September 20, 2022–Due Process Institute urges the House Judiciary Committee to support the Terry Technical Correction Act (H.R. 5455), a bill with broad bipartisan support and introduced by Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), David Cicilline (D-RI), Burgess Owens (R-UT), and Thomas Massie (R-KY).
Both the Fair Sentencing Act and the First Step Act were incredibly important pieces of bipartisan sentencing reform legislation that made important changes to reduce a glaring inequity in federal drug sentencing. In light of the Supreme Court’s holding in Terry v. United States (2021). However, Congress must act to ensure that justice is being equally
and consistently applied as it intended through these legislative enactments.
After Congress enacted the First Step Act, Tarahrick Terry sought resentencing, but the federal courts hearing his case determined that only those convicted of the more serious crack cocaine offenses that triggered mandatory minimum prison sentences under § 841(b)(1)(A) or § 841(b)(1)(B) were eligible for a sentence reduction, not people like Terry who were convicted of a crack cocaine offense under subparagraph (C). In June 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with those courts based on a technical drafting issue, despite the fact that the bipartisan sponsors of the First Step Act urged them in an amicus brief to hold that the Act made retroactive relief broadly available to all individuals sentenced for crack cocaine offenses before the Fair Sentencing Act.
The Terry Technical Correction Act would simply clarify that the First Step Act sentencing reforms were meant to apply to individuals convicted under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C), as well as other low-level offenses.