United States v. Gibson, No. 15-3107 (3d Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseIn 2008 and 2011 Gibson and Thompson separately pled guilty to drug offenses. In each case, the court departed downwards from the Career Offender Guidelines range and sentenced Gibson to 162 months and Thompson to 151 months of imprisonment. The Statement of Reasons indicated that Thompson’s sentence was imposed pursuant to the plea agreement. In 2014, Guidelines Amendment 782 retroactively reduced by two levels the base offense levels assigned to many drug quantities in the Drug Guidelines, including the drug quantities associated with their offenses. They filed unsuccessful motions (18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2)) for sentence reduction. The section permits a court to exercise its discretion to reduce a sentence only if: the sentence is “based on” a Guidelines range that has subsequently been lowered and a sentence reduction would be consistent with the Sentencing Commission’s policy statements. The Third Circuit affirmed the denials. Guidelines Amendment 759 provides that a court may not reduce a sentence under section 3582(c)(2) unless a Guidelines amendment has the “effect of lowering the defendant’s applicable guideline range.” In these cases, pre-departure, pre-variance “applicable guideline ranges” were calculated using the base offense levels for career offenders in Guidelines 4B1.1, which have not been lowered. Amendment 759, although enacted after they were sentenced, is not an ex post facto law.
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