Opinion ID: 3019620
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Legal Landscape Post-Booker: Our Sister

Text: 17 Circuit Courts Several of our sister circuit courts have addressed the crack/powder cocaine sentencing differential post-Booker. The Government depicts the rulings of those courts as follows: While a handful of district courts, following Booker, have taken it upon themselves to lower guideline ranges for crack offenses based on a perceived unfairness in comparison with sentencing for powder cocaine crimes, this is plainly beyond judicial authority, and the appellate courts to address the matter have unanimously rejected this result. See United States v. Cawthorn, [429 F.3d 793, 802-02] (8th Cir. [] 2005); United States v. Gipson, 425 F.3d 335, 337 (7th Cir. 2005); United States v. Daniels, 147 Fed. Appx. 869, 870 n.1 (11th Cir. Sept. 2, 2005). Gov’t Br. at 15-16. This contention is inaccurate for two reasons. First, it is well-documented that, as of the date of the Government’s brief, in excess of two dozen district courts (hardly a “handful”) have used their Booker discretion to refuse to apply the 100:1 crack/powder cocaine discrepancy. See Judge Michael W. McConnell, The Booker Mess, 83 Denv. U. L. Rev. 665, 683 (2006); see also Ryan S. King & Marc Mauer, Sentencing with Discretion: Crack Cocaine Sentencing After Booker 4-6, 11-19 ( J a n u a r y 2 0 0 6 ) , 18 http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/crackcocaine-afterboo ker.pdf (citing and analyzing cases). Second, and more importantly, the Government’s assertion is simply wrong that “the appellate courts [that have] address[ed] the matter” before us “have unanimously rejected” a court’s decision to sentence below the Guidelines ranges in crack cocaine cases. See United States v. Williams, 435 F.3d 1350, 1354-55 (11th Cir. 2006) (per curiam) (affirming as reasonable a below-Guidelines sentence of 90 months’ imprisonment in a crack case where the value of the crack involved was only $350 and the advisory Guidelines range was 188-235 months’ imprisonment). Moreover, the cases on which the Government relies to advance its argument simply are not on point. For example, it cites United States v. Daniels, No. 05-10432, 2005 WL 2114158 (11th Cir. Sept. 2, 2005) (per curiam). There, the District Court sentenced the defendant not below, but within, his advisory Guidelines range. Id. at . The Eleventh Circuit affirmed that sentence as reasonable, noting in approval that, in reaching its sentencing determination, the District Court “considered the nature and circumstances of Daniels’s “cooperation with the government, the nature of the offense, the drug involved, and ‘all of the circumstances particular to him.’” Id. (emphasis added). Thus, consideration of the drug involved (i.e., crack cocaine, powder cocaine, heroin, et al.) as a sentencing factor is proper and encouraged in the post-Booker regime. The Government ignores this statement and instead directs the Court’s attention to footnote one of the opinion, which states that 19 Daniels also argues that his sentence was unreasonable based upon the Sentencing Guidelines’ disparate treatment of powder and crack cocaine offenses. This argument is foreclosed by our precedent, and therefore . . . is without merit. Id. at  n.1. This comment does nothing more than restate the obvious, that is, within-Guidelines crack cocaine sentences are not per se unreasonable simply due to the crack/powder cocaine differential. The panel said as much in Scott. 2006 WL 1113513, at . Furthermore, the Eleventh Circuit has affirmed a below-Guidelines crack sentence in a precedential opinion decided subsequent to Daniels. See Williams, 435 F.3d at 135455. Daniels thus cannot mean what the Government reads it to say: that district courts may never take the Guidelines’ crack/powder cocaine differential into consideration and ultimately impose a non-Guidelines sentence. The Government also relies on United States v. Gipson, 425 F.3d 335, 337 (7th Cir. 2005) (per curiam). There, the defendant’s “sole argument on appeal was that the penalties under the [G]uidelines for crack cocaine as contrasted with powder are ‘grossly disproportionate,’ and therefore his sentence is unreasonable within the meaning of . . . Booker . . . .” Id. at 337. The Seventh Circuit affirmed Gipson’s sentence, noting (as the panel did in Scott) that the question in the case “is not whether after Booker a sentencing court may use the differential as a reason to impose a shorter sentence than the one recommended by the [G]uidelines, but rather whether it is error for a court not to have taken the differential into account.” 20 Id. What this means is that a sentencing court is required to calculate the crack/powder cocaine difference in determining Guidelines ranges, but is no longer required to consider the Guidelines anything more than advisory in meting out the sentence. Finally, the Government points to United States v. Cawthorn, 429 F.3d 793 (8th Cir. 2005), a case in which the Eighth Circuit rejected the defendant’s argument that “it was error for the [sentencing] court not to sentence outside the Guidelines range because it is always unreasonable to treat crack cocaine 100 times worse than powder cocaine.” Id. at 802. Cawthorn expressly adopted the reasoning of the Seventh Circuit, stating that, given its prior case law, “it would be inconsistent to require the district court to give a nonguideline sentence based on this differential.” Id. at 803. In reaching that conclusion, the Eighth Circuit stressed that the sentencing court had treated the crack/powder cocaine differential as advisory in sentencing Cawthorn: The district court merely saw the congressional choice [declaring that crack be treated 100 times more severe than powder cocaine] as a factor in the sentence; therefore Cawthorn’s argument that the district court treated the crack-powder disparity as mandatory is without merit. Id. (emphasis added). Unlike in Cawthorn, the District Court here believed that it had no discretion to impose a belowGuidelines sentence on the basis of the crack/powder cocaine differential and, thus, treated the Guidelines range difference as 21 mandatory in deciding the ultimate sentence. There are additional federal appellate decisions, not relied on by the Government, that are relevant to our analysis. Two are United States v. Pho, 433 F.3d 53 (1st Cir. 2006), and United States v. Eura, 440 F.3d 625 (4th Cir. 2006). The questions presented in Pho and Eura were identical: May a federal district court, consistent with the teachings of [Booker], impose a sentence outside the advisory [G]uidelines sentencing range based solely on its categorical rejection of the [G]uidelines’ disparate treatment of offenses involving crack cocaine, on the one hand, and powdered cocaine, on the other hand? Pho, 433 F.3d at 54 (emphasis added). The sentencing court in Pho categorically rejected the 100:1 ratio, opting instead for a 20:1 ratio because it “made more sense.” Id. at 58. The sentencing court in Eura appears to have done the same. See 440 F.3d at 630-32 & n.6. The First and Fourth Circuits, respectively, reversed, holding that “a ‘district court’s categorical rejection of the 100:1 ratio impermissibly usurps Congress’s judgment about the proper sentencing policy for cocaine offenses.’” Eura, 440 F.3d at 634 (quoting Pho, 433 F.3d at 63). Both Courts were careful, however, to restrict their ruling to “categorical rejections of the 100:1 ratio” so as not to run afoul of Booker. The First Circuit in Pho stated that “we do not intend to diminish the discretion that, after Booker, district courts enjoy in sentencing matters or 22 to suggest that, in a drug-trafficking case, the nature of the contraband and/or the severity of a projected guideline sentence may not be taken into account on a case-by-case basis.” 433 F.3d at 65. Picking up on that theme, the Fourth Circuit went on to say: Of course, it does not follow that all defendants convicted of crack cocaine offenses must receive a sentence within the advisory sentencing range. We certainly envision instances in which some of the § 3553(a) factors will warrant a variance from the advisory sentencing range in a crack cocaine case. 440 F.3d at 634 (emphasis in original); see also United States v. Castillo, __F.3d__, No. 05-3454-CR, 2006 WL 2374281, at -17, 21 (2d Cir. Aug. 16, 2006) (rejecting the district court’s substitution of a 20:1 ratio for the 100:1 ratio, but emphasizing that it was not holding “that district courts must always sentence within the ratio provided by the Guidelines; that would indeed be error under Booker”); United States v. Jointer, __ F.3d__, No. 05-4623, 2006 WL 2266308, at -4 (7th Cir. Aug. 9, 2006) (similar). To recap, federal courts of appeal have unanimously held that (1) Booker does not require sentencing courts to impose below-Guidelines sentences in every crack case due to the crack/powder differential, and (2) sentencing courts may not craft their own ratio as a substitute for the 100:1 ratio chosen by Congress. Contrary to the Government’s contentions, no circuit court has held that a sentencing court errs in simply considering 23 the particular form of a drug involved in the offense as one of many individual factors in imposing a sentence. In this context, we decide a limited issue of first impression for our Court: whether the District Court erred as a matter of law in believing it could not sentence below the applicable Guidelines range for offenses involving crack cocaine. To resolve this issue, we examine Booker and our case law explaining the sentencing process courts are to follow postBooker.