Court Opinion

ID: 9491310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:10:26.26894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:39.429443
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit
Judge, dissenting.
Because the plain meaning of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(b)(l)(A)(viii) and 841(b)(l)(B)(viii) (1988) in effect at the relevant time provided two different punishments for the same act, I believe that the rule of lenity requires a court to apply the less stringent penalty of the two. That is what the Fifth Circuit concluded in United States v. Kinder, 946 F.2d 362, 367-68 (5th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 503 U.S. 987, 112 S.Ct. 1677, 118 L.Ed.2d 394 (1992), 504 U.S. 946, 112 S.Ct. 2290, 119 L.Ed.2d 214 (1992), and the cases cited there, and I think that it did so correctly. The Supreme Court observed in United States v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 221-22, 73 S.Ct. 227, 97 L.Ed. 260 (1952), that “when choice has to be made between two readings of what Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress should have spoken in language that is clear and definite.” I see no reason why the same principle should not apply to ambiguous sentencing statutes, and it would not be easy to concoct a more literally ambiguous sentencing scheme than the one involved in this case. Indeed, this case presents an instance of what might plausibly be termed an express ambiguity.
I would therefore vacate the sentence imposed in this case and remand to the district court for resentencing. I would affirm the district court’s judgment in all other respects.