holding that Fair Sentencing Act applies to defendants sentenced after the effective date of the Act: “We have explained how in federal sentencing the ordinary practice is to apply new penalties to defendants not yet sentenced, while withholding that change from defendants already sentenced.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that Fair Sentencing Act applies to defendants sentenced after the effective date of the Act: “We have explained how in federal sentencing the ordinary practice is to apply new penalties to defendants not yet sentenced, while withholding that change from defendants already sentenced.”
- holding that the lower statutory minima and maxima for crack cocaine offenses adopted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, 124 Stat. 2372, apply to defendants who are sentenced after the effective date of the Act, regardless of whether the offense was committed before or after that date
- recognizing that the “requirement of clarity in regulation is essential to the protections provided by the Due Process Clause” and that “[w]hen speech is involved, rigorous adherence to [due- process] requirements is necessary to ensure that ambiguity does not chill protected speech”
- recognizing that because a federal sentencing statute “trumps the Guidelines!!,] • • • ordinarily no matter what range the Guidelines set forth, a sentencing judge must sentence an offender to at least the minimum prison term set forth in a statutory mandatory minimum”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Reid v. United States, 871 F. Supp. 2d 324 (2012)
Id. Dorsey, however, is inapplicable to movant’s case, because movant was sentenced in September 2007, well before the August 3, 2010 effective date of the Fair Sentencing Act.
The opinion
Justice Ginsburg,
concurring in the judgment.
In my view, the Court’s decision in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U. S. 726 (1978), was wrong when it issued. Time, technological advances, and the Commission’s untenable rulings in the cases now before the Court show why Pacifica bears reconsideration. Cf. FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U. S. 502, 532-535 (2009) (Thomas, J., concurring).