United States v. Bonds

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In 2010, Bonds pled guilty to a drug-conspiracy charge and was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment, which represented a significant downward variance from his guideline range of 210 to 262 months. In 2015, the district court denied Bonds’s motion for a sentence reduction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), on the erroneous ground that Bonds had been sentenced to the statutory mandatory minimum, when, in fact, there was no applicable mandatory minimum sentence. On appeal, Bonds argued for the first time that the retroactive Amendment 782 (lowering the base offense level for most drug-trafficking crimes) opens the door to applying the non-retroactive Amendment 742, which would change his criminal history from a category of VI to V. Amendment 742 struck a Guidelines provision that stated: “Add 2 points if the defendant committed the instant offense less than two years after release from imprisonment on a sentence counted under (a) or (b)." The Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of relief. Only if Amendment 742 applied in conjunction with Amendment 782 would Bonds be eligible for a sentence reduction; courts do not have the authority to consider the non-retroactive Amendment 742 in determining eligibility for a 3582(c)(2) reduction, View "United States v. Bonds" on Justia Law