UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Aundra COATS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 12-4525.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
July 25, 2013.
553 F.3d 553
Before: GILMAN, GRIFFIN, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed in part and reversed in part. This cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Before: GILMAN, GRIFFIN, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.
OPINION
JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge.
After Congress and the United States Sentencing Commission made significant changes to crack cocaine sentencing laws and guidelines, Aundra Coats filed a motion under
I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
In 2004, Coats pled guilty under a plea agreement to distribution of more than 50 grams of cocaine base (crack), in violation of
This came about because the government filed a sentencing enhancement information under
On August 3, 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) took effect. Pub.L. No. 11-220, 124 Stat. 2372 (2010). The FSA amended federal drug statutes to increase the quantities of cocaine base necessary to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. If sentenced under today‘s version of
Under the FSA, someone now charged with Coats‘s crime would face a mandatory minimum that is ten years less than—actually half of—the sentence imposed on Coats. In an effort to participate with those benefitting from the FSA‘s lower statutory mandatory minimum sentences and trim ten years from his prison sentence, Coats filed a motion for a sentence reduction under
II. ANALYSIS
We normally review a district court‘s denial of a sentence reduction for an abuse of discretion. United States v. McClain, 691 F.3d 774, 776 (6th Cir.2012). If the court determines that the defendant is not eligible for a sentence reduction, however, we conduct de novo review. Id. at 777.
After judgment is entered, a defendant‘s sentence may not be modified except as allowed by statute. United States v. Hammond, 712 F.3d 333, 335 (6th Cir. 2013) (per curiam). The district court has statutory authority to reduce a sentence “in the case of a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission.”
In undertaking this analysis, we must first consider whether Coats‘s original sentence was “based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission.”
Although Coats‘s applicable guideline range under the crack cocaine guideline line was 108 to 135 months of imprisonment, the district court was required to impose the statutory mandatory minimum sentence of 240 months. Because this statutory minimum was higher than the maximum of the guideline range, the statutory minimum became the guideline range by operation of U.S.S.G. § 5G1.1(b). Coats‘s sentence was based on the statutory minimum sentence, not the crack cocaine guideline range. See Freeman, 131 S.Ct. at 2695; Thompson, 714 F.3d at 950. Because the Sentencing Commission‘s amendments to the crack cocaine guidelines have no effect on statutory minimum sentences mandated by Congress, Coats‘s sentence was not “based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission.”
Coats nevertheless urges us to apply the reduced statutory minimum penalties of the FSA, but our case law fore
In Dorsey, the Supreme Court stated that, “in federal sentencing the ordinary practice is to apply new penalties to defendants not yet sentenced, while withholding that change from defendants already sentenced.” Dorsey, 132 S.Ct. at 2335 (emphasis added) (citing
18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(4)(A)(ii) and§ 3582(c) ). Moreover, we have rejected Hammond‘s Dorsey argument, see United States v. Stanley, 500 Fed.Appx. 407, 410, No. 11-4423, 2012 WL 4014932, at *3 (6th Cir. Sept. 13, 2012), and have confirmed, even in light of Dorsey, that the FSA is not retroactive to defendants like Hammond whose sentences were modified after the effective date of the FSA but who were originally sentenced before its effective date. See United States v. Mundy, 486 Fed.Appx. 598 (6th Cir. 2012); United States v. Finley, 487 Fed. Appx. 260, 265-67 (6th Cir.2012); see also United States v. Carradine, 621 F.3d 575, 580 (6th Cir.2010).
Id. These prior cases bind us and compel the result we reach here.
Coats cites United States v. Clark, 110 F.3d 15 (6th Cir.1997), but that case was decided under a prior version of U.S.S.G. § 1B1.10 and is no longer authoritative law. See United States v. Washington, 584 F.3d 693, 700 (6th Cir.2009); United States v. Mills, 435 Fed.Appx. 489, 493 (6th Cir.2011). Coats quotes Martin v. Hadix, 527 U.S. 343, 352, 119 S.Ct. 1998, 144 L.Ed.2d 347 (1999), that “[i]f there is no congressional directive on the temporal reach of a statute, we determine whether the application of the statute to the conduct at issue would result in a retroactive effect.” But this quotation must be considered in its proper context. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 applied to pending cases. See id. Coats also cites Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557, 577, 126 S.Ct. 2749, 165 L.Ed.2d 723 (2006), and Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, 379 U.S. 306, 313, 85 S.Ct. 384, 13 L.Ed.2d 300 (1964), but in both of those cases the Supreme Court was similarly concerned about whether to apply a statute to pending cases. Because Coats‘s sentence had long been final when Congress passed the FSA, his reliance on Martin, Hamdan, and Hamm is misplaced. The other Supreme Court cases Coats cites concerned civil or habeas matters, and we find them to be inapposite here, especially in light of the Supreme Court‘s recent guidance in Dorsey.
III. CONCLUSION
As the district court correctly noted, the sentencing disparity addressed here is directly attributable to the policy decisions of Congress. The district court correctly determined that Coats is not eligible for a sentence reduction under