United States v. Robinson

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. RISHEEN DANIEL ROBINSON (01), Defendant.

No. 10-40037-01-DDC

United States District Court, D. Kansas

December 30, 2022

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ADDRESSING MOTION TO REDUCE SENTENCE

Daniel D. Crabtree, United States District Judge

This matter is before the court on defendant Risheen Robinson's pro se Motion for a Reduction of Sentence (Doc. 167) and a “Supplement Motion to Reduce Sentence Under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i)” (Doc. 171). The Office of the District's Federal Public Defender entered an appearance and filed the latter of these two submissions. It asks the court to reduce Mr. Robinson's sentence to time served. The government doesn't oppose the motion, agreeing that the court should reduce Mr Robinson's sentence from 262 months to time served. The court remanded Mr. Robinson to custody more than 12 years ago, on March 24, 2010.

Mr Robinson contends that the “combination” of a sentencing scheme that would no longer apply and “a defendant's unique circumstances” can “constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons” to reduce an offender's sentence under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). See United States v. McGee, 992 F.3d 1036, 1048 (10th Cir. 2021); United States v Maumau, 993 F.3d 821, 837 (10th Cir. 2021). He argues a combination of reasons support the motion to reduce his sentence, including: he no longer would qualify as a career offender; the length of time he already has served; his post-conviction rehabilitation; and the small quantity of crack cocaine (a total of 3.67 grams) involved in his offense.^[1]

As background, a jury found Mr. Robinson guilty of one count of possession with intent to distribute a mixture containing a detectable amount of crack cocaine, a violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C). Doc. 91. The Presentence Investigation Report (PSR) classified Mr. Robinson as a career offender under U.S. SENT'G GUIDELINES MANUAL § 4B1.1 (2010). Doc. 87 (PSR) at ¶ 36. See also id. at 7 (noting application of Manual effective November 1, 2010). The PSR reached this conclusion because, under then prevailing law, Mr. Robinson's pre-2010 Kansas convictions for possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute qualified as predicate offenses. PSR at ¶¶ 36, 45-47. This career offender designation more than doubled Mr. Robinson's offense level, raising it from 16 to 34. Id. at ¶¶ 35 & 36. This increase derivatively increased his Guidelines' range from 46-57 months to 262-327 months. Id. at ¶ 75. The court sentenced Mr. Robinson to 262 months in custody, the bottom end of his Guidelines' range.

If sentenced today, Mr. Robinson no longer would qualify as a career offender because neither of his Kansas drug convictions would qualify as one of the two predicate offenses required by § 4B1.1(a). See United States v. Madkins, 866 F.3d 1136, 1143-48 (10th Cir. 2017) (holding that separate Kansas convictions for possession with intent to sell marijuana and, later, cocaine don't qualify as predicate offenses under § 4B1.1). Likewise, no conviction reported in Mr. Robinson's PSR still would qualify as a crime of violence. See PSR at ¶ 36; see also United States v. Adams, 40 F.4th 1162, 1165-66, 1171 (10th Cir. 2022). And even if one of Mr. Robinson's convictions qualified as a crime of violence, it would furnish just one of the two predicate offenses required by § 4B1.1(a).^[2] Absent his career offender designation, Mr. Robinson would have qualified for a separate reduction, the one promulgated under Amendment 782. That amendment would have lowered his Guidelines' range another two levels. If sentenced today, Mr. Robinson would face a Guidelines' range of 37 to 46 months. Mr. Robinson has already served more than 12 years of his 21.8 years sentence.

The Circuit's holdings in McGee and Maumau outline the analysis that district courts must apply when asked-as defendant does here-to reduce an inmate's sentence under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). Under this test, a district court may grant such a motion “only if three requirements are met[.]” Maumau, 993 F.3d at 831 (citing United States v. Jones, 980 F.3d 1098, 1107 (6th Cir. 2020)). The next three sections apply these three requirements to Mr. Robinson's case.^[3]

1. The district court must decide whether “extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant” the requested reduction.

The first step of the analysis asks whether defendant's motion satisfies the conditions imposed by the plain language of § 3582(c). That is, do “extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant” the requested reduction? Maumau, 993 F.3d at 831. Maumau rejects the idea that the Sentencing Commission-and the Commission alone-can define what qualifies as “extraordinary and compelling.” Id. at 832. Instead, the Circuit held, district courts “possess the authority to determine for themselves” what qualifies as extraordinary and compelling. Id.

Maumau and McGee recognize that a situation like Mr. Robinson's may qualify for this finding. For instance, Maumau's defendant was serving a 55-year sentence under the stacking mechanism required by an earlier version of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). 993 F.3d at 824 (explaining § 924(c) “required” district court to impose consecutive 25-year sentences for second or subsequent convictions under § 924(c) “even if those convictions occurred at the same time as a defendant's first conviction under the statute”). The Congress amended § 924(c) in 2018 by passing the First Step Act. After this amendment, no consecutive sentence was required for § 924(c) convictions unless an earlier § 924(c) conviction was final when defendant was convicted of a second § 924(c) violation. 993 F.3d at 826.

But the First Step Act didn't help Mr. Maumau because the act limited the retroactivity permitted by the First Step Act's amendment in a fashion that excluded Mr. Maumau. He responded by filing a motion under § 3582(c)(1), arguing that his situation qualified as extraordinary and compelling. The district court agreed, concluding, among other things, that “the fact that he would not receive the same sentence if the crime occurred today” represented “extraordinary and compelling grounds to reduce his sentence.” 993 F.3d at 828 (quoting district court's order) (quotation cleaned up). The Circuit affirmed, concluding that § 3582 authorized the district court's finding of extraordinary and compelling circumstances.

Maumau's sentence shares some similarities to Mr. Robinson's situation here. Both defendants received a sentence that differed-and differed substantially-from the sentence they would receive if sentenced at the time of their § 3582(c) motion. Mr. Maumau, if sentenced in 2020 instead of 2012, wouldn't have faced statutorily mandated consecutive-“stacked”-terms of 25 years because of the amendment to § 924(c). Likewise, Mr. Robinson wouldn't qualify today as a career offender and thus would face a Guidelines' range more than 200 months shorter than the one calculated and applied during his 2010 sentencing hearing. In short, both cases present a substantial “then vs. now” disparity. But there are some differences.

Mr. Maumau's original sentence resulted from statutorily mandated consecutive sentences. 993 F.3d at 826 (“Maumau's 57-year sentence included a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence for the first § 924(c) conviction and twenty-five year mandatory minimum sentences for both the second and third [§ 924(c)] convictions, with all of these sentences to run consecutively.”) The sentencing court in Maumau expressed dissatisfaction with the mandated sentence, commenting-both at sentencing and again later-on the “unjustness of the mandatory sentence” that the court had to impose. United States v. Maumau, No. 2:08-cr-758-TC-11, 2020 WL 806121 at *5 (D. Utah Feb. 18, 2020). And later, seven years after imposing his original sentence, the sentencing court submitted a letter to the United States Attorney. This letter confirmed the court's continuing “distaste with the mandatory sentence [the court] was required to impose[,]” and “urge[d] [the United States Attorney] to do everything in [his] discretionary prosecutorial power to correct this injustice.” Id.

Mr. Robinson directs the court to no such dynamics in his case. No statute mandated this court's sentence of Mr. Robinson. It's true that his career offender designation dramatically increased his Guidelines' calculation and range, but it didn't confine the court's authority to impose a lighter sentence. See Doc. 87 (PSR) at ¶¶ 74-75 (calculating Mr. Robinson's Guidelines' range but noting no statutory minimum sentence); but see id. at 1 (noting that 21 U.S.C. § 851 had enhanced defendant's maximum sentence to 30 years). The court sentenced Mr. Robinson in 2010 and, by then, the Booker decision^[4] had rendered the Sentencing Guidelines, in effect, advisory. This court thus possessed all the discretion it needed to nullify the effect of Mr. Robinson's career offender designation and sentence him below, even well below his enhanced Guidelines' range. But it didn't. And the parties note nothing suggesting that the court felt constrained to impose a sentence it believed was unjust.^[5]

In sum, the analysis of Mr. Robinson's situation is something of a mixed batch. That is, Mr. Robinson's sentence resembles the situations presented in Maumau and McGee in some respects. He, like those defendants, would face substantially different sentencing dynamics if sentenced today.

But Mr Robinson's situation differs from those earlier cases in other important respects. For one thing, a statutory mandate didn't produce Mr. Robinson's sentence. This court just didn't exercise its sentencing discretion in Mr. Robinson's favor, however. For another thing, the force producing the disparity in his case differed from...