United States v. Booker,543 U.S. 220 (2005),is a United States Supreme Court decision on criminal sentencing. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial requires that other than a prior conviction,only facts admitted by a defendant or proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury may be used to calculate a sentence exceeding the prescribed statutory maximum sentence,whether the defendant has pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial. The maximum sentence that a judge may impose is based upon the facts admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
The crack epidemic was a surge of crack cocaine use in major cities across the United States throughout the entirety of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This resulted in a number of social consequences,such as increasing crime and violence in American inner city neighborhoods,a resulting backlash in the form of tough on crime policies,a massive spike in incarceration rates,and a sharp escalation of the war on drugs.
Kimbrough v. United States,552 U.S. 85 (2007),was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court confirmed that federal district judges utilize,in an advisory fashion,Federal Sentencing Guidelines,in cases involving conduct related to possession,distribution,and manufacture of crack cocaine.
Frederic Block is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Gall v. United States,552 U.S. 38 (2007),was a decision by the United States Supreme Court,which held that the federal appeals courts may not presume that a sentence falling outside the range recommended by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is unreasonable. Applying this rule to the case at hand,it upheld a sentence of 36 months' probation imposed on a man who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ecstasy in the face of a recommended sentence of 30 to 37 months in prison.
Mark Warren Bennett is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa and a professor at Drake University Law School.
Jack Tarpley Camp Jr. is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. A Republican,he was nominated by Ronald Reagan,and retired from the bench in November 2010 after pleading guilty to drug related charges,including a felony count for giving a stripper cocaine even though he knew she was a convicted felon.
Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson is an American lawyer and jurist who is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25,2022,and confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office that same year. She is the first black woman and the first former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court. From 2021 to 2022,Jackson was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 was an Act of Congress that was signed into federal law by United States President Barack Obama on August 3,2010,that reduces the disparity between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trigger certain federal criminal penalties from a 100:1 weight ratio to an 18:1 weight ratio and eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine,among other provisions. Similar bills were introduced in several U.S. Congresses before its passage in 2010,and courts had also acted to reduce the sentencing disparity prior to the bill's passage.
The Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act was a bill proposed to the 112th United States Congress in 2011. It was introduced to amend Section 846 of the Controlled Substances Act to close a loophole that has allowed many drug trafficking conspirators to avoid federal prosecution. The Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act would have made it a federal crime for persons who conspire on United States soil to traffic or aid and abet drug trafficking inside or even outside the borders of the United States. This Act was created to provide clarity to current laws within the United States and provide criminal prosecution of those who are involved in drug trafficking within the United States or outside its borders. This Act would have provided a borderless application to United States Law and extends possible criminal charges to all individuals involved in the drug transport. The bill passed the House but was not acted upon by the Senate and thus died.
The Federal Correctional Complex,Petersburg is a United States federal prison complex for male inmates in Petersburg,Virginia. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons,a division of the United States Department of Justice.
Luis Felipe Restrepo,known commonly as L. Felipe Restrepo,is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.
Dorsey v. United States,567 U.S. 260 (2012),is a Supreme Court of the United States decision in which the Court held that reduced mandatory minimum sentences for "crack cocaine" under the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 does apply to defendants who committed a crime before the Act went into effect but who were sentenced after that date. The Act's silence on how to apply its new rules,before the effective date or not,caused a split among the Justices on how to interpret its new lenient provisions. Specifically,the case centered on Edward Dorsey,a prior offender who had been convicted of possession before the new rules came into effect but was sentenced after the effective date.
The Smarter Sentencing Act is a bill in the United States Senate that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some federal drug offenses. In some cases,the new minimums would apply retroactively,giving some people currently in prison on drug offenses a new sentence.
Shular v. United States,589 U.S. ___ (2020),is an opinion of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that,under the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984,the definition of “serious drug offense”only requires that the state offense involve the conduct specified in the statute. Unlike other provisions of the ACCA,it does not require that state courts develop “generic”version of a crime,which describe the elements of the offense as they are commonly understood,and then compare the crime being charged to that generic version to determine whether the crime qualifies under the ACCA for purposes of penalty enhancement. The decision states that offenses defined under the ACCA are "unlikely names for generic offenses," and are therefore unambiguous. This renders the rule of lenity inapplicable.
United States v. Cotton,535 U.S. 625 (2002),is a United States Supreme Court case that held the omission of a fact in a federal indictment that would enhance the maximum sentence is not a jurisdictional error and thus is not justification for a vacation of the sentence.
Terry v. United States,593 U.S. ___ (2021),was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with retroactive changes to prison sentences for drug-possession crimes related to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010,its retroactive nature established by the First Step Act of 2018. In a unanimous judgement,the Court ruled that while the First Step Act does allow for retroactive considerations of sentence reductions for drug-possession crimes prior to 2010,this only covers those that were sentenced under minimum sentencing requirements.
Michael Stefan Nachmanoff is an American lawyer who serves as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He served as a magistrate judge of the same court from 2015 to 2021.
Concepcion v. United States,597 U.S. ___ (2022),is a United States Supreme Court decision that concerns district courts' ability to consider changes of law or fact in exercising their discretion to reduce a sentence.
Brown v. United States,,is a pending United States Supreme Court case.
