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New Crack Amendments DO NOT apply to pending cases

This may be old news to most of you at this point, but because it bears posting on this blog (and because I was out of town last week), here is the rundown on the Sixth Circuit's FSA decision.

In United States v. Carradine, 10a0305p.06 , issued on September 20, 2010, the Court determined that the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which was enacted on August 3, 2010 lowering crack cocaine mandatory penalties, only applied to those defendants whose conduct occurred after the date of enactment. The Court, relying chiefly on 1 U.S.C. 109, found "The new law at issue here, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, contains no express statement that it is retroactive nor can we infer any such express intent from its plain language. Consequently, we must apply the penalty provision in place at the time Carradine committed the crime in question. We affirm the district court?s imposition of the 60-month mandatory minimum sentence."

The silver lining, if any, in this decision is that the Court did admit that the statute was amended, and not repealed. The Federal Public Defenders office for the Southern District of Ohio, which has this appeal in their appellate division, will be filing for en banc review.

Full post as published by Sixth Circuit Blog on October 01, 2010 (boomark / email).