Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li> wrote:
If you want to look at it a different way, if you are involved with a drug offense and are not using a weapon, you'll get a lower sentence than a full fledged drug crime. It's a step in the right direction - i.e. away from manadatory sentencing of a flat time period for a crime regardless of circumstances.
But Putra got the same sentence she would have gotten had she been convicted on both charges. The fact that she was acquitted meant nothing. UNITED STATES v. VERNON WATTS UNITED STATES v. CHERYL PUTRA on petition for writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit No. 95-1906. Decided January 6, 1997 Per Curiam. In these two cases, two panels of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that sentencing courts could not consider conduct of the defendants underlying charges of which they had been acquitted. United States v. Watts, 67 F. 3d 790 (CA9 1995) (-Watts-); United States v. Putra, 78 F. 3d 1386 (CA9 1996) (-Putra-). [...] Because the panels' holdings conflict with the clear implications of 18 U. S. C. 3661, the Sentencing Guidelines, and this Court's decisions, particularly Witte v. United States, 515 U. S. ___ (1995), we grant the petition and reverse in both cases. [...] Justice Stevens, dissenting. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 revolutionized the manner in which district courts sentence persons convicted of federal crimes. Burns v. United States, 501 U. S. 129, 132 (1991). The goals of rehabilitation and fairness served by individualized sentencing that formerly justified vesting judges with virtually unreviewable sentencing discretion have been replaced by the impersonal interest in uniformity and retribution. [...] II The issue of law raised by the sentencing of Cheryl Putra involved the identification of the offense level that determined the range within which the judge could exercise discretion. Because she was a first offender with no criminal history, that range was based entirely on the offense or offenses for which she was to be punished. She was found guilty of aiding and abetting the intended distribution of one ounce of cocaine on May 8, 1992, but not guilty of participating in a similar transaction involving five ounces of cocaine on May 9, 1992. United States v. Putra, 78 F. 3d 1386, 1387 (CA9 1996). If the guilty verdict provided the only basis for imposing punishment on Ms. Putra, the Guidelines would have required the judge to impose a sentence of no less than 15 months in prison and would have prohibited him from imposing a sentence longer than 21 months. If Putra had been found guilty of also participating in the 5 ounce transaction on May 9, 1992, the Guidelines would have required that both the minimum and the maximum sentences be increased; the range would have been between 27 and 33 months. As the District Court applied the Guidelines, precisely the same range resulted from the acquittal as would have been dictated by a conviction. Notwithstanding the absence of sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the alleged offense on May 9 led to the imposition of a sentence six months longer than the maximum permitted for the only crime that provided any basis for punishment. In my judgment neither our prior cases nor the text of the statute warrants this perverse result. And the vigor of the debate among judges in the courts of appeals on this basic issue belies the ease with which the Court addresses it, without hearing oral argument or allowing the parties to fully brief the issues. [...] Even more than Williams, this Court, like all of the Circuits that have adopted the same approach as the District Courts in these cases, relies primarily on the misguided five-to-four decision in McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U. S. 79 (1986). For the reasons stated in my dissent in that case, id., at 95-104, I continue to believe that it was incorrectly decided and that its holding should be reconsidered. Even accepting its holding that the Constitution does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt to establish a sentencing factor that increases the minimum sentence without altering the maximum, however, there are at least two reasons why McMillan does not dictate the outcome of these cases. In McMillan, as in these cases, the defendant's minimum sentence was enhanced on the basis of a fact proved by a preponderance of the evidence. But in McMillan, the maximum was unchanged; the sentence actually imposed was within the range that would have been available to the judge even if the enhancing factor had not been proved. In these cases, however, the sentences actually imposed were higher than the Guidelines would have allowed without evidence of the additional offenses. The McMillan opinion pointedly noted that the Pennsylvania statute had not altered the maximum penalty for the crime committed and operated solely to limit the sentencing courts' discretion in selecting a penalty within the range already available to it without the special finding of visible possession of a firearm. Id., at 87-88. Given the Court's acknowledged inability to lay down any `bright line' test that would define the limits of its holding, id., at 91, and its apparent assumption that a sentencing factor should not be allowed to serve as a tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense, id., at 88, see also ante, at 7, n. 2, the holding should not be extended to allow a fact proved by only a preponderance to increase the entire range of penalties within which the sentencing judge may lawfully exercise discretion. [...] In my opinion the statute should be construed in the light of the traditional requirement that criminal charges must be sustained by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That requirement has always applied to charges involving multiple offenses as well as a single offense. Whether an allegation of criminal conduct is the sole basis for punishment or merely one of several bases for punishment, we should presume that Congress intended the new sentencing Guidelines that it authorized in 1984 to adhere to longstanding procedural requirements enshrined in our constitutional jurisprudence. The notion that a charge that cannot be sustained by proof beyond a reasonable doubt may give rise to the same punishment as if it had been so proved is repugnant to that jurisprudence.