CONCEPCION V UNITED STATES CRACK

After the First Step Act became law, Concepcion sought relief under Section 404(b) of the Act. The district court then sentenced Concepcion to 19 years’-or 228 months’-imprisonment. §4B1.1(a), reasoning that he met the requirements of that section due to prior convictions for controlled-substance offenses and prior convictions for carjacking, robbery, and assault. The district court treated Concepcion as a “career offender” under U.S.S.G. §2D1.1(c), and the other using the career-offender provisions of U.S.S.G. The district court made two calculations under the 2008 Guidelines to determine which sentencing range would govern: one based on the drug quantities under U.S.S.G. At sentencing, the district court applied the 2008 edition of the federal Sentencing Guidelines to calculate the sentencing range.

CONCEPCION V UNITED STATES CRACK

In 2008, petitioner Carlos Concepcion pleaded guilty to a single count of possession with intent to distribute, and distributing, at least five grams of crack cocaine. As relevant here, Section 404(b) of the First Step Act allows a person convicted of crack-cocaine offenses and sentenced before August 3, 2010, to receive a reduced sentence “as if” Section 2 of the Fair Sentencing Act were “in effect at the time the covered offense was committed.” The First Step Act of 2018 makes the Fair Sentencing Act’s reforms retroactive. To reduce “unjustified race-based differences” in sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 substantially increased the quantity of crack cocaine needed to trigger the mandatory minimum sentence. §841 note, a district court must or may consider intervening legal and factual developments.” For more than three decades, federal drug laws treated one gram of crack-cocaine as the equivalent of 100 grams of powder cocaine for purposes of setting the statutory minimum and maximum sentence.

The question presented is “hether, when deciding if it should ‘impose a reduced sentence’ on an individual under Section 404(b) of the First Step Act of 2018, 21 U.S.C. This Report summarizes cases granted review on Septem(Part I).

Concepcion v united states