Order granting motion for compassionate release.

Argument: Anthony Jones pleaded guilty to several counts, including five 924(c) counts. He was sentenced to 357 months, which the court reduced to time served in granting his motion, a total reduction of 15 months.

On retroactivity:  “It cannot be denied that FSA § 403reflects a “legislative rejection” of stacking and a “legislative declaration of what level of punishment is adequate” for violations of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). Redd, 444 F.Supp.3d at 723-24. Though the statute did not provide automatic relief to defendants like Mr. Jones, it has in no uncertain terms established that sentences like Mr. Jones's “unfair and unnecessary.” Id.”

On finality of sentencing:

“The Court likewise rejects the Government's objection that reducing a defendant's sentence based on subsequent legal changes would “undermine the finality of sentences.” Opp. at 9. Although “the principle of finality” is indisputably “essential to the operation of our criminal justice system,” Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 309, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), it is not without exceptions. As the Ninth Circuit has explained, sentence reductions under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) are “acts of lenity”; as such, they “are not constrained by the general policies underlying initial sentencing or even plenary resentencing proceedings.” United States v. Padilla-Diaz, 862 F.3d 856, 861 (9th Cir. 2017). In other words, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) represents Congress's judgment that the generic interest in finality must give way in certain individual cases.”

Memorandum & Opinion 

Argument: Haynes had served almost 27 years of a 46.5-year sentence for various offenses, including conspiracy to commit bank robbery, four counts of robbery. “A full 40 of those years are the mandatory consecutive terms for the two additional 18 U.S.C § 924(c) counts (“stacked” under then-current law) that the government charged in a superseding indictment only when Haynes declined a plea offer and exercised his right to trial.”

The Court reduced Hayes’ sentence to time-served, citing as ECR, “the brutal impact of Haynes's original sentence, its drastic severity as compared to codefendant Rivers's ten-year term, its harshness as compared to the sentences imposed on similar and even more severe criminal conduct today, and the extent to which that brutal sentence was a penalty for Haynes's exercise of his constitutional right to trial” and “ the FSA’ elimination of the § 924(c) sentencing weaponry that prosecutors employed to require that sentence. . . ”

Memorandum and Order

Argument: Cornelius Grahm pleaded guilty to six counts, including two 924(c) counts for a total sentence of 488 months. His scheduled release date was September 2023. Graham moved for compassionate release on the grounds that his sentence after the First Step Act’s changes to the law would have been only 308 months, entitling him to be released in June 2020. He further argued that his age and medical circumstances placed him at high risk for COVID-19. The court explicitly did not consider or rely on the COVID-19 arguments in granting compassionate release. The court reduced the original sentence to 308 months.

Opinion and Order

Argument: Andre Curtis was convicted at trial of 8 robbery counts and 8 924(c) counts. He was sentenced to 2,271 months (189 years) and had served 238 months (19.8 years) at the time of the decision. In 2015, the court asked BOP to move for compassionate release to resentence Curtis, indicating it would have “imposed a sentence… of more than twenty years but less than life.” The US Attorney for N.D. Oklahoma agreed that the original sentence was excessive. BOP denied Curtis’s request in January 2016, essentially on the argument that compassionate release did not provide a second-look mechanism. Citing several other cases, the court finds the change in law re: 924(c)s to be extraordinary and compelling.

Memorandum and Order granting compassionate release. 

Argument: Daniel Brown pleaded guilty to four counts, including two 924(c) counts for a total sentence of 510 months. The sentencing judge indicated at the time that the stacked 924(c)s yielded a sentence “far greater than necessary to achieve the ends of justice.” A codefendant was sentenced to only 170 months and released prior to the compassionate release motion. A prior compassionate release motion citing rehabilitation and the draconian sentence had been denied “at th[at] juncture.” The court granted this second motion, citing Brown’s frequent letters to the court, his unsuccessful pursuit of executive clemency, the increased amount of time Brown had served, the COVID-19 pandemic, then in its early stages, and Brown’s risk factors for COVID-19. No cases had been confirmed in Brown’s facility at the time of the court’s grant of compassionate release.

On the First Step Act’s changes to allow defendants to move for compassionate release on their own behalf:

“The Act listed these changes under the title of “Increasing the Use and Transparency of Compassionate Release.” § 603(b), 132 Stat. at 5239. That title is “especially valuable” here. Yates, 135 S. Ct. at 1090. The Court assumes the BOP Director faithfully executes the narrowly drawn policy and program statements related to compassionate release. Therefore, the only way direct motions to district courts would increase the use of compassionate release is to allow district judges to consider the vast variety of reasons that may be ‘extraordinary and compelling.’”

Memorandum Opinion

Argument: Timothy Arey was convicted at trial of seven counts, including three 924(c) counts. He was sentenced to 952 months, which was later reduced to 895 months under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). Arey moved for compassionate release citing “a combination of his ‘age, health conditions and unduly harsh stacked 924(c) convictions) in addition to the pandemic. The court specifically held in a section of its opinion that “the dramatic change to §924(c) sentences constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason,” while holding that the COVID-19 pandemic is not. Accordingly, stacked 924(c)s were the only basis here. Arey’s term was reduced to 390 months, and the court modified his sentence without reducing it to time served.

NACDL’s Trial Penalty Clemency Project seeks to recruit volunteers to assist federal prisoners seeking commutations. 

Mounir Nafkha moved for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), asking the Court to reduce his nearly 73-year sentence to time served, due in large part to four consecutively “stacked” counts under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). Judge Campbell held that that  “constitute[s] extraordinary and compelling reasons for his early release.”

Order granting motion for compassionate release after reconsideration. 

Argument: An order granting compassionate release on a motion for reconsideration. Prior motion included both argument based on modifications to 924(c) and daughter’s recent hospitalization. Reconsideration and compassionate release granted based on 924(c) modifications alone. Discussion of 924(c) in original denial limited to noting amendment was not retroactive. Original sentence was 351 months, reduced to 151 months.

Holding that sentencing disparity alone can be “extraordinary and compelling”:

“Notably, the only rationale offered by the government for opposing the relief sought is the contention that Congress did not specify that Section 403 of the FSA should apply retroactively. See Dkt. 230, at 2 (citing, e.g., United States v. Drayton, No. CR 10-20018-01-KHV, 2019 WL 464872, at *2 (D. Kan. Feb. 6, 2019)). However, this simply establishes that a defendant sentenced before the FSA is not automatically entitled to resentencing; it does not mean that the court may not or should not consider the effect of a radically changed sentence for purposes of applying § 3582(c)(1)(A).”

Order granting motion to reduce sentence. 

Argument: Judge Lawson held that: (1) Mr. McDonel’s mandatory 100-year sentence for multiple firearm brandishing 924(c) offenses constituted extraordinary and compelling circumstance allowing sentence reduction, and (2) statutory sentencing factors supported sentence reduction.