Archive | First Step Act of 2018

In 2007, Charles Bryant was convicted of conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of crack. Since he had a prior conviction for a felony drug offense, he faced a mandatory minimum term of 240 years. The district court sentenced him to 300 months.

In 2018, § 404(b) of the First Step Act (“FSA”) made Mr. Bryant eligible for a reduced sentence. A separate section of the FSA, § 401(a) limited the application of the sentence enhancement provision to cases where the defendant has a prior conviction for a “serious drug offense.” However, § 401(c) states that § 401(a) applies retroactively only “if a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of [the] date of enactment.” Therefore, the district court ruled, the new § 401(a) did not apply to Mr. Bryant because he had already been sentenced in 2007. Nevertheless, because his current conviction would be a lesser …

In United States v. Jeremy Thompson, 2d Cir. No. 18-2545, __ F.3d ___ (2d Cir. June 8, 2020), the Court held (in an opinion by Judge Walker) that a New York conviction for fifth-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, in violation of N.Y. Penal Law § 220.31, does not qualify as a “prior conviction for a felony drug offense” for purposes of the recidivism enhancement in 21 U.S.C. § 851 under Taylor’s now-familiar categorical approach. This is so because, as the Court previously held in Harbin v. Sessions, 860 F.3d 58 (2d Cir. 2017), this New York law (1) is indivisible and (2) regulates a broader range of controlled substances than the analogous federal drug schedule. In particular, while § 220.31 criminalizes the sale of HCG (a pregnancy hormone), federal law does not. And because fifth-degree sale is indivisible, it is irrelevant that court documents show …

The First Step Act of 2018 authorizes district courts to make a discretionary decision about whether and how to reduce a defendant’s sentence, but only if the defendant was sentenced for a “covered offense.” The Act defines a “covered offense” as “a violation of a Federal criminal statute, the statutory penalties for which were modified by section 2 or 3 of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 . . ., that was committed before August 3, 2010.”

The question in United States v. Davis, No. 19-874 (2d Cir. June 5, 2020) (Katzmann, Wesley, and Bianco), was whether Davis was originally sentenced for a “covered offense,” in which case he was eligible for a sentencing reduction. The defendant said he was sentenced for a “covered offense” because he had been convicted and sentenced for conspiring to distribute at least 50 grams of crack cocaine, in a violation of 21 U.S.C. …

The First Step Act of 2018, Pub. L. 115-391, allows judges to now “impose a reduced sentence” on people sentenced before August 3, 2010, for certain offenses involving 5 grams or more of crack cocaine.  There’s been a lot of litigation on the Act — yielding over 200 written decisions nationally so far — with a number of bad rulings from courts relying on pro se pleadings or meritless arguments from the government.  Judge Allyne Ross, of the Eastern District of New York, recently addressed both and issued a good ruling for people serving (or not) long crack sentences.

In United States v. Miles, the defendant had been sentenced in 2009 for a 50-gram crack offense that then carried a mandatory minimum of 10 years, which Judge Ross imposed.  After passage of the First Step Act, Miles moved pro se for a reduced sentence given that, per the …