US v. Payne: In 2000, Payne was convicted of several simple possession offenses, including one involving crack cocaine. As a result, he was convicted of a felony on that count and sentenced to 63 months in prison (with 12-month sentences on the other possession counts being served concurrently). He completed his term of imprisonment in 2004 and his supervised release in 2007. In 2015, after the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, Payne unsuccessfully filed a writ of error coram nobis seeking to have his crack conviction reclassified as a misdemeanor. In 2019, after the passage of the First Step Act, he filed a similar motion, arguing that his conviction was a covered offense and the district court could impose a reduced sentence by reclassifying his offense as a misdemeanor. The district court denied the motion.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of Payne’s motion, concluding that there was no basis for relief under either the First Step Act or Declaratory Judgment Act. As to the First Step Act, the court held that there was no longer any sentence to reduce and that the Act simply did not grant courts the authority to reclassify prior offenses. That is because the First Step Act “makes clear that it operates on extant sentences, not the classification of completed offenses as misdemeanors,” noting that the Act “operates on penalties, not convictions.” As to the Declaratory Judgment Act, the court concluded it did not grant courts authority to reclassify prior convictions “unless another substantive portion of law retroactively changed the classification of the defendant’s offense.” The Fair Sentencing Act was not retroactive and did not “extinguish Payne’s liability for a felony offense.”
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