US v. Lee: Lee was charged with multiple drug and firearm charges, including a pair of drug charges with enhanced mandatory minimum penalties if he had a prior conviction for a “serious drug felony.” Pursuant to 21 U.S.C. §851, the Government filed an information seeking such enhancements based on a prior New York conviction. Both Lee and the Government took the position that the jury, not the district court, had to find the facts necessary to determine whether that offense was a “serious drug felony” (specifically whether Lee had served a term of more than 12 months in prison and whether he had been released within 15 years of the current offense), but the district court disagreed. It made the necessary findings, concluded that the prior offense was a serious drug felony, and sentenced Lee to 340 months in prison (include 280 months each on the two serious drug felony counts).
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Lee’s sentence. Assuming, without deciding, that Lee and the Government were right that the jury should have found the necessary facts, the court concluded that any error was harmless. Both factual elements were “uncontested and supported by overwhelming evidence.” It also appears, from the brief opinion anyway, that the increased statutory penalties didn’t have any real impact on the eventual sentence imposed.
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