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Where originally sentenced under career offender guideline, not entitled to two level reduction under Crack Amendment

By Candace Hom, Melinda Ghilardi, Nancy Rimmer, Sarah Gannett, Renee Pietropaolo and Tieffa Harper

In United States v. Mateo, No. 08-3249, March 24, 2009, the Court of Appeals joined four other Circuits in denying a motion to reduce sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) where at the original sentencing, the defendant was sentenced under the career offender guideline.Mateo was convicted of an offense involving crack cocaine. At his original sentencing, however, Mateo was sentenced as a career offender under USSG § 4B1.1. Then, in 2007, after the Sentencing Commission retroactively amended section § 2D1.1 lowering the base offense levels for crack cocaine offenses, Mateo filed a motion for a sentence reduction. He argued that, even though he was sentenced as a career offender under § 4B1.1, his sentence was "based on" § 2D1.1, and therefore entitled to a reduction...continue to full post

Full post as published by Third Circuit Blog on March 27, 2009 (boomark / email).