds in spite of the fact that prior to the imposition of sentence in these cases, the Council of the District of Columbia had concluded, on the basis of a compelling legislative record, that mandatory minimum sentences were excessive for and unjust to some of the non-violent drug offenders who were being subjected to them. It is our responsibility to ensure that men or women are not sent to prison, or kept there, unless such incarceration clearly and unambiguously reflects the legislative will. United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 348, 92 S.Ct. 515, 523, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971) (citations omitted). I am satisfied that the Council never intended to compel a judge to impose a mandatory minimum sentence, after the effective date of the MMSAA, on any defendant who, in the judge's opinion, does not deserve such a sentence. Moreover, in my view, the federal and District of Columbia general savings statutes on which the majority relies are inapplicable to the MMSAA, because the MMSAA did not release or extinguished any penalties, but simply provided judges with additional sentencing options. I am also satisfied that these savings statutes were not intended to override the Council's ameliorative legislative intent in enacting the MMSAA. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from Part III of the majority opinion. My colleagues discern a constitutionally sufficient rational basis for sentencing Ms. Jae Hoa Park to a mandatory minimum term of five years for possessing powdered cocaine with intent to distribute it (PWID), when the mandatory term would have been only four years if the drug in question had been crack cocaine  a far more addictive and dangerous drug. I am no apostle of judicial activism, but I do not see how we can justify keeping Ms. Park in prison for an extra year when the harsher punishment for powdered cocaine is patently irrational and was most probably placed in the statute by mistake. Accordingly, I also dissent from Part V C of Judge Ferren's opinion for the court. I join the remainder of his opinion.