U.S. v. Watts

• Decision Date: 05 April 2011
• Docket Number: C.A. No. 09–cr–30030–MAP.
• Citation: 775 F.Supp.2d 263
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiffv.Antoine WATTS, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

775 F.Supp.2d 263

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff

v.Antoine WATTS, Defendant.

C.A. No. 09–cr–30030–MAP.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

April 5, 2011.

Alex J. Grant, Paul H. Smyth, United States Attorney's Office, Springfield, MA, for Plaintiff.Myles Jacobson, Law Office of Myles Jacobson, Northampton, MA, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM RE: DEFENDANT'S MOTION REGARDING APPLICATION OF THE FAIR SENTENCING ACT OF 2010 (Dkt. No. 69) ¹

PONSOR, District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

The narrow question raised by this pretrial motion is whether, if Antoine Watts is convicted of possessing with intent to distribute five grams or more of crack cocaine, the court will be compelled to impose a minimum mandatory sentence of at least five years on him, or will have the discretion to impose a lower sentence as permitted by the recently enacted Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (“FSA”). Pub. L. No. 111–220, 124 Stat. 2372 (2010).

The broader question is whether federal trial courts will be required, for roughly the next five years, to perpetuate a congressionally recognized injustice. It is disturbing enough when courts, whose primary task is to do justice, become themselves the instruments of injustice, as in the history of our nation it must be acknowledged they sometimes have. But this discomfort reaches its zenith when the injustice has been identified and formally remedied by Congress itself. For a trial judge, the distastefulness of being forced to continue imposing a rejected penalty becomes unendurable in light of the fact that Congress acted partly because the injustice is racially skewed and, as everyone now agrees, will fall disproportionately upon Black defendants such as Mr. Watts.

The government's position here is that this court, and all federal trial courts in this country, must robotically continue to impose penalties that all three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—and all elements of our political system-Republicans and Democrats from the most conservative to the most liberal—have now formally condemned as racially tainted and have explicitly rejected as not only unjust but mistaken from the outset. For the reasons set forth below, the affront to manifest and undisputed congressional intent advocated by the government here is not required by law.

A few more introductory words. The government's contention that the General Saving Statute (“Saving Statute”), 1 U.S.C. § 109, demands this result—that is, that the Saving Statute makes perpetuation of obvious injustice a regrettable but necessary expression of respect for the law, however harsh its consequences—cannot survive a close examination of the Saving Statute itself or its legal context. The Saving Statute is simply not the straitjacket the government has tried to tailor.

As will be seen, the case most heavily relied upon by the government for its crabbed interpretation of the Saving Statute, Warden, Lewisburg Penitentiary v. Marrero, 417 U.S. 653, 661, 94 S.Ct. 2532, 41 L.Ed.2d 383 (1974), states that when a statute such as the FSA contains a “specific directive” that can be said “ by fair implication or expressly to conflict with § 109” a court is empowered to hold that the new statute supersedes the Saving Statute. Id. at 659 n. 10, 94 S.Ct. 2532 (citing Great No. R. Co. v. United States, 208 U.S. 452, 465–66, 28 S.Ct. 313, 52 L.Ed. 567 (1908)) (emphasis supplied). Thirty years after Marrero, Justice Scalia, in discussing whether a new statute superseded a prior one, pungently noted that “[w]hen the plain import of a later statute directly conflicts with an earlier statute, the later enactment governs, regardless of its compliance with any earlier-enacted requirement of an express reference or other ‘magical password.’ ” Lockhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 142, 149, 126 S.Ct. 699, 163 L.Ed.2d 557 (2005) (Scalia, J., concurring) (emphasis in original).

It cannot be disputed that the situation before the court now is precisely what Justice Scalia described. When the intent of Congress and the interests of justice coincide as exactly as they do with regard to the question of the application of the FSA here, it ill behooves a court (or a prosecutor) to engage in contortions to thwart both. For this reason, elaborated below, the court has allowed Defendant's motion and will consider his sentence in light of the applicable statutes as amended by the FSA.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

It is important to view this case from two perspectives: the narrow context of the specific case, with the government and the defendant seeking justice from the court, and the broader historical and legal landscape that the parties and the court inhabit.

A. Antoine Watts

Antoine Watts was born in 1978 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and has lived here all his life. He, his four sisters and two brothers were raised by their single mother. His father's whereabouts are unknown. Mr. Watts completed the eleventh grade at Putnam High School and received his GED in 2008. Through a temp agency, he worked at a number of local businesses, including the Yankee Candle Company and Brightside Hospital. Mr. Watts has two sons, ages seven and eleven.

In 1997, at age twenty, Mr. Watts was arrested and convicted of assault and battery on a police officer. (Dkt. No. 6, Karangekis Aff. ¶ 39.) In 2003, he was convicted in the state district court of distributing a Class B substance (cocaine). ( Id.) At some point, according to the government, Mr. Watts became a member of a Springfield street gang called the Sycamore Street Posse. ( Id. ¶ 38.) On April 16, 2009, in a sale recorded by audio and video, he allegedly sold less than 28 grams (or one ounce) of crack cocaine to a confidential informant.² ( Id. ¶¶ 37, 39.) In connection with this sale, Mr. Watts was arrested with eight other alleged gang members. ( Id. ¶ 1.) On October 9, 2009, he pled not guilty and was ordered detained. On October 13, Mr. Watts was released on bond with conditions. The government filed an Information, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 851, seeking an enhanced statutory penalty on the basis of Mr. Watts's prior felony conviction. As a result, Mr. Watts's mandatory minimum sentence under the prior law increased from five years to ten years.

Before moving to dismiss the § 851 Information, Mr. Watts moved for discovery regarding the filing of § 851 Informations in federal drug cases in the District of Massachusetts from 2007 through 2009, in an attempt to demonstrate that African–Americans are selectively targeted for the enhanced penalty. (Dkt. No. 44.) This court denied the motion on September 9, 2010, on the grounds that Mr. Watts had failed to meet his burden regarding discriminatory intent. (Dkt. No. 65.) ³ Weeks later, Mr. Watts filed this motion for an order regarding the applicability of the FSA to him. Significantly, under the FSA, Mr. Watts would face no mandatory minimum sentence.⁴

As noted, all the participants in this case approach the issues potentially in play here against a historical and legal backdrop. The discussion will now turn to a necessarily compressed overview of how we all got here.

B. The War on Drugs.

It is a painful, and often noted, irony that the United States of America—the land of the free and the home of the brave—leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its citizens. Some seven percent of the population, or 2.3 million people, are currently housed, at vast expense, in the nation's prisons and jails.⁵ Approximately 210,000 inmates are in federal prisons; of these federal prisoners, 100,000 were convicted of drug crimes.

America's prison population has increased by 500% in the last thirty years, a result almost entirely of an increased determination by state and federal officials to impose lengthy sentences on drug offenders. Part of this initiative included Congress's enactment in 1986 of the Anti–Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. As a result, while in 1984, a total of 7,459 defendants pled guilty to or were convicted of violation of drug laws in the United States district courts, by 2009 that number had climbed to 26,612.

In the mid–1980s, NBA player Len Bias's cocaine overdose, a rise in inner-city and gang violence perceived to be due to a rise in the use of a powerful new drug called crack, the alleged “crack baby” epidemic, and an increase in child neglect cases apparently due to parental addiction to crack created a nationwide wave of fear and calls for Congress to act swiftly and harshly to penalize those associated with the sale and use of the drug.⁶ The passage of the Anti–Drug Abuse Act, a 192–page omnibus bill that amended the Controlled Substances Act, was called “the most comprehensive, hard-hitting antidrug bill ever written.” Sen. Patrick Leahy, 132 Cong. Rec. S 12231 (daily ed. Sept. 10, 1986).

C. Statutory Mandatory Minimum Sentences.

The Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986 amended the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”) to include mandatory penalties for possession and distribution of cocaine base, or crack. Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99–570, 100 Stat. 3207 (1986). The theory underlying the penalties in the new statute was that crack cocaine was an inherently more dangerous drug than powder cocaine. It was certainly less expensive and was thought to be fifty percent more addictive. As Senator Patrick Leahy stated in his remarks in support of the bill, “[d]rug merchants are now pushing a new craze that is sweeping the Nation. It's called crack.... One hit costs just $10. Users say addiction can begin after only the second use of crack.” Sen. Patrick Leahy, 132 Cong. Rec. S 12231 (daily ed. Sept. 10, 1986).

In this environment, Congress somehow decided to mandate sentences for crack cocaine offenses that were one hundred times more harsh than penalties for offenses that involved cocaine in powder form, despite the fact that the two substances were chemically identical and that powder cocaine...