United States v. Augustine, No. 12-50061 (9th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseOn October 10, 2007, defendant was sentenced to 121 months in custody after pleading guilty to distributing 83.2 grams of crack cocaine. At issue on appeal was whether a defendant sentenced for a crack cocaine offense before the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (FSA), Pub. L. No. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, was enacted was eligible for a reduced sentence under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). The court held, consistent with all circuits to have addressed the issue, that the FSA's lowered mandatory minimums were not available to such individuals. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's determination that the FSA did not apply retroactively to defendant.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed the district court’s order lowering the defendant’s sentence by only one month, to the mandatory minimum under the law in effect at the time of the defendant’s sentencing, on the defendant’s motion pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). The panel held that the lower mandatory minimums in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which addressed the inequitable disparity between the sentences prescribed for crack and powder cocaine offenses, do not apply in § 3582(c)(2) proceedings to defendants sentenced before the FSA was enacted. The panel rejected the defendant’s attempts to distinguish United States v. Baptist, 646 F.3d 1225 (9th Cir. 2011) (per curiam), and United States v. Sykes, 658 F.3d 1140 (9th Cir. 2011); and agreed with other circuits that Dorsey v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 2321 (2012), does not require retroactive application of the FSA’s mandatory minimums to those sentenced before the Act’s passage.
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