Opinion ID: 220833
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lopez's Arguments

Text: Lopez challenges the BOP's interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) on three principal grounds. He first contends that the BOP applies two different meanings of term of imprisonment depending on whether a defendant receives a credit under § 3585(b) or an adjustment under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b). In the former, he asserts that the BOP construes term of imprisonment to include time served prior to sentencing, and in the latter, he asserts that the agency restricts term of imprisonment to only the term served after sentencing. We reject this argument. As already discussed, see supra at 183-84, the agency uniformly construes term of imprisonment as coterminous with a defendant's federal sentence. That this definition results in the award of GCT for presentence custody where a defendant receives a § 3585(b) credit, but not where a defendant receives a U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) adjustment, does not mean that the agency's construction of 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) unfairly strains the meaning of term of imprisonment. Rather, this distinction derives simply from the statutory definition of a federal sentence, which excludes presentence custody credited to another sentence. [5] See 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b). Second, Lopez maintains that the agency's interpretation conflicts with our decision in United States v. Rivers, 329 F.3d 119 (2d Cir.2003). In Rivers, the defendant pled guilty to a single count of distribution of crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(A)(1), based on which he was required to `be sentenced to a term of imprisonment ... not less than 5 years.' Id. at 120-21 (quoting 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B)). At sentencing, the district court first determined that a 64-month sentence was appropriate, which fell within the applicable 60 to 71-month Sentencing Guidelines range, and then sua sponte granted Rivers an 18-month adjustment under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) based on time he had already served in state prison on a related drug offense, which resulted in a remaining sentence of 46 months. See id. at 121. The Government argued on appeal that because 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B) mandated a minimum five-year sentence, the district court lacked the authority under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) to adjust Rivers's sentence below this statutory threshold. See id. at 122. We rejected this argument, holding that while an adjustment under § 5G1.3(b) was neither a departure from the Sentencing Guidelines nor a credit against the minimum sentence, [T]he effect of an adjustment is similar to that of a credit. In that sense, the adjustment is no less proscribed by the statutory minimum than where the prisoner is credited by the BOP for time already served. So long as the total period of incarceration, after the adjustment, is equal to or greater than the statutory minimum, the statutory dictate has been observed and its purpose accomplished. Here, Rivers was sentenced to an aggregate period of 64 months, above the minimum sentence mandated by 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B). At the end of the day, the resulting adjusted sentence the district court imposed for the totality of the conduct amounts to the sentence intended by the statute. Id. at 122 (internal citations omitted). Lopez points to Rivers as requiring that a 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b) credit and a U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) adjustment be treated as functionally similar, thus barring the BOP from awarding GCT as to the former but not as to the latter. We disagree. Although we held in Rivers that a U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(b) adjustment should be treated similarly to a 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b) credit, we did so specifically in the context of interpreting the phrase sentenced to a term of imprisonment as used in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B), a statute markedly different from 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b). See Rivers, 329 F.3d at 122. In doing so, we relied on decisions by our sister circuits construing criminal statutes containing analogous statutory-minimum provisions, which mandated that a defendant shall be... imprisoned not less than a certain number of years. Id. (citing, e.g., United States v. Drake, 49 F.3d 1438, 1440-41 (9th Cir.1995)). In response to the Government's claim that those decisions were distinguishable, we held there was no reason to apply a different rule for 21 U.S.C. § 841, despite the fact that statute used the phrase sentenced as opposed to imprisoned, since it would be illogical to permit adjustments for some criminal statutes but disallow them as to others. See id. at 122-23. This reasoning is inapplicable to this case. Unlike Rivers, there is no logical analogue here between 18 U.S.C. § 3624, which governs the BOP's administration of GCT, and 21 U.S.C. § 841, which concerns the appropriate punishment for a criminal offense. On that basis alone, we see no reason why Rivers should preclude the distinction drawn by the agency between § 3585(b) and § 5G1.3(b) for purposes of calculating GCT. See also Schleining, 642 F.3d at 1248-49 (holding that Drake, 49 F.3d 1438, in which the Ninth Circuit announced a rule functionally analogous to our holding in Rivers, was inapplicable to that court's determination of the relationship between § 3585(a) and § 3624(b)). In any event, the point is not that a § 3585(b) credit and a § 5G1.3(b) adjustment are similar. No one, including the BOP, could reasonably dispute with respect to determining the length of a prison term for a federal offense that application of either of these achieves the same functional result. What is relevant here  and what was not at issue in Rivers  is how a credit and an adjustment differ with respect to the administration of a federal sentence. As the above makes clear, the BOP has persuasively shown that for purposes of calculating GCT, whether a defendant receives a credit or an adjustment for time spent in presentence custody has significant consequences since the latter does not form part of the defendant's federal sentence. Finally, Lopez advances a number of broader challenges to the validity of the BOP's reasoning, asserting that the agency's construction of § 3624(b) makes accrual of GCT contingent on the fortuity of a defendant's federal sentencing date, and the agency's distinction between a credit and an adjustment results in unwarranted sentence disparities between similarly situated defendants. We acknowledge that in theory, if Lopez's federal sentencing had proceeded more swiftly, the amount of time adjusted by the district court under § 5G1.3(b) might have been smaller given the shorter period of presentence custody, which in turn could have resulted in a longer federal sentence  a longer term of imprisonment  and a larger potential GCT award. But we reject Lopez's contention that this possibility makes the accrual of GCT fortuitous, let alone arbitrary. A statutory interpretation can founder on this basis if it is absurd, see Troll Co. v. Uneeda Doll Co., 483 F.3d 150, 160 (2d Cir.2007) ([I]t is an elemental principle of statutory construction that an ambiguous statute must be construed to avoid absurd results.), and the construction advanced by the agency falls far short of this threshold. There are numerous circumstances in which the date of a defendant's sentencing will bear upon the ultimate length of the sentence imposed. See, e.g., United States v. Diaz, 627 F.3d 930, 931 (2d Cir.2010) (holding that a defendant was not eligible for a sentence reduction under new legislation because he was sentenced prior to the enactment of the relevant statute); Labeille-Soto, 163 F.3d at 99 (holding that if a defendant happens to complete a prior state sentence before the date on which he is sentenced in district court, the court may not order that his federal sentence run concurrently with his state prison term under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3). While Lopez alleges that the agency's interpretation of § 3624(b) deprived him of a substantial GCT award, even if Lopez had been sentenced on the day he pled guilty  and assuming all other facts remain the same  at most, he would have been eligible for approximately 40 additional days of GCT. [6] Although we in no way discount the significance of this additional prison time, we are not persuaded that this potential result renders the BOP's interpretation absurd. We also reject Lopez's assertion that the BOP treats similarly situated defendants differently without any rational justification. While the overall length of imprisonment ordered by a district court for a particular federal offense will be approximately the same regardless of whether a defendant receives a § 3585(b) credit or a § 5G1.3(b) adjustment, the federal sentence imposed in either case is different because in the latter circumstance, the defendant's presentence custody has already been credited to a separate state offense. Lopez suggests this is too fine a distinction to justify awarding GCT differently among defendants who receive a credit rather than an adjustment, but for reasons already discussed, we are persuaded that the agency's decision to base its interpretation of § 3624(b) on the precise definition of a federal sentence follows logically from a distinction already codified by Congress under 18 U.S.C. § 3585. In any event, the Supreme Court has recognized that while [i]t may seem unwise policy to treat defendants differently ... when they are similarly situated in fact, Reno v. Koray, 515 U.S. 50, 64, 115 S.Ct. 2021, 132 L.Ed.2d 46 (1995), this is not sufficient to undermine the BOP's construction of a statute where a legal distinction predominates, cf. 515 U.S. at 62-64, 115 S.Ct. 2021 (holding that, while an inmate confined in a community treatment center after having been detained and committed to the BOP's custody, and an inmate released to such a center on bail were similarly situated, in fact, their relative positions were legally distinct because the former remained subject to BOP control, and thus was eligible for a credit under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b)).