The Court rejects petitioner's contentions that the revised Guidelines are entitled to deference as a construction of §841(b)(1) and that those Guidelines require reconsideration of the method used to determine statutory minimum sentences.
As a result, the commission is considering a proposal that would allow judges to remove prison time in excess of the old statutory minimum sentences, but such inmates would still not be eligible for a reduction to the new minimum sentences established by the 2010 law.
It is doubtful that the Commission intended the Guidelines to displace Chapman's actual weight method for statutory minimum sentences, since the Commission's authoritative Guidelines commentary indicates that the new method is not an interpretation of the statute, but an independent calculation, and suggests that the statute controls if it conflicts with the Guidelines.
For example, the Sentencing Commission departed from the empirical approach when setting the Guidelines range for drug offenses, and chose instead to key the Guidelines to the statutory mandatory minimum sentences that Congress established for such crimes.
Congress is currently considering a bill called the Smarter Sentencing Act, which would cut statutory mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes by half.
That ruling, which led directly to the Ring decision, held that juries, and not judges, have to determine any fact that increases a sentence above the statutory minimum.
If the guidelines become retroactive, such an offender who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison several years ago could ask a judge to reduce his sentence to 10 years, the old statutory minimum term.
The drug distribution charges alleged in the indictments carry a minimum sentence of at least five years and statutory maximum penalties of 40 years in federal prison.
"Williams' conduct during the smuggling trip, despicable as it was, fell short of the statutory minimum to subject Williams to the possibility of a death sentence," the court ruled.
(She rejected the prosecutor's request for life sentences, and sent the accused to prison for twenty-five years, the statutory minimum).
Statutory minimum wages 2018.
