United States v. Alvaran-Velez

At issue in this appeal was whether the Ex Post Facto Clause forbids applying a current U.S. Sentencing Commission policy statement, which offers sentence reductions only to those defendants whose original sentences are not already below newly reduced guideline ranges, to a defendant whose crime occurred before that version of the policy statement took effect. Defendant claimed that he could have gotten a sentence reduction under the version of the policy statement in effect at the time of his crime.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion for a sentence reduction and held that the 2006 version of USSG 1B1.10 did not apply to defendant in the first place, and thus applying its amended 2016 counterpart did not make his punishment more onerous than it otherwise would have been. Therefore, the court joined the unanimity of circuits that have held that the 2006 version of the policy statement did not by its own terms give persons in defendant's position the opportunity he claims for a reduced sentence. The court also held that the amendment's prohibition on below-guideline sentence reductions was a permissible exercise of the Sentencing Commission's discretion to determine and limit the retroactivity of its amendments. View "United States v. Alvaran-Velez" on Justia Law