v. United States
| Decision Date | 19 February 1991 |
| Docket Number | P,No. 89-7370,GOZLON-PERET,89-7370 |
| Citation | 111 S.Ct. 840,498 U.S. 395,112 L.Ed.2d 919 |
| Parties | Mosheetitioner, v. UNITED STATES |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (Reform Act) eliminated special parole, supervised by the United States Parole Commission, for drug offenders after incarceration and established conditions for a new system of supervised release to be overseen by the sentencing court. However, the supervised release provisions' effective date was delayed until November 1, 1987. In October 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (ADAA) was enacted, which, in § 1002, sets minimum and maximum sentences and mandates terms of supervised release for certain drug offenses. Some ADAA sections, but not § 1002, specified a November 1, 1987, effective date. Petitioner was convicted of, inter alia, offenses to which § 1002 applies that occurred after the ADAA's enactment but before the effective date of the Reform Act's supervised release provisions. The District Court sentenced him to concurrent prison terms and imposed concurrent 5-year terms of special parole for each offense, ruling that Congress intended that parole be imposed in cases where the offenses were committed in the interim between the ADAA's enactment and November 1, 1987, and rejecting petitioner's argument that no post-confinement supervision was appropriate for offenses committed during that time. The Court of Appeals vacated the sentence, holding that § 1002's plain language required that petitioner be sentenced to terms of supervised release rather than special parole.
Held: Supervised release applies for all drug offenses in the categories specified by ADAA § 1002 that were committed after the ADAA was enacted but before November 1, 1987. Pp. 404-410.
(a) Section 1002 contains no provision for its effective date and therefore took effect on its date of enactment. There is no clear direction to the contrary by Congress, whose silence here contrasts with its expression of effective dates for other ADAA sections. Nothing about Congress' apparent purpose in enacting § 1002—to rectify an error in the Controlled Substances Act that would have required supervised release for small- but not big-time drug offenders—rebuts this presumption. In arguing that Congress must have intended to postpone all of § 1002's penalty provisions in order to avoid creating a conflict with §§ 1007(a) and 1009(a) which, effective November 1, 1987, authorize shorter sentences for certain offenders who cooperate with the Government—since § 1002's mandatory minimum sentence requirements otherwise would eliminate the possibility of such shorter sentences for offenses committed during the interim period, petitioner is mistaken. Congress corrected these problems in December 1987 by permitting departures from mandatory minimum sentences for cooperating offenders whose offenses were committed before November 1, 1987, a move that can be explained only if Congress believed that the mandatory penalties had gone into effect as of the ADAA's date of enactment. Also rejected is petitioner's argument that the delayed implementation of § 1004, which provides that all references to "special parole" in the Controlled Substances Act were to be changed to "supervised release," delayed the effect of § 1002's supervised release provisions. Since a specific provision controls one of a more general application and § 1002 made the change from special parole to supervised release independent of § 1004, § 1004's general change-over provision does not apply. Moreover, it is unlikely that Congress intended to delay some, but not all, of § 1002's provisions. Pp. 404-407.
(b) That the term "supervised release" was defined in the enacted, but not yet effective, Reform Act rather than in the ADAA does not mean that the term as used in the ADAA had no significance before November 1, 1987. It is not uncommon to refer to other, related legislative enactments when interpreting specialized statutory terms, a device whose utility is not defeated by the fact that the Act referred to is not yet effective. At the time the ADAA was enacted, the Reform Act had all of the weight and dignity of a deliberate, considered enactment of Congress, presented to and approved by the President; and it is reasonable to assume that Congress, when it passed the ADAA, knew that the full definition of supervised release existed in the Reform Act and legislated with reference to it. It is also possible that Congress, knowing that it was unlikely that anyone committing a drug offense during the interim period would be released from custody before November 1, 1987, concluded that in all such cases the Reform Act would be effective at the time a district court began its duties under the supervised release program. Section 1002's plain language also forecloses the possibility that the rules governing special parole should apply to crimes committed in the interim period. Pp. 407-409.
(c) The absence of an effective date provision in § 1002 does not create an ambiguity calling for the invocation of the rule of lenity. While § 1002 may have created some minor inconsistencies with other statutory provisions, its postconfinement supervision provisions are not ambiguous. Pp. 409-410.
894 F.2d 1402 (CA3 1990), affirmed.
Peter Goldberger, for petitioner.
Amy L. Wax, for respondent, pro hac vice, by special leave of Court.
This case presents a problem in the interpretation of the federal drug enforcement laws and their reference to the method of postconfinement monitoring known as "supervised release." Before 1984, drug offenders sentenced to prison were required to serve terms of special parole following their incarceration. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 eliminated special parole and, in its place, established conditions for the new system of supervised release. To ensure the orderly implementation of this change, Congress delayed the effective date of the Sentencing Reform Act's supervised release provisions until November 1, 1987. A year before that date, however, Congress enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (ADAA), which mandates terms of supervised release for certain drug offenses. In this case we consider whether the ADAA's supervised release requirements apply to offenses committed during the interim period after the ADAA was enacted but before the Sentencing Reform Act's provisions for supervised release became effective.
Petitioner Moshe Gozlon-Peretz was convicted under 21 U.S.C. § 846 on one count of participation in a conspiracy to distribute in excess of a kilogram of heroin, and under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 2 on counts of distributing 240 grams of heroin and of possession with intent to distribute in excess of one kilogram of heroin. The substantive offenses occurred on February 26, 1987, nearly four months after the ADAA's enactment but eight months before the November 1, 1987, effective date of the Sentencing Reform Act's provisions for supervised release. Following a remand by the Third Circuit for reasons not at issue here, see United States v. Levy, 865 F.2d 551, 559-560 (1989) (en banc), the District Court sentenced petitioner to 20 years on the conspiracy count and to concurrent 15-year sentences for the substantive offenses.
At the sentencing hearing, the Government and petitioner disagreed as to whether some form of postconfinement supervision was required for petitioner's substantive offenses. At issue then, and at issue in the case before us, was the interpretation of § 1002 of the ADAA, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) (1982 ed., Supp. IV). Although ADAA § 1002 specifies a term of "supervised release," the Government argued in the District Court that a term of special parole was required. According to the Government, because § 1002 directs that drug offenders receive postconfinement supervision, and because drug offenders were sentenced to special parole before the ADAA was enacted, Congress intended that special parole be imposed during the interim before the effective date of the Sentencing Reform Act, November 1, 1987. Petitioner, contending that Congress intended to delay the effective date of the ADAA's supervised release provisions, argued that no form of postconfinement supervision was appropriate under the ADAA for offenses committed prior to November 1, 1987. The District Court accepted the Government's position and imposed concurrent 5-year terms of special parole for each of petitioner's substantive offenses.
The Third Circuit vacated the sentence and remanded, holding that, under the plain language of § 1002, petitioner should have been sentenced to two 5-year terms of supervised release rather than special parole. 894 F.2d 1402 (1990). According to the Third Circuit, the supervised release provisions in § 1002 became effective on the ADAA's date of enactment, October 27, 1986, and apply to all offenses committed after that date. Because of a split among the Courts of Appeals as to the appropriate form of postconfinement supervision for the interim period in question, we granted certiorari. 496 U.S. 935, 110 S.Ct. 3212, 110 L.Ed.2d 660 (1990). We now affirm.
We first trace in more detail the relevant statutory history of the federal drug enforcement penalty scheme and of federal sentencing in general. We begin with the Controlled Substances Act, Pub.L. 91-513, Tit. II, § 401(b), 84 Stat. 1260, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 841(b). When first enacted, § 841(b) subjected offenders involved in the manufacture or distribution of schedule I and II narcotic substances, including heroin, to a maximum of 15 years' imprisonment and, if a prison sentence was imposed, to a mandatory 3-year term of special parole. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) (1982 ed.).1 Special parole was "a period of supervision served upon completion of a...
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