Opinion ID: 531018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Imposition of a Special Parole Term

Text: 43 Robles next argues that the district court lacked statutory authority to impose a four-year special parole term to follow his prison term on the distribution count. We reject this contention. 44
45 Section 841(b), both before and after the 1986 amendments, has prescribed penalties for violations of section 841(a). Prior to 1984, section 841(b)(1)(A) prescribed the penalty applicable to diverse offenses involving cocaine, authorized prison sentences of up to fifteen years, and required trial courts to impose a special parole term of not less than three years for any violation. Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Pub.L. 91-513, Sec. 401, 84 Stat. 1236, 1260. In 1984, Congress amended section 841(b) to increase the maximum prison term for section 841(a) violations involving, inter alia, a kilogram or more of cocaine, from fifteen to twenty years. Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub.L. No. 98-473, Sec. 502, 98 Stat. 1837, 2068. This new penalty was established in a new section 841(b)(1)(A), and the prior penalty statute, which continued in effect for violations involving, inter alia, less than a kilogram of cocaine, was redesignated section 841(b)(1)(B). Id. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, Congress omitted the mandatory special parole term in the new section 841(b)(1)(A) created by the 1984 amendments. Id. Redesignated section 841(b)(1)(B), on the other hand, still included the old special parole requirement. Thus, the 1984 amendment created the anomaly that between 1984 and 1986 the penalty provision applicable to section 841(a) offenses involving less than a kilogram of cocaine included a mandatory special parole term requirement, while offenses involving a kilogram or more of cocaine apparently did not. See United States v. De Los Reyes, 842 F.2d 755, 758 n. 2 (5th Cir.1988); United States v. Phungphiphadhana, 640 F.Supp. 88, 89 (D.Nev.1986). 46 In the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Congress again amended section 841(b), this time by completely striking both section 841(b)(1)(A) and section 841(b)(1)(B), and inserting new, entirely rewritten, sections 841(b)(1)(A) and 841(b)(1)(B) providing for even stricter penalties. The new section 841(b)(1)(A) authorized a penalty of up to life imprisonment for offenses involving, inter alia, five kilograms or more of cocaine, and new section 841(b)(1)(B) authorized imprisonment for up to forty years for offenses involving, inter alia, five hundred grams or more of cocaine. Both new sections also included mandatory terms of supervised release of not less than four years. Neither new section mentions special parole. See Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Pub.L. No. 99-570, Sec. 1002(2), 100 Stat. 3207, 3207-2 to -4. 7 47 As discussed above, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 also enacted a substitution of supervised release for special parole terms throughout the federal narcotics laws, effective November 1, 1987. As we have also noted, this Court held in United States v. Byrd, supra, that the provisions requiring terms of supervised release in the new section 841(b) did not become effective until November 1, 1987, when the general changeover from special parole to supervised release became effective. But again, as discussed above, the rest of the changes to section 841(b) became effective immediately on October 17, 1986, when the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was signed by President Reagan. Robles' offense was committed in February 1987.
48 Robles claims he was convicted of distributing one kilogram of cocaine, and that prior to the enactment of the 1986 amendments, section 841(a) offenses involving a kilogram or more of cocaine were not punishable by the imposition of a special parole term. Since he committed his offense prior to the effective date of the new supervised release term requirement, he argues, this pre-October 1986 law should have governed the penalty in his case. Therefore, he concludes, the decision of the district court to impose special parole upon him was error. For support, Robles relies on our decision in United States v. De Los Reyes, supra. 49 The defendant in De Los Reyes had pleaded guilty to possessing less than fifty kilograms of marihuana, a crime punishable by section 841(b)(1)(C) at the time of the offense (October 18, 1986), which expressly provided for special parole terms, 8 and thus that case refrained from deciding the issue for which Robles cites it. The Court did, however, discuss the ambiguity as to the law that would be applicable to offenses punishable pursuant to the pre-October 27, 1986 section 841(b)(1)(A), but that had occurred during the gap period. It suggested two ways this statutory ambiguity might be resolved: (1) by simply substituting the phrase special parole term for term of supervised release in the new section 841(b) for these October 1986-November 1987 gap cases, or (2) by applying the law in effect just prior to the enactment of the 1986 amendments on the parole issue--in other words, by allowing special parole for all cases except those that would have fallen within the ambit of pre-October 17, 1986 section 841(b)(1)(A), which had omitted the special parole requirement. The De Los Reyes Court expressly refrained from deciding which approach should be applied until presented with a case in which the issue was properly before it. United States v. De Los Reyes, 842 F.2d at 758 n. 3. 50 Robles argues that because his crime falls within the gap period and would have fallen within the ambit of pre-October 1986 section 841(b)(1)(A), we must now decide the issue left open in De Los Reyes, that is, whether to apply prior (viz., pre-October 1986) law respecting special parole or to simply read special parole term for term of supervised release in section 841(b) for offenses committed during the October 1986-November 1987 gap. He urges the court to apply prior law, which he asserts will deny the district court authority to impose a special parole term on him. 51 Robles incorrectly assumes, however, that pre-October 1986 law did not authorize a special parole term for his distribution count. He erroneously asserts that he was convicted of distribution of one kilogram of cocaine. Count two of the indictment alleged distribution of approximately one kilogram of cocaine, but the undisputed evidence at trial establishes that the quantity of cocaine actually delivered to Agent Gonzalez amounted only to 996 grams, some four grams short of a kilogram. 9 Thus, the penalty provision of section 841(b) applicable to Robles' case was section 841(b)(1)(B), which prescribes penalties for distributing greater than five hundred grams. Prior to the 1986 amendments, the applicable penalty provision would have been the old section 841(b)(1)(B), which prescribed penalties for, inter alia, distributing less than a kilogram of cocaine. See Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Pub.L. 91-513, Sec. 401(b)(1)(A), 84 Stat. 1236, 1260, as amended by Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub.L. No. 98-473, Sec. 502, 98 Stat. 1837, 2068. As noted above, that section did require the imposition of a special parole term of not less than three years in addition to the term of imprisonment. Id. Thus, whichever of the approaches suggested by the De Los Reyes Court were applied, the district court would have been required to impose a special parole term for Robles' second count. 52
53 Arguably, however, this analysis should not end our inquiry. There is a third possibility, not discussed in De Los Reyes, for dealing with the special parole issues in offenses occurring after the amended section 841(b) took effect October 27, 1986, and prior to the effective date of the supervised release requirements in that section on November 1, 1987. Since the new section 841(b) makes no reference whatsoever to special parole, and since all of that section except the supervised release term requirement became effective on October 27, 1986, one might persuasively argue that the new law eliminated the special parole term requirement for all violations of section 841(a) occurring in the gap period, regardless of the applicability of special parole prior to that date. 10 Section 1004(b), which provided for the delayed effective date of the changeover from special parole to supervised release, might have the implicit effect of preserving the special parole term requirement of pre-October 1986 law, but reading such an effect into that section requires a somewhat expansive construction of a criminal statute and the rule of lenity hence militates against imposing special parole terms for offenses occurring during the October 27, 1986-November 1, 1987 gap period. Cf. Bifulco v. United States, 447 U.S. 381, 100 S.Ct. 2247, 2258-59, 65 L.Ed.2d 205 (1980) (relying on the rule of lenity in the face of ambiguous congressional intent to hold that section 846, the narcotics conspiracy statute, does not authorize imposition of special parole terms). 54 Neither Byrd nor De Los Reyes unambiguously holds otherwise. The offense in De Los Reyes occurred on October 18, 1986, just prior to the effective date of the 1986 amendments, and hence prior to the beginning of the gap period. 11 The opinion in Byrd does not specify the date of the offense in that case, although it is perhaps inferable that it was during the gap. More recent cases in this Circuit, however, relying on Byrd and De Los Reyes, have clearly applied the special parole term requirement to section 841(b)(1)(B) offenses committed during this period. See, e.g., United States v. Posner, 865 F.2d 654, 657, 660 (5th Cir.1989) (February 1987 offense with sentence under section 841(b)(1)(B)); United States v. Molina-Uribe, 853 F.2d 1193, 1199 (5th Cir.1988) (December 1986 offense with sentence under section 841(b)(1)(B)). Other circuits have followed our lead. See, e.g., United States v. Whitehead, 849 F.2d 849, 860 (4th Cir.1988); United States v. Smith, 840 F.2d 886, 890 (11th Cir.1988). None of these cases provide any analysis in support of this result, but rather assume that Byrd forecloses the issue. Nonetheless, these cases bind our decision today. 55 In light of this precedent, we must conclude that the provision of section 1004 of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that delayed the effective date of the supervised release requirement in section 841(b) also implicitly extended the application of the old special parole term requirements, at least insofar as those requirements existed just prior to the enactment of the 1986 amendments. Thus, at least for offenses subject to a special parole term requirement just prior to the enactment of the 1986 amendments, the special parole term requirement continued in effect until November 1, 1987. 12 Because Robles' distribution count is such an offense, we conclude that the district court did not err in imposing a special parole term upon him.