Pubdate: Tue, 16 Nov 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A18
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Adam Liptak
Referenced: The ruling http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-479.pdf
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

COURT RULES GUN USE IN DRUG CRIMES MEANS ADDED 5 YEARS

WASHINGTON -- People convicted of possessing a gun while selling 
drugs are subject to five-year mandatory minimum sentences on top of 
most of other sentences, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The ruling was the first signed decision of the term, and it was 
unanimous. But the court's newest member, Justice Elena Kagan, did 
not participate, having disqualified herself in light of her work as 
United States solicitor general.

The decision involved two defendants whose cases had been 
consolidated. One of them, Kevin Abbott of Philadelphia, was 
convicted of drug trafficking, of a related gun charge with the 
5-year minimum and under a law requiring a 15-year minimum sentence 
for career criminals. Only the latter two charges figured in his 
sentence, and the trial judge added them together for a total of 20 years.

The second defendant, Carlos R. Gould of Wichita Falls, Tex., pleaded 
guilty to a drug charge involving cocaine with a 10-year minimum 
sentence and the related gun charge with a 5-year minimum. The trial 
court gave him a little more than the minimum on the drug charge -- 
11 years and 5 months -- and then added five years for the gun charge.

The question in the case was what Congress meant when it revised a 
1968 federal gun control law in 1998 by, among other things, adding a 
new preface saying the five-year minimum for having or using guns 
while selling drugs applied "except to the extent that a greater 
minimum sentence is otherwise provided."

Mr. Abbott argued that his 15-year-sentence for being a career 
criminal was such a greater minimum sentence and that it should 
cancel out the additional five years for the gun charge. Mr. Gould 
said the same thing about his 10-year sentence.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court, said the 
defendants' approach, which also relied on federal sentencing 
guidelines, might make sense as a matter of policy.

"We do not gainsay that Abbott and Gould project a rational, less 
harsh, mode of sentencing," she wrote. "But we do not think it was 
the mode Congress ordered."

It was implausible, Justice Ginsburg wrote, to think Congress had 
altered the law in 1998 in the direction of leniency. All Congress 
meant to say in 1998 was that defendants subject to a mandatory 
minimum sentence of more than five years for a particular crime -- 
that of having or using a gun in connection with a drug crime -- need 
only serve the longer sentence.

Congress did not mean to say, Justice Ginsburg went on, that any 
longer minimum sentence for unrelated crimes also canceled out the 
five-year gun sentence.

"We doubt that Congress meant a prefatory clause, added in a bill 
dubbed 'an act to throttle criminal use of guns,' to effect a 
departure so great from" the 1968 law's purpose, she wrote. That 
purpose, she said, was "insistence that sentencing judges impose 
additional punishment."

Indeed, she wrote, a broader reading of the disputed words could 
result in "sentencing anomalies," including the possibility that "the 
worst offenders would often secure the shortest sentences." 
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