Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Third Circuit Blog

Criminal Law

: Third Circuit Blog

"Career Offender" Designation Not Always Fatal to Sentence Reduction Motion Pursuant to Crack Cocaine Guideline Amendments

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

After an extended engagement with some very fine print, the Court holds in United States v. Glenn Flemming, No. 09-2726 (July 27, 2010), that a notable group of defendants are eligible for sentence reductions pursuant to the Sentencing Commission?s retroactive lowering of crack cocaine offense levels. These are all who were designated as career offenders under pre-2003 versions of the Sentencing Guidelines but who, following a determination that the career offender enhancement overstated their actual criminal history, received downward departures to points within a sentencing range yielded by the crack cocaine guideline. The Court also strongly suggests, without deciding, that the opposite result will hold for defendants sentenced under later versions of the Guidelines...continue to full post

Full post as published by Third Circuit Blog on July 29, 2010 (boomark / email).