United States v. Mazzini

Citation487 F.Supp.3d 1170
Decision Date13 May 2020
Docket NumberNo. 95-CR-000538-MV,95-CR-000538-MV
Parties UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Marcos MAZZINI, Defendant.
CourtUnited States District Courts. 10th Circuit. District of New Mexico

Rhonda P. Backinoff, James R.W. Braun, US Attorney's Office, Albuquerque, NM, for Plaintiff.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

MARTHA VÁZQUEZ, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

THIS MATTER is before the Court on Defendant Marcos Mazzini's Motion for Resentencing. Doc. 2634. The government filed a response [Doc. 2636] and Mr. Mazzini filed a reply [Doc. 2637]. Having considered the briefs, exhibits, relevant law, and being otherwise fully informed, the Court finds that the motion is well-taken and will be GRANTED . Exercising its authority under Section 404(b) of the First Step Act of 2018, the Court will impose a reduced sentence of 246 months and 10 days of imprisonment in this case.1

BACKGROUND

This case began in October 1995, when at the age of 21 Mr. Mazzini was arrested and charged along with 22 other co-defendants. See Doc. 2634 Ex. 4 at ¶¶ 1–2 ("PSR"). He was later named in over 20 counts of a 48-count Third Superseding Indictment charging him with numerous drug, weapons, and violent offenses as part of an extensive RICO conspiracy that he participated in as a member of the Sureño 13 gang, which controlled drug trafficking in Albuquerque's "War Zone" area from the fall of 1993 to the fall of 1995. See Doc. 2634 Ex. 2 ("Third Superseding Indictment"). According to his Presentence Investigation Report, Mr. Mazzini joined the gang after moving to Albuquerque from Los Angeles, California in early 1994. See PSR at ¶ 33.

On June 1, 1999, Mr. Mazzini entered into a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement in which he agreed to plead guilty to Counts 1, 3, 13, and 46 of the Third Superseding Indictment, charging RICO, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961, 1962(c), and 1963(a) ; Conspiracy to Distribute 5 Grams and More of Cocaine Base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(b)(1)(B) and 846 ; Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering (Attempted Murder) and Aiding and Abetting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 1959(a)(5) ; and Using and Carrying Firearms During and In Relation to a Drug Trafficking Offense and Aiding and Abetting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 924(c)(1). See Doc. 2634 Ex. 3 at 2 ("Plea Agreement"). In exchange, the government agreed that "a specific sentence of 300 months imprisonment [was] the appropriate disposition of [the] case." Id. at 3. Although the plea agreement did not provide a further breakdown of the sentence, two of the counts Mr. Mazzini agreed to plead guilty to carried mandatory minimums at the time: Count 3, Conspiracy to Distribute 5 Grams and More of Cocaine Base, carried a five-year mandatory minimum pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B) ; and Count 46, Using and Carrying Firearms During and In Relation To a Drug Trafficking Offense, carried a five-year mandatory minimum to run consecutive to all other counts pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). See PSR at ¶¶ 251, 253.

Mr. Mazzini came before the Court for sentencing on August 30, 1999. See Doc. 2635 at 1. After calculating his guidelines imprisonment range, the Court accepted the Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement "for a specific sentence of 300 months." See Doc. 2638 at 18 ("Sentencing Tr."). The Court then sentenced Mr. Mazzini to 240 months of imprisonment in the BOP as to each of Counts 1, 3, and 13, to run concurrently, as well as 60 months of imprisonment on Count 46, to run consecutively, for a total term of imprisonment of 300 months, or 25 years. See id. at 18–19. The Court additionally ordered Mr. Mazzini to be placed on supervised release for five years following his release from prison. Id. at 19. On motion by the government, the Court then dismissed all of the outstanding charges against Mr. Mazzini in this case. See Doc. 2393.

That did not mark the end of Mr. Mazzini's legal troubles in the District of New Mexico, however. On March 6, 2001, he was charged with assaulting multiple correctional officers and attempting to escape the Torrance County Detention Center on August 17, 1999, just under two weeks before he was sentenced in the instant case. See United States v. Mazzini et al. , No. 1:01-CR-00291-LH, (D.N.M. Mar. 6, 2001), ECF No. 1. He ultimately pled guilty to one count of Assault with a Deadly Weapon of a Person Assisting an Officer or Employee of the United States in the Performance of Official Duties, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) and (b), and one count of Attempted Escape from Custody, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 751(a). See Doc. 2635 at 1. On April 25, 2002, Judge LeRoy Hansen sentenced Mr. Mazzini to 96 months, or eight years, of imprisonment pursuant to another Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement, to run consecutive to the 25-year sentence he received in this case. Id.

His previous requests for resentencing having been denied, Mr. Mazzini remains incarcerated in the BOP today.2 He is now 45 years old and has been in continuous custody since his arrest in October 1995 at the age of 21. As a result, Mr. Mazzini has spent well over half of his life, and virtually all of his adult life, behind bars. According to the BOP, Mr. Mazzini completed serving his 25-year sentence in this case on October 12, 2017. See Doc. 2635 at 1. He is now serving the remainder of his eight-year sentence in case number 1:01-CR-00291 and has a current release date of March 6, 2024. Id. Because Mr. Mazzini is not an American citizen, he will be transferred to the custody of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation upon his release from the BOP. See Doc. 2634 at 23. In the instant motion, he asks the Court to accelerate his release and deportation by reducing his sentence in this case under Section 404 of the First Step Act. See Doc. 2634 at 1 (citing First Step Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194, 5194-249 (2018)). Both probation and the government recommend that the Court deny Mr. Mazzini's request.3 See Docs. 2635, 2636.

STANDARD

To understand the sentencing reform Congress passed in the First Step Act and the Fair Sentencing Act before it, one must first go back to 1986. That year, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, 100 Stat. 3207, which among other things introduced the so-called "100-to-1" sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. See Kimbrough v. United States , 552 U.S. 85, 96, 128 S.Ct. 558, 169 L.Ed.2d 481 (2007). The disparity came from the respective amounts of each drug required to trigger the mandatory minimums in 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(b)(1)(A) and (B) : under the Act, a five-year mandatory minimum was triggered by 5 grams of crack or 500 grams of powder cocaine, and a ten-year mandatory minimum was triggered by 50 grams of crack or 5,000 grams of powder cocaine. See id.

As the Supreme Court describes in Kimbrough v. United States , the United States Sentencing Commission initially incorporated the 100-to-1 disparity into the Sentencing Guidelines through the base offense levels assigned to offenses involving crack and powder cocaine. See id. at 97, 128 S.Ct. 558. However, the Commission later changed its position and advocated for the reform of the disparity after concluding that it was unwarranted and led to a number of problematic outcomes. Id. First, the Commission noted that assumptions about the relative harmfulness of crack as compared with powder cocaine were no longer supported by the research, pointing for example to a finding that "the negative effects of prenatal crack cocaine exposure are identical to the negative effects of prenatal powder cocaine exposure." Id. at 98, 128 S.Ct. 558 (citations omitted). Second, the Commission concluded that the disparity ran counter to the statutory purpose of punishing major drug traffickers more severely than low-level dealers because "[d]rug importers and major traffickers generally deal in powder cocaine, which is then converted into crack by street-level dealers." Id. As a result, the sentencing disparity led to "the anomalous result that retail crack dealers [got] longer sentences than wholesale drug distributors who suppl[ied] them the powder cocaine from which their crack [was] produced." Id. (internal quotations and citations omitted). Finally, the Commission noted that the 100-to-1 disparity "foster[ed] disrespect for and a lack of confidence in the criminal justice system" because of the widely held perception that it "promote[d] unwarranted disparity on the basis of race." Id. The Commission also found that the racial disparity was more than just perceived: it noted in a 2002 report that because 85 percent of the federal defendants convicted of crack offenses were black, the significantly harsher penalties created by the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity were imposed "primarily upon black offenders." Id. (citations omitted).

After describing these concerns, the Supreme Court in Kimbrough held that sentencing courts are permitted to vary downwards from a defendant's guidelines range on the basis of the crack to powder disparity. See id. at 111, 128 S.Ct. 558. Two years later, in Spears v. United States , 555 U.S. 261, 129 S.Ct. 840, 172 L.Ed.2d 596 (2009) (per curiam), the Court strengthened Kimbrough ’s holding, clarifying that "district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the crack cocaine Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines." Id. at 265–66, 129 S.Ct. 840. Although these decisions allowed courts to reject the crack to powder disparity insofar as it existed in the Sentencing Guidelines, they did nothing to alter the 100-to-1 disparity that continued to persist in the mandatory minimums imposed by statute. See id. at 262, 129 S.Ct. 840.

Then, in 2010, Congress changed the law with the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, Public Law 111–220 ; 124 Stat. 2372. In Section 2 of the Act, Congress raised the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger the five-year mandatory minimum in 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B)(iii) from 5...

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