United States v. Ceasar
| Decision Date | 18 February 2021 |
| Docket Number | CRIMINAL ACTION NO. 16-174 SECTION "F" |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. SHANNON CEASAR |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana |
Before the Court is the defendant's motion for reduction of sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). For the reasons that follow, the motion is DENIED.
Shannon Christopher Ceasar was a medical doctor who operated a pill mill,1 defrauded healthcare benefit programs by issuing fraudulent prescriptions, and threatened to kill law enforcement officers with the Drug Enforcement Administration when he suspected he was under investigation.2 He is currently servingthree concurrent 120-month sentences of imprisonment at FCI Oakdale.
The sentence imposed was below the 210-240 months advisory guideline range calculated by the U.S. Probation Office.3 Several sentencing enhancements informed his advisory guideline range, but both the government and the defendant moved for a below-guidelines sentence for a number of reasons including Ceasar's acceptance of responsibility and history of myriad health conditions and substance abuse issues. Having served approximately half of the 120-month term of imprisonment, Ceasar now asks the Court to reduce his sentence based on health concerns exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Courts generally "may not modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed[.]" 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c). Few exceptions apply. Since passage of the First Step Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194 (2018), federal courts "may reduce the term of imprisonment" upon an inmate's request and demonstration of certain criteria. § 3582(c)(1)(A); see also United States v.Chambliss, 948 F.3d 691, 692-93 (5th Cir. 2020)(As amended, § 3582(c) provides that the Court "on a motion by the BOP or by the defendant after exhausting all BOP remedies, may reduce or modify a term of imprisonment, probation, or supervised release after considering the factors of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), if 'extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction.'").4
"The First Step Act and COVID-19 have redefined the compassionate release landscape." United States v. Jones, 980 F.3d 1098, 1100-01 (6th Cir. 2020)("The First Step Act of 2018's provision allowing incarcerated persons to file their own § 3582(c)(1)(A) motions coupled with COVID-19's pernicious presence in federal prisons triggered a massive upswing in imprisoned persons seeking compassionate release; 10,940 persons applied for compassionate release in the first three months of the pandemic alone."). A new statutory remedy coupled with an historic pandemic presenting unique challenges to institutional living environments has triggered a perfect storm for interpretation conflicts in the case literature. The Court first considers the threshold issue of exhaustion before turning to address the conflicts implicated in the parties' submissions and ultimately proceeding to consider whether Ceasar is entitled to a sentence reduction.
§ 3582(c)(1)(A). The statute's requirement that an incarcerated person seeking compassionate release must file a request with the Bureau of Prisons before filing a motion in federal court imposes a non-jurisdictional, "mandatory claim-processing rule" that a "court must enforce" when "properly raised" by the Government. See United States v. Franco, 973 F.3d 465, 468 (5th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 2020 WL 7132458 (U.S. 12/7/20)(emphasis added in Franco, quoting Pierre-Paul v. Barr, 930 F.3d 684, 692 (5th Cir. 2019)). When an inmate's request is administratively denied before 30 days have lapsed, the statute's exhaustion requirements have been inconsistently construed: some courts hold that, regardless of whether the warden responds, compassionate release petitioners must either exhaust administrative appeals or wait 30 days after requesting relief from the warden; others hold that a compassionate release petitioner must fully exhaust administrative appeals ifthe warden timely denies a request. This debate is merely academic here, where the government embraces the Department of Justice's position aligned with the former interpretation, that is, that a compassionate release petitioner must either exhaust administrative appeals or wait 30 days after the warden receives request.
Here, more than 30 days after petitioning the warden for compassionate release, Ceasar filed the present motion. As a threshold matter, the government concedes that Ceasar has satisfied the mandatory exhaustion requirement to pursue this motion for compassionate release.5 Accordingly, the Court turnsto consider the merits of Ceasar's request for a sentence reduction.
Three substantive criteria guide the Court's discretion in determining whether an incarcerated person has demonstrated that a sentence reduction is warranted:
See 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A).7 As the petitioner, Ceasar has the burden to show that a sentence reduction is warranted. See United States v. Jones, 836 F.3d 896, 899 (8th Cir. 2016); United States v. Green, 764 F.3d 1352, 1356 (11th Cir. 2014). Notably, and ultimately dispositive here, even if a compassionate release petitioner is eligible relief (i.e., he demonstrates that extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant a sentence reduction), consideration of applicable § 3553(a) factors may nevertheless persuade the Court to exercise its discretion to deny the motion. See Chambliss, 948 F.3d at 693-94 ().
Congress does not define "extraordinary and compelling reasons" but, rather, delegated that task to the SentencingCommission, which defines "extraordinary and compelling reasons" in the advisory notes to a policy statement found at U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13. Whether the First Step Act rendered § 1B1.13 inapplicable (or otherwise downgraded it from binding to merely helpful) in cases where an incarcerated person files a motion for compassionate release such that district courts have full discretion to determine whether "extraordinary and compelling" reasons justify compassionate release is fodder for debate in the case literature; a debate that remains unresolved in the Fifth Circuit.
U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13 -- the only potentially "applicable policy statement" -- implements the compassionate release statute. "Provided [that] the defendant" is not a danger to the safety of any person or to the community, the policy statement's application notes offer four categories of extraordinary and compelling reasons: medical conditions, age, family circumstances, and "other" reasons -- the latter, a catchall expressly conferred to the discretion of the Director of the Bureau of Prisons. See id. cmt. n.1(A)-(D). Notably, the policy statement (i) is expressly constrained to motions and determinations by the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, not prisoner motions;8 and (ii) has not beenamended since the First Step Act expanded the compassionate release remedy to prisoner-initiated motions.9 As such, an increasingly resounding consensus finds that the Sentencing Commission has not yet issued a policy statement "applicable" to prisoner requests for sentence reductions. See, e.g., United States v. McCoy, 981 F.3d 271, 281-82, 286-87 (4th Cir. 2020)(joining the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits in holding that there currently exists no "applicable policy statement" governing prisoner motions such that district courts may consider any extraordinary and compelling reason for release raised by a petitioner, including the severity of the defendants' sentences, coupled with the disparity between those sentences and sentences they would receive today); United States v. Gunn, 980 F.3d 1178, 1180-81 (7th Cir. 2020)(because the U.S.S.G. lacks an "applicable" policy statement, "the trailing paragraph of § 3582(c)(1)(A) does not curtail a district judge's discretion" although the Sentencing Commission's analysis may guide discretion); United States v. Jones, 980 F.3d 1098, 1111 (6th Cir. 2020)(where incarcerated persons seek compassionate release, district courts "have full discretion to define 'extraordinary and compelling' without consulting the policy statement § 1B1.13."); United States v. Brooker, 976 F.3d 228, (2dCir. 2020)(generally holding that the First Step Act allows courts to exercise discretion, unconstrained by U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13, to determine what reasons are "extraordinary and compelling" and specifically finding that an unduly lengthy sentence is a circumstance a court may consider in determining whether extraordinary and compelling reasons justify a sentence reduction).10
Consideration of these authorities persuasively suggests that the "trailing paragraph" of § 3582(c)(1)(A) -- which requires that a reduction be consistent with applicable policy statements -- does not limit the district court's discretion because § 1B1.13 is a policy statement not "applicable" to, much less binding on, prisoner-initiated applications for compassionate release. The Fifth Circuit has yet to weigh in on the split, other than tosuggest that § 1B1.13 is at least...
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