United States v. Blewett

• Citation: 719 F.3d 482
• Decision Date: 11 July 2013
• Docket Number: 12–5582.,Nos. 12–5226,s. 12–5226
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Cornelius Demorris BLEWETT (12–5226) and Jarreous Jamone Blewitt (12–5582), Defendants–Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

719 F.3d 482

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Cornelius Demorris BLEWETT (12–5226) and Jarreous Jamone Blewitt (12–5582), Defendants–Appellants.

Nos. 12–5226, 12–5582.

United States Court of Appeals,

Sixth Circuit.

May 17, 2013.

Rehearing En Banc Granted, Opinion Vacated July 11, 2013.

ON BRIEF:Jamie L. Haworth, Frank W. Heft, Jr., Office of the Federal Public Defender, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant in 12–5226. Laura R. Wyrosdick, Frank W. Heft, Jr., Office of the Federal Public Defender, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant in 12–5582. Candace G. Hill, United States Attorney's Office, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee.

Before: MERRITT, MARTIN, and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

MERRITT, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which MARTIN, J., joined. GILMAN, J. (pp. 494–98), delivered a separate dissent.

OPINION

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

This is a crack cocaine case brought by two currently incarcerated defendants seeking retroactive relief from racially discriminatory mandatory minimum sentences imposed on them in 2005. The Fair Sentencing Act was passed in August 2010 to “restore fairness to Federal cocaine sentencing” laws that had unfairly impacted blacks for almost 25 years. The Fair Sentencing Act repealed portions of the Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that instituted a 100–to–1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine, treating one gram of crack as equivalent to 100 grams of powder cocaine for sentencing purposes. The 100–to–1 ratio had long been acknowledged by many in the legal system to be unjustified and adopted without empirical support. The Fair Sentencing Act lowered the ratio to a more lenient 18–to–1 ratio. However, thousands of inmates, most black, languish in prison under the old, discredited ratio because the Fair Sentencing Act was not made explicitly retroactive by Congress.

In this case, we hold, inter alia, that the federal judicial perpetuation of the racially discriminatory mandatory minimum crack sentences for those defendants sentenced under the old crack sentencing law, as the government advocates, would violate the Equal Protection Clause, as incorporated into the Fifth Amendment by the doctrine of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 74 S.Ct. 693, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954) (Fifth Amendment forbids federal racial discrimination in the same way as the Fourteenth Amendment forbids state racial discrimination). As Professor William J. Stuntz, the late Harvard criminal law professor, has observed, “persistent bias occurred with respect to the contemporary enforcement of drug laws where, in the 1990s and early 2000s, blacks constituted a minority of regular users of crack cocaine but more than 80 percent of crack defendants.” The Collapse of American Criminal Justice 184 (2011). He recommended that we “redress that discrimination” with “the underused concept of ‘equal protection of the laws.’ ” Id. at 297.

In this opinion, we will set out both the constitutional and statutory reasons the old, racially discriminatory crack sentencing law must now be set aside in favor of the new sentencing law enacted by Congress as the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. The Act should apply to all defendants, including those sentenced prior to its passage. We therefore reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for resentencing.

I.

The district court judge, bound by unavoidable mandatory minimums, sentenced the Blewett ¹ cousins in 2005 to a mandatory minimum of ten years each under the old 100–to–1 crack cocaine law, sentences based on the quantity of crack cocaine possessed. The Blewetts seek retroactive resentencing under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)² and 28 U.S.C. § 994(u)³ becausethe Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, P.L. No. 111–220, 124 Stat. 2372, as implemented by new sentencing guidelines, has substantially reduced crack cocaine sentences, including the mandatory minimum sentences imposed in this case. See21 U.S.C. § 841(b) (increasing the amount of crack from 50 grams to 280 grams to trigger the 10–year mandatory minimum and from 5 grams to 28 grams to trigger the five-year mandatory minimum). If the Blewetts were sentenced today under the revised crack law, they would not be subject to a statutory minimum because the quantity of crack involved falls below the threshold for any statutory minimum.

The old 100–to–1 crack cocaine ratio has led to the mass incarceration of thousands of nonviolent prisoners under a law widely acknowledged as racially discriminatory. There were approximately 30,000 federal prisoners (about 15 percent of all federal prisoners) serving crack cocaine sentences in 2011. United States Sent'g Comm'n, Analysis of the Impact of Guideline Implementation of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 if the Amendment Were Applied Retroactively, at 12 (May 2011).⁴ Thousands of these prisoners are incarcerated for life or for 20, 10, or 5 years under mandatory minimum crack cocaine sentences imposed prior to the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act. More than 80 percent of federal prisoners serving crack cocaine sentences are black. See, e.g., United States Sent'g Comm'n, Annual Report 2011 at 37 (83%); United States Sent'g Comm'n, 1996 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics tbl.29, at 47 (85.8%). In fiscal year 2010, before the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, almost 4,000 defendants, mainly black, received mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine. United States Sent'g Comm'n, 2010 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics tbl.43.

In 2010, recognizing the statistical evidence of widespread racial discrimination based on empirical studies, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act. The preamble to the Fair Sentencing Act, recognizing racial injustice, states that it is designed “to restore fairness to Federal cocaine sentencing.” Justice Breyer's majority opinion in Dorsey v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2321, 2328, 183 L.Ed.2d 250 (2012), states that the new law was adopted “because the public had come to understand sentences embodying the 100–to–1 ratio as reflecting unjustified race-based differences.” The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy, reflecting on the purpose of the new Act, stated that the former 100–to–1 ratio law is “one of the most notorious symbols of racial discrimination in the modern criminal justice system.” 156 Cong. Rec. S1683 (daily ed. Mar. 17, 2010). Many members of Congress stated that the old law should be changed because it was racially discriminatory and not based on any coherent rationale. ⁵

Yet, despite the passage of the Act and the Supreme Court's condemnation of the 100–to–1 ratio in Dorsey, more than 17,000 such crack prisoners sentenced under the old, racially discriminatory law are not eligible for resentencing. The majority of these people, the government claims, cannot benefit from the new law because they received a sentence under the old mandatory minimums or received a career offender designation (requiring two previous drug convictions). So according to figures supplied by the Sentencing Commission, less than one-half of those given excessive, racially discriminatory sentences, like the ones imposed on the Blewetts, are eligible for relief. United States Sent'g Comm'n, Analysis of the Impact of Guideline Implementation of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 if the Amendment Were Applied Retroactively, at 12 (May 2011).

Congress, as Justice Breyer's opinion in Dorsey confirmed, intended in the Fair Sentencing Act to repeal and redress the wrongs of the older crack sentencing statute that Congress believed had proven itself to be arbitrary, irrational, and racially discriminatory. The status quo has now been overturned. The question remaining is: how retroactive is the new law? Fully? Or only partially, just covering a minority of those wrongly sentenced?

The answer to the question turns on our interpretation of principles of equal protection and several interlocking rules, provisions of sentencing law, including background canons of statutory interpretation, the Fair Sentencing Act, the previous statutes it repealed or modified, and the sentencing guideline provisions propagated pursuant to it. We regard as the most important consideration the clear congressional purpose to end the long, racially discriminatory sentences imposed in crack cocaine cases over the past 25 years and the fact that the perpetuation of such sentences is unconstitutional.⁶

II.

We readily acknowledge that no party challenges the constitutionality of denying retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act to people who were sentenced under the old regime. That does not mean, however, that the constitutional question is irrelevant as we determine whether the Blewetts are entitled to a sentence reduction. That is because we are constrained to interpret statutes and sentencing guidelines so as to avoid potential conflict with the Constitution. The constitutional-doubt canon means that a statute or other authoritative text should be interpreted in a way that avoids creating an unconstitutional law or placing its constitutionality in doubt. The most recent treatise on the subject of canons of construction quotes a statement defining the meaning of the constitutional-doubt canon found in United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U.S. 366, 408, 29 S.Ct. 527, 53 L.Ed. 836 (1909): “[W]here a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 247 (2012). The interpretation the government puts forth to deny retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act would result in a violation of equal protection.

Quite apart from the legal doctrine that guides the Equal Protection Clause (as incorporated into the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment), the discriminatory nature of...