New case to determine Court's ruling on guideline reasonableness
6/13/07
The sudden death of Mario Claiborne, a petitioner in one of two cases being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the now-advisory federal sentencing guidelines are "presumptively reasonable," has forced the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss Claiborne v. United States. (See FAMMGram, Spring 2007, p. 17.)
FAMM filed amicus briefs in Claiborne and the companion case, Rita v. United States, No. 06-5618 in which a within-guideline sentence was affirmed by the appeals court after finding the guideline sentence "presumptively reasonable," despite a number of factors that supported a below-guideline sentence. It is unclear at press time whether Rita will be held over to the October term or decided by the end of June.
Claiborne died in a shooting on May 29. The Court was obliged to dismiss Claiborne's case, even though the outcome would potentially affect thousands of cases, because he did not survive and his legal interests could not be represented by anyone else.
New cases to clarify reasonableness issue
On June 11, the Court apparently rejected the suggestion by the U.S. Solicitor General to expedite the review of Beal v. United States, Docket 06-8498, a case that resembled Claiborne. Instead, the Court granted review to Gall v. United States, No. 06-7949. Also from the 8th Circuit, Gall raises the same legal issue that Claiborne raised. Claiborne received a below-guideline sentence and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him, stating that “the farther the district court varies from the presumptively reasonable guideline range, the more compelling the justification . . . must be.” Similarly, Gall received a lower sentence which was vacated by the 8th Circuit. Gall will be argued before the Supreme Court in October, so the issue it raised will not be resolved until nearly the end of 2007.
Crack cocaine sentencing will be addressed in another case granted on June 11, Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330, from the 4th Circuit. According to the 4th Circuit’s opinion, which vacated the below-guideline sentence, Kimbrough pleaded guilty to distributing cocaine, conspiring to distribute and distributing 50 or more grams of crack cocaine, and possessing a firearm in connection with a drug trafficking offense. Because the district court disagreed with the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, it reduced Kimbrough’s sentence for the crack offenses from 168 – 210 months to 120 months. The 8th Circuit reversed the below-guideline sentence because “a sentence that is outside the guideline range is per se unreasonable when it is based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses.”
FAMM expects to file amicus briefs in Gall and Kimbrough and will post them on the website as soon as they are available.
Click here to read FAMM's amicus brief in Rita and other resources.