United States v. Martin

• Decision Date: 03 September 2020
• Docket Number: August Term 2019,No. 19-1701,19-1701
• Citation: 974 F.3d 124
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Jerrod MARTIN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

974 F.3d 124

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Jerrod MARTIN, Defendant-Appellant.^†

No. 19-1701

August Term 2019

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: May 20, 2020

Decided: September 3, 2020

COLLEEN P. CASSIDY, Assistant Federal Defender, Federal Defenders of New York, Inc., New York, NY, for Defendant-Appellant.

ANDREY SPEKTOR, Assistant United States Attorney, (David C. James, Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), for Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, NY.

Before: SACK, WESLEY, and LIVINGSTON, Circuit Judges.

WESLEY, Circuit Judge:

Jerrod Martin pleaded guilty, pursuant to a plea agreement, to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(b)(1)(A) and one count of using a firearm during a drug trafficking offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i). In July of 2007, he was sentenced to 150-months' imprisonment for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute and to 60-months imprisonment, to be served consecutively, for using a firearm during a drug trafficking offense.

In March of 2019, Martin moved for resentencing pursuant to the First Step Act, Pub. L. No. 115-391, § 404(b), 132 Stat. 5194, 5222 (2018).¹ Martin requested that his drug conspiracy sentence be reduced from 150 months to 60 months resulting in an aggregate sentence from the drug conspiracy and gun sentences of 120 months. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Cogan, J. ) concluded that it could not reduce Martin's sentence below the time he had served and instead granted Martin's motion by reducing his sentence to time served and directing his immediate release. Shortly thereafter, the Bureau of Prisons notified the district court that, because of good time credit, Martin had completed serving his original two terms of imprisonment in late 2018 but remained imprisoned because he continued to serve two consecutive 12-month sentences imposed for crimes committed while he was in prison—crimes (and corresponding sentences) not mentioned by Martin in his First Step Act application nor by the government in its response.² The district court then vacated its prior order and denied Martin's motion for relief under the First Step Act as moot.

Martin moved for reconsideration, arguing that because the Bureau of Prisons aggregated his sentences and treated them as one, the district court should do so also. Thus, the court could still order his immediate release if his drug conspiracy sentence was reduced in conjunction with his mandatory gun sentence to a total of 188 months. That sentence would result in the remaining time Martin had already served being credited towards his two 12-month terms of imprisonment and Martin would be released in short order, thus accomplishing the intent of the district court's original order.³

The district court denied Martin's motion for reconsideration. The court reasoned that it lacked the ability to, in effect, modify Martin's aggregate term of imprisonment. It found that section 404 of the First Step Act did not permit a general resentencing, and only permitted the imposition of a reduced sentence for a "covered offense." The court therefore lacked the ability to reduce his drug conspiracy sentence in order to generate over-served time that could be credited to his 12-month terms of imprisonment.

Martin appeals; he argues that the district court erred in determining it could not grant the relief he requested because reducing the term of imprisonment for his crack cocaine offense would have a collateral effect on his "sentence"—it would result in crediting the time he over-served on the reduced sentence towards his later, consecutive sentences. He further argues that the First Step Act contains no limitation preventing the court from retroactively reducing his sentence to less than time served. We disagree in both respects.

Sentences are imposed for specific convictions within judgments of conviction. Judgments of conviction are final judgments that are only modifiable by courts in limited circumstances, including where "expressly authorized" by statute. The fact that multiple sentences may be aggregated for administrative purposes does not authorize a court to treat those sentences as an undivided whole, the authorization to modify one part of which confers authorization to modify the whole.

Section 404(b) of the First Step Act permits district courts to "impose a reduced sentence as if sections 2 and 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 ... were in effect at the time the covered offense was committed." See Pub. L. 115-391, 132 Stat. at 5222. The First Step Act only authorizes the imposition of a reduced sentence for specific offenses, and where an inmate has already served his sentence for that specific offense, the Act does not authorize any relief. The plain language of the Act involves the "imposition" of a "reduced sentence"; we cannot read that language to permit the imposition of a new and reduced sentence where the original has been served. The fact that granting retroactive relief would affect another sentence that was aggregated for administrative purposes does not operate to create a live case or controversy.

Therefore, an inmate like Martin—who has served the entirety of his sentence for a covered offense and remains imprisoned only by virtue of consecutive terms of imprisonment arising out of separate judgments of conviction—cannot obtain effectual relief through a favorable judicial decision authorized by the First Step Act. Martin points to no collateral consequences stemming from his sentence for drug trafficking. Nor does the practice of crediting time spent in prison to other sentences where a defendant's conviction or sentence has been vacated operate to create a live case or controversy because Martin neither challenges his conviction nor argues that his sentence was unlawful when it was imposed.

For these reasons we affirm the district court's decision dismissing Martin's motion as moot.

BACKGROUND

I. Martin's Sentences⁴

Jerrod Martin was a member of a drug trafficking organization operating in Brooklyn, New York. Martin and several of his co-conspirators were arrested in June of 2003 and indicted for a number of criminal acts including trafficking 50 grams or more of cocaine base (otherwise known as "crack" or "crack cocaine"), and committing a homicide in 2003.⁵ On November 1, 2005, Martin pleaded guilty pursuant to a plea agreement to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (Count Seven), and one count of using a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (Count Ten). Martin stipulated that he would be sentenced based on having distributed 1.5 kilograms of crack cocaine during the time in which the trafficking organization operated. At Martin's plea allocution, he admitted that his organization had trafficked roughly 1.5 kilograms of crack during its tenure.

In July of 2007, Judge Trager sentenced Martin to 150-months' imprisonment for Count Seven and a consecutive 60-months' imprisonment for Count Ten.⁶ Under the law at the time, Martin was subject to a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for Count Seven, and a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for Count Ten. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) (2006).

Martin was convicted of two additional crimes while serving those two terms of imprisonment. In June of 2010, Martin pleaded guilty to an information charging a misdemeanor drug offense and was sentenced to a consecutive 12-month term of imprisonment. Four years later, Martin was convicted after a jury trial of the misdemeanor assault of a corrections officer and was sentenced to another consecutive 12-month term of imprisonment. See United States v. Martin , 704 F. App'x 34, 35 (2d Cir. 2017) (summary order).

II. Martin's Motion for Relief Under the First Step Act

In 2010, Congress enacted the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the mandatory minimum sentence for distribution of 50 grams or more of crack cocaine from 10 years to 5 years. See Pub. L. No. 111-220, §§ 2–3, 124 Stat. 2372, 2372 (amending 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1) ). The Fair Sentencing Act also increased the threshold required to trigger a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence from 50 grams to 280 grams of crack cocaine. See id. § 2. However, the Fair Sentencing Act did not apply retroactively to defendants sentenced before the Act became effective. See Dorsey v. United States , 567 U.S. 260, 268–69, 132 S.Ct. 2321, 183 L.Ed.2d 250 (2012). In 2018, Congress passed the First Step Act, Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194 (2018). Section 404(b) of the First Step Act permits a district court, on a motion from the defendant, the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP"), or the Government, to "impose a reduced sentence as if sections 2 and 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 ... were in effect at the time the covered offense was committed." 132 Stat. at 5222.

On March 1, 2019, Martin moved for relief under the First Step Act in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.⁷ When Martin made his motion, he had already spent over 188 months in prison.⁸ Martin sought a reduction of his sentence under Count Seven, the "covered offense," to 60-months imprisonment, and requested that the court impose a total sentence of 120-months’ imprisonment, which would result in his immediate release. No mention was made of Martin's convictions for the offenses he committed in prison. The Government opposed Martin's motion, arguing that the 1.5 kilograms of cocaine base trafficked by Martin's organization "supports application of the same statutory penalties even after passage of the Fair Sentencing Act." J.A. 98.

In April of 2019, the district court (Cogan, J. ) rejected Martin's request...