United States v. Lawrence, No. 20-3061 (D.C. Cir. 2021)
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In 2009, defendant was sentenced to nearly 21 years in prison for selling 21.1 grams of crack cocaine. After Congress enacted the First Step Act in 2018, defendant filed a motion for sentence reduction. The district court reduced his sentence only by the ten months needed to comply with the new statutory maximum. At issue on appeal is whether the law mandated that the district court provide defendant the opportunity to allocute before ruling on his motion for a sentence reduction.
The DC Circuit held that no right to allocute applies to motions to reduce a sentence under the First Step Act and thus affirmed the district court's judgment. In this case, the court explained that defendant was not categorically entitled to an opportunity for allocution as part of his Section 404 proceedings under the First Step Act, and he has made no claim that allocution was necessary in the particular circumstances of his case.
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