WASHINGTON — Mario Claiborne faced a likely prison sentence of 37 to 46 months as he stood before a U.S. District Court judge in March 2005.
That was the recommended range for a prison term under federal sentencing guidelines. But Judge Carol E. Jackson chose to knock nearly two years off the prison term for the 21-year-old St. Louis resident, who had pleaded guilty to two cocaine-related offenses.
Claiborne's case now sits before the Supreme Court, which will answer a central question: How does a judge adequately justify a sentence that's well outside the prison term recommended by federal guidelines?
The court agreed last week to hear Claiborne's case, along with a similar case from North Carolina. That case raises the question of how much weight should be given to the advisory guidelines and whether a sentence within the suggested range can automatically be presumed "reasonable."
Lower courts have divided over those issues since the court decided last year to make the guidelines advisory, not mandatory. While district courts were no longer bound by those guidelines, they were still required to take them into account.
In the 2005 opinion, issued before Claiborne was sentenced, the 5-4 Supreme Court majority said it hoped the changes would help "avoid excessive sentencing disparities" while maintaining a level of flexibility. But two justices in that majority, swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor and then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, are no longer on the court.
Now, the court will re-examine that decision for the first time and seek to clarify whether a presumption of "reasonableness" given to sentencing guidelines actually implies that they're more "mandatory" than "advisory."
Claiborne had no criminal record before he was arrested twice in 2003, both times for cocaine-related activity. In May, he sold 0.23 grams of cocaine base to an undercover police officer in St. Louis, according to court documents. Almost six months later, he dropped a bag of 5.03 grams of cocaine base as he tried to run from St. Louis police.
The judge concluded that even the minimum recommended sentence of 37 months was "excessive." She cited Claiborne's lack of a prior criminal record, the "small quantity" of cocaine he had possessed and the court's finding that he'd be unlikely to commit similar crimes in the future.
"I don't want to minimize what you did — you committed two serious felony offenses," the judge told Claiborne, according to court transcripts. Just after that, the judge said: "I come to the conclusion that a 37-month sentence would be tantamount to throwing you away."
The Justice Department appealed. Government attorneys disputed the lower court's conclusion that Claiborne was unlikely to repeat a similar offense again, calling it nothing more than "a speculative hope." They noted that Claiborne had been arrested for another felony less than half a year after his first arrest for a similar offense.
"It strains credulity to suggest that there are many drug dealers who deal in such quantities first-time offenders or not who receive sentences as low as 15 months' imprisonment," government attorneys wrote.
In February 2006, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis agreed that the proposed 15-month prison term was far too short and reflected "substantial leniency."
"The sixty percent reduction granted to Claiborne was an extraordinary variance that is not supported by comparably extraordinary circumstances," the appeals court wrote.
The Supreme Court will likely hear the case in spring 2007.
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