NACDL President Jim Lavine's written statement to the U.S. Sentencing Commission regarding proposed amendments to the sentencing guidelines, particularly in relation to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (S. 1789).

Testimony of Chief Judge Patti B. Saris Chair, United States Sentencing Commission For the Hearing on “Agency Perspectives” Before the Over-Criminalization Task Force of the Committee on the Judiciary United States House of Representatives

NACDL President Jim Lavine's written statement to the U.S. Sentencing Commission regarding amending the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (S. 1789) to apply retroactively to maintain fairness in sentencing application.

Letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission regarding proposed amendments to the sentencing guidelines.

Letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission regarding proposed amendments to the Fair Sentencing Act.

Brief of Retired Federal Judges, Former Federal Prosecutors, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner. 

Argument: Defendants sentenced for crack cocaine offenses under the pre-2010 version of § 841(b)(1)(C) are eligible for resentencing under the First Step Act of 2018.  The First Step Act’s resentencing provisions apply to offenses whose penalties were “modified” by the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010.  Although defendants sentenced under the pre-2010 version of § 841(b)(1)(C) remain eligible for their original sentences after the statute was recently amended, the sentences they would have received under the post-2010 version of the statute almost certainly would have been lower—likely significantly lower.  That is because the Fair Sentencing Act dramatically expanded the drug quantities to which § 841(b)(1)(C) applies.  All else equal, a sentencing judge generally aims to align the various drug-quantity ranges in § 841(b) with the corresponding sentence ranges—assigning lower sentences for lower quantities and higher sentences for higher quantities.  In other words, the drug-quantity benchmarks in § 841(b) exert a powerful anchoring influence over a judge’s sentencing decisions.  And Congress changed the relevant anchor points 2010.  Thus, it “modified” the statutory penalties in § 841(b)(1)(C), and defendants sentenced under that provision are entitled to resentencing.

Brief of the Federal Public and Community Defenders for the Judicial Districts of the Sixth Circuit and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amici Curiae in Support of Reversal.

Argument: The career offender guideline is problematic. The impact of the career offender guidelines was even more severe before the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. The severity of the career offender guideline does not advance the purposes of sentencing. The career offender guideline has an unwarranted adverse impact on Black defendants. A career offender sentence creates rather than avoids unwarranted disparity in the ordinary case. Courts must take special care when considering the need to avoid unwarranted disparity for those deemed career offenders and eligible for First Step Act relief.

Coalition letter to House and Senate Judiciary Committee leadership and Congressional leadership regarding the sentencing and racial disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses, as addressed in the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law (EQUAL) Act (S. 79 / H.R. 1693, 2021).

Brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner.

Argument: Certiorari is warranted because the Third Circuit’s decision prohibits a whole class of crack-cocaine offenders from being eligible for resentencing under the First Step Act while identically situated defendants in other circuits may be resentenced.  The Third Circuit’s rule is inconsistent with Congress’s goal of providing relief to low-level drug offenders because it excludes the lowest-level offenders and those with uncertain drug amounts from resentencing while allowing those who possessed greater amounts of crack cocaine to obtain relief.  Defendants convicted for possessing lower-quantities of crack cocaine could receive substantial sentence reductions even though they remain eligible for the same sentence.  The Third Circuit’s rule frustrates Congress’s goal of providing relief to the disproportionate number of Black Americans incarcerated for crack-cocaine offenses.

NACDL Executive Director Norman Reimer's written statement to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security regarding implementation of the First Step Act of 2018 (S. 756). Accompanied by NACDL's FOIA request to the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs regarding the risk and needs assessment tool DOJ will create for such implementation.

Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Association of Federal Defenders in support of petititoners.

Argument: It was error for the sentencing courts in these cases to not sentence the defendants pursuant to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, where the defendants were sentenced after the effective date of the FSA. The General Savings Statute, 1 U.S.C. §109, does not prevent the application of the Fair Sentencing Act to pending proceedings, because the application of an ameliorated penalty does not come within the technical abatement rule. Technical abatement occurs because at common law, abatement by repeal included a statute’s repeal and reenactment with different penalties, and is the complete deprivation of the power to prosecute— the scenario Sec. 109 was written to prevent. Application of the FSA’s penalties to ongoing prosecutions does not create a technical abatement at common law; therefore the General Savings provision of Sec. 109 does not apply.

Brief Amicus Curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in support of defendants-appellants.

Argument: The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive purposeless punishments now rejected in American laws and practices, as are pre-FSA crack sentences. Society’s standards reflected in modern legislation and practices demonstrate a national consensus against pre-FSA crack sentences. There is no evident legitimate penological justification for preventing only less serious, low quality crack offenders from being eligible for sentencing modification of pre-FSA sentences under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). The sentence modification provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) and Guideline policy statements provide an effective and appropriate means to address and remedy the Eighth Amendment concerns in this case. For the foregoing reasons, the Eighth Amendment provides support for the Blewett panel ruling, and this Court need not and should not order rehearing en banc of that decision.